Laurens Vanthoor and César Ramos took a commanding win for WRT Audi in the Qualifying Race at Baku. But it was all about Max Götz, who won the Sprint Series title after the challenging Grasser Racing Lamborghini of Jeroen Bleekemolen and Hari Proczyk had to pit late on in the race to repair damage.
“You can’t imagine what’s happened in the last hour. It’s amazing, my second title in three years,” exclaimed Götz. “If you see the state of the car it’s amazing we even finished. It was very difficult to drive because I lost a lot of aero in the fast corners. We also want to be on the podium and finish the season with a nice cheque now.”
The start of the race was relatively clean, with many drivers opting to skip the first chicane to avoid contact. But it all kicked off at turn four, when contact between Joe Osborne’s Triple Eight BMW and the Zakspeed Mercedes created a multi-car collision, which ended with Dominik Baumann in the wall hard after the #85 HTP Mercedes was spun round into him. Matheus Stumpf also had a spin at turn seven on the same lap just before the safety car was deployed to clear up the damage.
“The car felt really good in the first two corners, I tried to cut the corner, and the Mercedes spun into me. It was bad luck, but if he went straight on it would have been fine. The damage is heavy, I think it is over for us” said a disheartened Baumann.
When the race resumed, pole man Stéphane Ortelli in the #9 WRT Audi still held the lead ahead of Vanthoor in the #1 with Jeroen Bleekemolen holding station in third. It started to become clear very quickly however, that the Grasser Lamborghini was experiencing issues with the ABS again, as Bleekemolen locked his brakes hard on more than one occasion. He struggled to keep up with the two Audis up front.
Behind the Dutchman was at that point Andy Soucek in the Beechdean Aston Martin, who managed to nab fourth from Frédéric Vervisch’s #16 Boutsen McLaren on the first lap after the Belgian skipped the first chicane and lost momentum.
On the ninth lap disaster struck for the championship leading #84 HTP Mercedes, as Max Buhk clipped the wall on the outside of turn 7, which caused significant damage to the rear wing, effecting the car’s handling. Buhk slipped back down the order from sixth down to ninth by the time the pit window opened. The team brought the car in immediately, to put Götz in the car.
“When he came in, it was the first time I saw that the rear wing was missing, and the rear was damaged. The car was upset and not easy to drive,” said Götz.
The first of the frontrunners to pit were Bleekemolen and Vanthoor, and after an extremely quick stop by the Grasser mechanics, the Lamborghini emerged from the pits ahead of the Audi, and eventually in the lead of the race. But as Richelmi rejoined after Ortelli handed the car over a lap later, Ramos, now in the #1 WRT Audi dived up the inside of Proczyk to take the lead again for the Belgian team.
Proczyk couldn’t keep up with Ramos, who quickly pulled away. But at that time, the championship was still very much hanging in the balance, as the HTP Mercedes was out of the points. It looked therefore, like the Lambo would take a crucial second place to keep them in the running, but towards the end of the race, the bonnet started to get loose, damaging the front bumper and splitter in the process.
It made the car almost underivable for the Austrian, who tumbled down the order to fourth before being called in by the stewards to repair the damage. It eliminated them from the championship, handing it to Götz.
“This track is very aggressive with curbs, you have to run them or you are slow. He didn’t hit anything, it’s just parts falling off going over the curbs. I had small vibrations when I came in,” said a disappointed Bleekemolen. “They have to change the tyre wall at the last chicane, it makes you run the curbs fully to stay fast and that’s so bad for the cars.”
This set up the Ramos for a relatively easy run to the flag aside from a late charge from Johnny Adam in the second place Beechdean Aston, who was flying in the final few laps, pulling away from Stephane Richelmi’s #9 sister Audi in third.
“It’s my first time here at Baku, and I wasn’t confident in the dry after the rain meant I didn’t have much running. After the stops I was just able to hold off the Aston Martin which was really quick. We are looking forward to fighting them in the main race,” said Ramos after the race.
Despite a hefty incident in qualifying, Fortec Motorsport won the Silver Cup, while GT Russia won Pro Am after their only completion, the #5 Phoenix Audi didn’t take the start due to accident damage.
The Main Race is still to come here at Baku, starting at 13:55 local time.
Stephen Kilbey
