Audi completes dominant opening weekend in FIA GT1 with 1-2 finish in main race

Stephane Ortelli and Laurens Vanthoor followed up on their qualifying race victory in wet conditions at the French track on Sunday with a dry win in the championship race on Monday. They ended up 3.7s ahead of team-mates Frank Stippler and Oliver Jarvis in the second of the two WRT Audi R8 ultras.

Ortelli led from pole position and pitted with a 2.1s lead over Stippler, who stopped two laps later. Jarvis emerged from the pits with half a car's length over Vanthoor, who was unable to make his warm tyres count.

Vanthoor made an unsuccessful bid for the lead three laps into his stint at Turn 7 before making the same manouevre stick four laps later. The Belgian was able to pull away to secure a double victory on his sportscar debut.

Jarvis hung on to second despite a charge from Markus Winkelhock in the best of the All-Inkl team's pair of Mercedes-Benz SLS AMGs. The German, who shared the car with team manager Marc Basseng, finished less than a second down at the finish of the one-hour race.

The second All-Inkl Merc, driven by Nicky Pastorelli and Thomas Jaeger, finished fourth ahead of the two AF Corse Ferrari 458 Italias.

Peter Kox was the fastest driver on the track for much of the second half of the race, but was unable find a way up into the top six in the Reiter Lamborghini he shared with Darryl O'Young.

Results - 40 laps:

Pos  Drivers                   Team/Car                Time/Gap
 1.  Ortelli/Vanthoor          WRT Audi            1h00m26.801s
 2.  Stippler/Jarvis           WRT Audi                + 3.731s
 3.  Basseng/Winkelhock        Munnich Mercedes       +  4.421s
 4.  Pastorelli/Jager          Munnich Mercedes       +  6.366s
 5.  Ide/Castellacci           AF Corse Ferrari       + 18.925s
 6.  Vilander/Salaquarda       AF Corse Ferrari       + 21.231s
 7.  O'Young/Kox               Reiter Lamborghini     + 21.682s
 8.  von Thurn und Taxis/Enge  Reiter Lamborghini     + 35.234s
 9.  Parisy/Halliday           Exim Porsche           + 49.619s
10.  Buurman/Bartels           Vita4One BMW         + 1m00.307s
11.  Mayr-Melnhof/Lauda        Vita4One BMW         + 1m05.808s
12.  Martin/Vasiliev           Valmon Aston         + 1m27.167s
13.  Zuber/Afanasyev           Valmon Aston             + 1 lap
14.  Pavlovic/Cressoni         Sunred Ford             + 2 laps
15.  Lariche/Wei               Exim Porsche            + 3 laps

Retirements:

     Demoustier/Parente        Hexis McLaren            18 laps
     Makowiecki/Dusseldorp     Hexis McLaren             3 laps