yasser Shahin wins GT World Challenge Australia in the Audi R8 LMS
Trophy class title for Brad Schumacher
Audi is the TCR Australia champion for the first time with Chaz Mostert
The final weekend in Australian GT and touring car racing at Bathurst rounded off an already strong season for Audi Sport customer racing with the perfect result: No fewer than three of the brand’s customers secured championship titles at the famous rollercoaster track.
Audi R8 LMS GT3
Seventh title in Australia: Yasser Shahin won the Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia presented by AWS in the Audi R8 LMS fielded by The Bend Motorsport Park team. The Australian had prominent support in the competition for the Pro-Am classification as the highest category in this racing series: Audi Sport driver Christopher Mies shared the cockpit with Shahin on the Bathurst track. The first of the two one-hour races went to the Australian-German driver pairing with a six-second advantage, second place was secured by another Audi customer team, Liam Talbot/Fraser Ross. By winning the first race, Shahin was already champion. In the second race, the two Audi cars crossed the finish line in the top two positions again – this time in reverse order. After Mark Eddy (2011), Christopher Mies (2015), Geoff Emery (2017, 2018 and 2019) and Geoff Emery/Garth Tander (2019 – Endurance), with Yasser Shahin, for the seventh time in a decade a driver with an Audi has clinched the GT title in Australia. Each time, the Melbourne Performance Centre entered the cars and was a strong factor for success. For privateer driver Shahin, it was already the second title in an Audi R8 LMS after having been the historic last champion of the Audi Sport R8 LMS Cup in 2019. Privateer Brad Schumacher offered further cause for celebration: The Australian secured the title in the Trophy classification in an Audi R8 LMS as well. This is the sixth time that this class of the racing series has gone to an Audi customer. For Audi Sport customer racing, success in the southern hemisphere complements a strong season in the GT World Challenge: In the European offshoot of this international racing platform of promoter SRO, Team WRT with Audi Sport drivers Dries Vanthoor/Charles Weerts had won no less than five titles in various categories, including two overall drivers titles.
Audi RS 3 LMS (TCR) First championship success in TCR Australia: Chaz Mostert is the new champion of TCR Australia. The Australian touring car ace won the title early in the Audi RS 3 LMS at the Bathurst circuit. After a total of five wins in the first four race weekends of the season, the 29-year-old professional driver’s advantage was big enough to become champion as early as at the start of the final weekend. Ninth place in the first of three races after a practice accident and subsequent intensive repairs by the Melbourne Performance Centre was enough for Mostert to win the title early. This brings the number of championship victories of the first generation of Audi’s entry-level touring car to 24 since 2017. Eight of these successes alone were achieved in the past season – spread across Australia, the Baltic States, Belgium, Canada, Eastern Europe, Italy, New Zealand and Spain.
