Saturday Kyalami 9 Hours was attended by a large crowd and despite watching a small field they went home happy.
dominated by BMW
The reason is South African driver Sheldon van der Linde who, together with his teammates Dries Vanthoor and Charles Weerts, won the overall race in the German WRT team’s BMW M4 GT3. This event is round two of this year’s Intercontinental GT Challenge.
Van der Linde, Vanthoor and Weerts finished 1.7 seconds ahead of the WRT team’s second BMW M4, shared by Philipp Eng, Augusto Farfus and Maxime Martin.
Third, another 1.3 seconds behind, is Tresor Attempto Audi R8 LMS crewed by Mattia Drudi, Ricardo Feller and Patric Niederhauser.
Also read: Lights ready to go out in Kyalami 2023 9-Hour
The second Audi Tresor Attempto finished fourth overall in the hands of Alex Aka, Dennis Marschall and Markus Winkelhock.
They were followed by the SunEnergy1 Mercedes-AMG GT3 team represented by Kenny Habul, Jules Gounon and Yannick Mettler who, in the process, won the event’s Pro-Am class.
The results showed Habul and Gounon retained the overall drivers’ championship this year with three points from van der Linde, Vanthoor and Weerts.
Meanwhile, one-two BMW now sees it tied with Mercedes-AMG at the top of the manufacturers’ standings.
How did it happen?
Driving ahead, van der Linde, who started from second, initially fell back to third at the start, but was able to drive behind, after the BMW WRT never relinquished the number one spot, closely followed by its sister car.
Its closest rival in terms of pace, the pole-sitter GruppeM Mercedes-AMG GT of Maro Engel, Mikael Grenier and Raffaele Marciello, lost first, second, third and sixth gears just after the halfway mark and dropped down the field.
The team made it 70% of the distance to qualify and earn IGTC points before effectively retiring.
As the evening wore on, it looked like the Audi might be able to challenge the BMW, but as darkness fell, the M4 stepped up and pulled back.
Less than 30 minutes to go, the full yellow color appeared after the local Stradale Racing Mercedes-AMG GT entered, led by Arnold Neveling at the time, got beached above Leeukop.
He, however, can get back and despite the field bunching up with Drudi seems keen to split BMW 1-2, Audi’s team decision not to pit him in the safety car were the move taken by WRT, leaving him in. old tires and can not mount the challenge as a race again.
The order was unchanged and as the clock struck 22h00, van der Linde, who took over from Vanthoor with 90 minutes remaining, crossed the finish line to win in front of an enthusiastic crowd.
Despite the death penalty and several pit stops, the Stradale AMG GT3 of Neveling, Charl Arangies and Clint Weston, finished eighth overall, one place out of the classification but ultimately non-running in the GruppeM Mercedes-AMG GT3 finish.
Finishing to finish the race was the MJR Motorsport Audi R8 LMS of Marius Jackson, Mo Mia and Kwanda Mokoena who waited a long time to pit due to unconfirmed mechanical problems.
The Kyalami Supercup for the only entries competing in the opening hours was won by the NGK Pablo Clark Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Mikaeel Pitamber, who defeated Sun Moodley’s version of BigFoot Expressing.
The next race
After the opening 12-hour Bathurst in Australia and 9-Hour, the series now takes an extended hiatus before resuming at the end of June with the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps. The full calendar can be viewed here.