Another championship title for a customer team: only one week after winning the Portuguese GT Championship, César Campaniço, Boss of Team Novadriver, can celebrate yet another title. The Finn Mikko Eskelinen, with whom Campaniço shares an Audi R8 LMS ultra, celebrated winning the Iber GT Championship title in the finale at Barcelona. In the first race Eskelinen/Campaniço finished fifth while their Novadriver team mates Manuel Giao/Carlos Vieira were victorious. In the second race, the Finnish-Portuguese pairing completed the triumph with second place. Campaniço had no chance himself of defending his Spanish title from the previous year. In September he was forced to miss the race in Valencia due to a conflicting date with the Portuguese Championship. 2012 was the most successful year for his team, which competes in its third consecutive year with Audi GT3 race cars, after winning the Cup and championship in Portugal as well as the title in Spain.
Premiere in China: Edoardo Mortara makes his debut in the Audi R8 LMS Cup at the finale in Shanghai this coming weekend. The Audi DTM driver reacquaints himself with the GT3 sportscar after having last competed a year ago in the ILMC finale and the GT race in Macau. One week after the race at Shanghai he fights in the Audi R8 LMS ultra for his fourth consecutive victory in the street race in Macau.
Eager anticipation for December: Audi once again provides the Audi R8 LMS this year as race car for the Race of Champions. The annual competition between race drivers from all around the world is staged in Bangkok between 14 and 16 December. Audi transports four examples of the powerful 560 hp GT3 race cars from the Chinese base in Zhuhai to Thailand.
Two appearances for Audi: Mattias Ekström visits the ‘Goldenen Lenkrad’ awards ceremony as jury member next Wednesday. Afterwards, he is guest at the Auto Mobil International (AMI) exhibition in Leipzig.
A word from ... André Lotterer
Together with your team mates Benoît Tréluyer and Marcel Fässler you are the first World Champions in the FIA Endurance Championship WEC. Which moments do you remember the best?
Quite obviously first and foremost our second Le Mans win. It is and always will be the most important race. Also, however, the fastest qualifying time at Sebring opener. After we had exceeded the speed in the pit lane, we were given a sport penalty. Afterwards just a single flying lap was enough to take pole position. I will also have fond memories of Fuji because of the intense fight with Toyota. We were only crowned champions at the finale.
Within just three years at Audi you have achieved everything with two Le Mans victories, another podium finish at Le Mans and now the World Championship title. The decision you made about your career before the 2010 season was obviously not so wrong …
I’m extremely grateful that I was even given this opportunity at all. I was racing in Japan for a long time. Because of this, it’s not so easy to return to Europe, particularly as the focus of attention is not automatically on our performance in Japan. In 2009 I had the opportunity to compete for a private Audi team at Le Mans. It was a fantastic surprise that I was able to move up into the factory team and to immediately sit in a car capable of winning.
In the first WEC season Audi fought against the challenger Toyota. Was it easy just having one strong opponent?
Quite the opposite. On one hand Toyota was capable of winning from the word go. This in itself was a challenge. It was also easy to overlook exactly what this constellation means mathematically. If you don’t win one race, you at least have a good chance of finishing on the podium. However, when a result outside the top ten comes into the equation, as was the case for us at Sebring, things then get very interesting. Especially as our championship contenders came from the same team, took seven podium finishes and have always collected big points. This is why we had to play catch up. The result was only clear at the very end. This was no easy year!
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