Bentley Wins Debut Blancpain Sprint Series Cup Race

It was a strong opening effort for Bentley Motorsport, as it won its first qualifying race on Saturday April 9. The qualifying race win gave the #8 Bentley Team M-Sport Continental GT3 pole position for Sunday’s main race.

The win ultimately came down to a strategic gamble. Despite the track being wet for the race start, the Bentley was one of two cars on the grid to start on slicks, rather than rain tires. The decision proved to be the right one, giving Andy Soucek and Maxime Soulet the race win.

Sunday’s main race, however, was less successful. While running in third place, the #8 Bentley Team M-Sport Continental GT3 was bumped from behind, sending it spinning off the track. Despite the shunt, Soucek raced valiantly for an hour to get the car across the line in 11th place.

“We struggled to match the qualifying pace, so we knew we had to rely on strategy to get a result in the races,” commented Bentley’s Director of Motorsport Brian Gush. “We took a gamble with tires with car number eight and it paid off. We would have liked to have come away with more points but, given the circumstances this weekend, I think we did the best job we could.”

The #7 Continental GT3, meanwhile, started much lower on the grid, in P20. Its drivers, Steven Kane and Vince Abril, managed to make up three spots, finishing in P17.

Despite the trouble in Sunday’s event, Bentley earned itself eight points in the Blancpain Sprint Series Cup title race with its strong Saturday performance.

The teams will compete again at Monza on April 23 and 24.

The post Bentley Wins Debut Blancpain Sprint Series Cup Race appeared first on VWVortex.

from VWVortex http://ift.tt/1TMjTrq
via IFTTT

Comments

Project SportWagen: Going Stage 2 with APR

When we last left you, the humble little SportWagen was fresh from the development process with our friends at AWE Tuning, sporting a new downpipe, exhaust and intake, allowing things to breathe a bit easier. The car sounded great, but there was no getting around the fact that our wagon was still quite, well, slow. While we realize that nothing we do to the Golf SportWagen at this point will make it a race car, we still felt compelled to do something . To put it bluntly, we had a fever, and the only cure was more power. Flash forward a few hours, and we found ourselves at Waterfest, staring down APR’s palatial spread and the numerous tuned vehicles surrounding it. Earlier in the year, APR had hinted to us that their 1.8 TSI files would be quite impressive, and based on what they were able to do with the 2.0 TSI found in the new GTI and our time in their Golf R, we knew it’d be worth the wait. So with this in mind, we lined our G...

Project Golf SportWagen- Intro

I’ve never really been one for SUVs and crossovers. The current offerings aren’t the body-on-frame, go-anywhere specialty tools I remember from my youth, and what they lack in capability, they also lack in on-road performance. The current crop isn’t terribly good at handling or being efficient, which in my opinion are major components of our ideal driving experience. So when it comes to space or utility, I usually look for something of the wagon variety- and it seems that I’m not alone. We hit quite a few shows around the east coast each summer, and we see modified Jetta SportWagens at nearly every event. Even amongst common consumers, these cars are highly sought-after. They don’t depreciate much, making even early Mk 5 2.5 versions expensive in comparison to other Jettas or Golfs of the same vintage. This year, Volkswagen launched their latest SportWagen, which is now billed as a Golf. In many ways, this latest SportWagen is the best yet and it has certai...

Volkswagen Group Records Best Ever First-Half-of-Year Sales

With 5.5 million vehicles in customer hands after the first six months of 2018, the Volkswagen Group is seeing the best performance of its history. Group deliveries increased significantly in all core regions,” said Fred Kappler, head of sales for the Group. “Our core brands recorded strong growth in the first half year.” For the year-to-date, all of Volkswagen’s brands had sales bumps. MAN, SEAT, and Skoda led the sales charge with performances 24%, 17% and 11% better than the previous year. The big sellers, too, had strong sales periods, with Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Audi, and Volkswagen sales rising 3.5%, 4.5% and 6.3% respectively. That last figure is particularly good new for the board, since Volkswagen alone sold more than 3 million vehicles in the first half of 2018. As Kappler stated, the numbers are equally good when you break sales down by region. Brazil and Russia were the most improved markets (22% and 20%, respectively), while strong sales in Europe and China (u...

Vorderman Volkswagen

Search This Blog