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Audi GT team WRT expands into TCR with Comini, Vernay and VW

Multiple championship-winning WRT Audi GT team will expand into the TCR touring car series with reigning champion Stefano Comini in 2016

The Belgian squad, which has also won the Spa and Nurburgring 24-hour classics with Audi, will field a pair of Volkswagen Golfs in the TCR International Series for inaugural champion Comini and former Peugeot LMP1 test and reserve driver Jean-Karl Vernay.

WRT will also enter the new-for-2016 Benelux TCR Series with one Golf TCR and one SEAT Leon TCR.

Team boss Vincent Vosse told Autosport: "I believed in GT3 from the start and I also believe in TCR for the same reasons.

"I am sure it is going to become big business and I want to get in at the beginning."

The move into the international series was made possible courtesy of a link-up with Italian sports drink Leopard, which was one of WRT's sponsors in the Blancpain GT Series last season.

Vosse explained that he had chosen the Golf because "there are lots of SEAT Leons and I wanted to do something different".

Comini said that he was making the switch from the Target Competition squad in order to drive "for what will quickly become the best team in TCR".

"Vincent was the first team owner to speak to me after I won the title in Macau last year," he said.

"They are giving me my first professional drive, but they are a team that also only looks at two things: the stopwatch and the results."

Vernay, whose CV also includes the 2010 Indy Lights title, is moving over from the WRT BGTS Audi squad.

Vosse said that the versatility the Frenchman had shown across multiple categories explained the choice.

The Leon TCR for the Benelux series, in which two drivers share a car, will be run under the RACB National Team banner and supported by SEAT Belgium.

The drivers will be sometime Auto GP racer Sam Dejonghe and Denis Dupont, winners of a competition organised by the Royal Automobile Club Belgium to find new touring car talent.

The Golf will be driven by Ronnie Latinne, formerly a regular in the defunct Belgian Touring Car Championship, and Maxime Potty, who is moving up to car racing from WRT's karting academy.

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