The celebration of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in August has generated an uncomfortable and unexpected clash of dates between the DTM event at the Nürburgring and the WEC reigning event. A situation that affects Sophia Flörschas the 20-year-old racer one of Abt Sportsline’s Audi R8 LMS GT3s at the German competition and also has a WEC program with the LMP2 of the Richard Mille team that he shares with Beitske Visser and Tatiana Calderón. Given this circumstance, Flörsch has decided to give priority to Le Mans with the approval of Abt and Schaeffler.
As a result of this confrontation on the Flörsch calendar, Veteran Markus Winkelhock will be in charge of driving Abt’s third Audi at the Nürburgring, replacing Sophia. In this way, the 41-year-old German driver will return to the DTM after competing in the German competition for the last time in 2010. Audi official driver in its GT3 program, Winkelhock has achieved great success in GTWC Europe, ADAC GT Masters and in the main tests of the specialty. What’s more, Winkelhock knows the Schaeffler Paravan cable transmission system like no one else that uses the GT3 of the Abt team in the DTM.
In fact, Winkelhock has been one of the pilots who has worked the most on the system developed by Schaeffer, especially in the GTC Race series. This same season, the German rider competes with a Audi R8 LMS GT3 managed by Phoenix Racing and equipped with this technology. In this aspect, It should be remembered that Winkelhock was the first pilot to use this electronic steering system under the Audi umbrella after competing in a GT3 equipped with this technology as a guest in the GTC Race at the Nürburgring in 2019, a category that he also won in sprint mode in 2020.