BES: Vanthoor and Frijns dominate Zolder Race 1

WRT Audi drivers Laurens Vanthoor and Robin Frijns dominated the qualifying race at Zolder to make it three wins in a row in the Blancpain Sprint Series.

Vanthoor converted pole position into the lead of the race and had built up a lead of nearly three seconds over the chasing HTP Bentley driven by Maximilian Buhk before the midrace pit stops.

The WRT Audi R8 LMS ultra with Frijns at the wheel emerged from the pit sequence with a lead of approximately nine seconds over the Rinaldi Ferrari of Marco Seefried and Dutch driver was able to control the gap to take victory by 5.5s.

Frijns, who followed up on his Brands Hatch double with Vanthoor last month, said: "I wasn't cruising, although I was controlling the gap a bit.

"I was asking my engineer what the gap was and they were gaining, gaining, so it is going to be an interesting race tomorrow."

Norbert Siedler, who started the Ferrari 458 Italia, had run to the pitstops on the tail of Buhk before a quicker turnaround by the Rinaldi crew leapfrogged Seefried ahead of Vincent Abril in the HTP Motorsport Bentley Continental GT3.

The Phoenix Audi of Markus Winklehock and Niki Mayr-Melnhof took fourth ahead of the BMW Team Brazil entry of Valendo Brito and Atila Abreu.

MRS Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 of Craig Dolby and Sean Walkinshaw just hung on to sixth after Caca Bueno tried to bundle his way through at the final corner in the second Brazilian BMW Z4 GT3 he shared with Sergio Jimenez.

The WRT Audi team's day was spoilt by a startline accident that resulted in the retirement of two of its fleet of R8s.

Stephane Richelmi and Kevin Estre in the best of the Attempto McLaren's made contact on the narrow start-finish straight. The Audi turned sharp left across the nose of the McLaren 650S GT3 and careened into the side of the WRT entry started by Frank Stippler.

Silver Cup honors went to the second HTP Bentley shared by GT debutant Tom Dillmann and Jules Szymkowiak, while Bernd Schneider and Alexey Karachev took victory in the Pro-Am class.