Isaac Tutumlu leads the Gulf 12 hours on debut with brand-new Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo

The Spaniard moved into the GT3 Gentleman lead with the Car Collection Motorsport-run Audi fighting with factory drivers during his stint. Tutumlu was forced to retire from the race following an incident of one of his teammates.

Isaac Tutumlu delivered another strong performance throughout the weekend during the 2018 Gulf 12 hours race hosted at the Yas Marina Circuit. On his debut with the brand-new Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo, Tutumlu teamed up with German drivers Peter Schmidt, Maximilian Paul and Dirk Parhoffer. Despite Tutumlu couldn’t repeat on the podium as last year, the Spaniard displayed tons of talent fighting with factory drivers during his stint.

In the free practice session, Tutumlu gave prominence and his teammates spent most of track time. Tutumlu himself underlined: “I worked with Dirk and Peter on the telemetry and they made promising progress. In the same way Maximilian, making his first outing in GT racing after a successful career in karting, also showed quick learning.” Later in qualifying, Tutumlu was fastest for Car Collection Motorsport clocking a lap time of 2:09.700 to take P1 in class. However, Tutumlu and his teammates started from 19th and second in Gentleman class with an average lap of 2:12.480.

Tutumlu explained “I made a good start and overtook eight drivers to move into the class lead. Besides, I was running into the top-ten fighting with factory-backed drivers such as Christopher Haase, Clemens Schmid, Darren Turner or Álvaro Parente”. The driver racing under the Car Collection Motorsport banner built a solid lead after the first hour before making a pit stop to hand over to Parhoffer, who had a race incident bringing their race to an early end.