The California 8 Hours, third round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge, was in the road for domination from Land Motorsport, but some hard fights and heartbreaking moments delivered the win to Magnus Racing, Kelvin van der Linde, Markus Winkelhock and Pierre Kaffer in their Audi R8 LMS.
On the green flag the No. 44 Magnus Audi took a bold move for first but the No. 29 Land Audi was quick to take back the position but the race was halted early as the No. 99 Automatic Aston Martin GT4 retired. Once the green came back Alvaro Parente was the guy who dashed, jumping then to second place, but even though he was quick, it wasn’t enough to reach the leading car.
The first pit stop round didn’t make much to change the order, but brought the confirmation of another retirement as the No. 93 RealTime Acura had cooling issues. Things were pretty much settled until the end of the second hour when Dane Cameron in the No. 43 RealTime Acura started rocking things again by overtaking not only the No. 11 WRT Audi but also the No. 9 K-PAX McLaren, jumping then to third place overall.
In the third hour the driver change factor that benefited RealTime played against them as Robin Frijns in the No. 11 quickly caught Tom Dyer in the No. 43 and got past him for third. The halfway mark brought a Safety Car period as the No. 07 TRG Aston Martin GT4 stopped with problems, with this becoming the perfect opportunity to capitalize into the leading car, but the No. 29 opened the gap again as the No. 44 and the No. 43 had their own matters to solve as Tom Dyer unlapped himself from the Magnus Racing machine.
With 3 hours and 20 minutes to go another yellow flag period emerged as damage in the Corkscrew tire barriers saw one of them get loose and rolled downhill for a while. When the green came back emerged and Audi battle between Magnus Racing and WRT for second, all of this while having the Land Audi locked on target a few seconds ahead, but keeping it clean with time being the key point. While that the No. 43 RealTime Acura was hit with a drive-through penalty which pretty much ruined their odds for even fight for a win.
With the final hour coming and the last round of pit stops, things simply went wrong for the No. 29 and the No. 11 WRT Audi took the lead, but their quick pitwork turned into drive-through penalties for the two cars, and by being quick in serving the penalty the No. 29 retook first place, although still having the No. 11 with Robin Frijns right in its back wing. And if this wasn’t intense enough, both cars decided to lap the No. 07 TRG Aston Martin by each of its sides, then coming to contact and going off-track, but the No. 11 had the worst luck by spinning and staying on gravel while the No. 29 just rallycrossed its way back, with the yellow flag coming right after this.
The restart had the No. 44 Magnus Audi in pursuit of the No. 29 Land Audi, and after 20 minutes of total pressure, Kelvin van der Linde finally got past Christopher Mies for first place, opening a bit of a gap then. Without the pace and tires to keep track of the No. 44, Mies had to settle for second while van der Linde brought Magnus Racing to victory.
The No. 54 Black Swan Porsche won the GT3 Pro-Am category and finished 5th overall while the No. 193 MARC Mazda won the two-car only Invitational class and the No. 26 Rearden Porsche won the GT4 class.
The final round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge will be the final edition of the Sepang 12 Hours as part of the championship calendar on December 10th, with the Malaysian endurance race moving away to be replaced by the Suzuka 10 Hours next year and joining the Asia Pacific 36 Endurance Cup.
PHOTO: Audi Sport
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