Vincent Vosse’s Team WRT has made a determined commitment to endurance since last year. In fact, the Belgian line-up landed in the LMP2 category in 2021 and won everything in their power. Le Mans, WEC and European Le Mans Series, achieving a total of four entries for the 90th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans which is running this weekend, although it is only using three. Also, the structure competes as standard with two LMP2 prototypes in the silver category of the WEC.
All this effort was focused on supporting Audi’s LMDh program from the 2023 season. in the queen category of the WEC, an objective that has collapsed after the decision of the Ingolstadt firm to put its program on ‘stand by’. Made all this landing, Team WRT is looking at different options to compete in the queen class of the World Championshipeven if that means breaking its relationship with Audi in other categories if required by the contract it could reach with another brand.
In other words, Team WRT would have no problem breaking the successful link with Audi in GT3 if required by the eventual brand with which it could compete in LMDh. Meanwhile, Audi Sport have shown their desire to maintain the ‘team-customer’ relationship with WRT. Chris Reinke himself has expressed the brand’s hope of having WRT racing its Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II in the best competitions and tests in the world. And in this sense is working from the German firm.
Chris Reinke has been categorical about it: «I can confirm that we are working on it. WRT has been one of our main partners for many years. We are very happy with the success we have achieved together. From the point of view of careers under the ‘career-customer’ model, we would be very happy if we could continue on our successful path with the Audi R8 LMS GT3 with WRT. We want to go further. The strategic possibilities from his point of view is something that only WRT can comment on.
The head of Audi added: “It seems that WRT wants to graduate as a team in other world-class stages. It has an LMP2 program at the moment running in good partnership with us. You can see it in the driver line-ups they have at Le Mans. Beyond this, we have different plans in LMDh and that could affect our future perspective next to WRT. From Audi’s ‘racing-customer’ department we have a very solid partnership with WRT and we want to maintain it.”
Photos: GT World Challenge Europe