Portimão race ends in tears as Tutumlu’s teammate crashes

Lady Luck wasn’t in Tutumlu’s side during the 24 hours of Portimão. The Spaniard contested the Portuguese race driving an Audi R8 LMS of Car Collection Motorsport with Ali Çapan, Siegfried Kuzdas, Edward Lewis Brauner and Stefan Aust as teammates. Kuzdas went off track in free practice and it caused serious chassis damage, according to Audi engineers.

Isaac Tutumlu couldn’t make it to the start at the 24 hours of Portimão, another event counting towards the 24H GT Series, as his Audi chassis was damaged by teammate’s crash in free practice. Tutumlu shared the Car Collection Motorsport Audi R8 LMS with Ali Çapan, Siegfried Kuzdas, Edward Lewis Brauner and Stefan Aust and soon the Barcelona native revealed to be the fastest Audi driver. Tutumlu clocked a time of 1:45.600 in free practice to rank second overall and it couldn’t be improved by factory Audi drivers Pierre Kaffer and Christopher Haase.

Unfortunately Kuzdas went off track and ran over a kerb causing serious chassis damage. Audi engineers found the extensive damage in the early hours of Saturday and it wasn’t repairable with only a few hours to go before the race. It still didn’t prevent Tutumlu from being the fastest Audi driver in qualifying once again with a lap time of 1:45.209. “Siegfried lost control on cold tires shortly after leaving the pits. The car ran over a kerb damaging a rim and the flat bottom. We changed them for qualifying I didn’t really find the car different, maybe a little less grip available. In fact, I was the fastest Audi driver again. We still improved our set-up in night practice as my lap time was just two tenths slower on old tires. Unfortunately Audi engineers discovered chassis damage and they couldn’t allow us to drive the car anymore”, said Tutumlu. At least, Isaac was pleased “with my performance, as I was faster than Kaffer and Haase. Our new Spanish engineer Miguel Gálvez was key to improve the car set-up. But Creventic has to change the BoP for the Barcelona 24 hours because the Mercedes cars were way too fast for a third consecutive race.”