Team Mars gives Audi its first TCR win in 2019
The Audi Team Mars won the TCR class in the opening round of the Japanese Super Taikyu endurance series and scored the first victory of the season for the Audi RS 3 LMS.
Hideaki Okajima, Masanobu Kato, Masato Shimoyama and Daisuke Imamura shared driving duties during the 5-hour race and eventually won by the slim margin of six seconds ahead of the Modulo Racing DOME Honda Civic Type R driven by Tadao Uematsu, Shinji Nakano, Mitsuhiro Endo and Hiroki Otsu. However, the Honda was demoted to fourth by a penalty for overtaking under yellow flag.
It was an exciting race that saw five teams running in the same lap until the end. The BRP Audi of ‘Hirobon’, Takeshi Matsumoto and Takuro Shinohara set pole position and was in the lead for the first three hours. Then the Team Mars Audi that had started from 7th on the grid, moved into the first place thanks to a prefect pit-stop strategy, while there was a close fight for second between the BRP Audi, the Modulo DOME Civic and the KCMG Honda Civic of Paul Ip, Jim Ka To and Matthew Howson.
Otsu overtook Ka To for second, 40 minutes before the end of the race and began cutting his gap from the leaders – Kato and Matsumoto – by four/six seconds per lap. With ten minutes left on the clock, Otsu was on the tail of Matsumoto’s Audi; after the latter managed to reject a few attempts, the two cars made contact at T1 and both went wide onto the gravel, but rejoined.
Otsu took the opportunity to pass Matsumoto and tried to chase Kato; he was able to reduce the gap from 23 to 6 seconds during the final five minutes, but couldn’t get close enough to try an overtaking manoeuvre and had to settle for second before being handed a 30-second penalty that dropped him to fourth behind the BRP Audi and the KCMG Civic.
The winning Audi was classified an outstanding 7th overall behind six GT3 cars.
The Super Taikyu will resume at Sugo on 27/28 April, for round 2.
Race
1. Team Mars, Audi RS 3 LMS (Okajima / Kato / Shimoyama / Imamura), 120 laps
2. BRP, Audi RS 3 LMS (‘Hirobon’ / Shinohara / Matsumoto), 12.88
3. KCMG, Honda Civic FK8 (Paul Ip / Jim Ka To / Howson), 33.00
