Navarra: No title yet for Laurens Vanthoor

In the sport world some weekends can be highly frustrating. One has the team and the car to win, but bad luck just ruins one’s chances. That's what happened to Laurens Vanthoor and his WRT Audi teammate Stéphane Ortelli in the penultimate round of the FIA GT Series in Navarra, Spain.

"Arriving here with a 19 point bonus and leaving with only 5 left, is not really a perfect weekend…", Laurens Vanthoor commented straight after the weekend’s Championship race. "But this will only motivate us even more to grab the title in Baku."

#11 Belgian Audi Club Team WRT Audi R8 LMS ultra: Stéphane Ortelli, Laurens Vanthoor

Photo by: SRO/VIMAGES/Fabre

Laurens Vanthoor: However in qualifying, somehow we did not perform as well as we had expected. For one or another reason Stéphane did not get the full speed out of the WRT Audi R8 LMS Ultra and we did not make it on to the front row of the grid. This meant that we had to be aggressive during the first race, and the qualifying race of the Spanish round of the this highly rated FIA GT Series."

In that first race, weather conditions were very unpredictable and a tyre choice would be important for the outcome of the race.

Laurens Vanthoor: "We decided to go out on slicks, a gamble, it could have worked out very well for us, but it didn't… Luckily we scored 4 points, out of a maximum of 8, but nevertheless this should have been a better race."

The Championship race was another difficult chapter in Laurens Vanthoor’s weekend.

Laurens Vanthoor: "We had a serious brake issue, something that very rarely happens on the car, but it ruined our race. We lost a lot of our bonus with a view to our title rivals and now everything will be decided during the last event, the street race in Baku. We remain confident, as our car is fast and we remain fast driver pairing, but in a race between walls, everything could happen!"

The last race will take place on the 22nd and 23rd of November in Baku - Azerbeidjan

Laurens Vanthoor