9 Hours of Kyalami – Undisputed victory for Team WRT

In a race controlled from start to finish, Team WRT signs an authoritative double at the 9 Hours of Kyalami, 2nd round of the 2023 IGTC campaign.

Published on 25/02/2023 à 21:01

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9 Hours of Kyalami – Undisputed victory for Team WRT

Team WRT wins with a double at the 9 Hours of Kyalami. © Jeff Latham / Kyalami 9 Hour

This is what we call total domination from Team WRT. While we could predict a great battle against the Mercedes-AMG GT3 No. 999 from Team GruppeM Racing notably led by Raffaele Marciello, author of pole position the day before, the duel ultimately did not take place in these 9 Hours of Kyalami 2023.

Quickly rid of the No. 3 Mercedes-AMG GT999, the Belgian structure set its own pace by placing the No. 4 BMW M3 GT32 (Sheldon van der Linde-Dries Vanthoor-Charles Weerts) in front of the No. 33 sister car (Philipp Eng-Augusto Farfus-Maxime Martin). If in the first two hours the leading trio was held within around fifteen seconds, Team WRT gradually took off.

Team GruppeM and Marciello on the mat

In a relatively clean race without too many incidents or safety car interventions, the BMW M4 GT3s of Vincent Vosse were never worried. Team GruppeM tried as best they could to hang on but the damage was already done. Things even got tough for the Hong Kong-based entity when it had no choice but to pull its Mercedes-AMG GT3 into the garage a little less than 2 hours from the checkered flag to leave it a full hour later. late.

GruppeM hasn't completely given up on its Mercedes-AMG…

📺 https://t.co/spRMu9X9SY #IGTC | #K9H (I.e. pic.twitter.com/E6lh0t0cT1

— Intercontinental GT Challenge (@IntercontGTC) February 25, 2023

The main threat removed, Team WRT fixed the positions for good, thus offering victory to the No. 32 with the local Sheldon van der Linde at the controls but also the first for BMW in the Intercontinental GT Challenge with the M4 GT3 since only Mercedes and Ferrari had won in 2022. The entry of the Safety Car half an hour from the end changed nothing and the No. 33 reached the finish a few meters further, thus offering the double to its team of 'Audi R8 LMS evo II GT3 of Tresor Attempto Racing (Mattia Drudi-Ricardo Feller-Patric Niederhauser)

In Pro-Am, victory went to Jules Gounon, 5th in the general classification, alongside Yannick Mettler and Kenny Habul (Mercedes-AMG GT3 No. 75 – SunEnergy1)

After two races in the space of 3 weeks, theIGTC now enters a 3-month truce which will take it until the 24 Hours of Spa (June 29-July 2), moved forward by one month since the Belgian Grand Prix of F1 will take place at the end of July (28-30).