The WRT Audi team which won this year’s Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hour has declared itself unlikely to compete in the 2019 edition.
The Belgian outfit entered two R8 LMS cars under the Audi Sport Team WRT banner in the 2018 Bathurst 12 Hour, with its Car #37 entry of Robin Frijns/Stuart Leonard/Dries Vanthoor winning the race having led at the time of a late-afternoon red flag.
Will Davison was among the four-driver crew in the sister Car #39 entry which finished 14th outright and eighth in GT3 Pro-Am.
While Audi itself has already confirmed that it will enter at least two R8 LMSs in each of the five rounds of the 2019 Intercontinental GT Challenge, of which Bathurst is the first, WRT is unlikely to be converging on Mount Panorama in late-January.
“It doesn’t look like we will be there at the moment and it’s not a race you can decide to do at the last minute,” team boss Vincent Vosse told UK publication Autosport of the Bathurst 12 Hour.
Vosse did reveal that the team is hopeful of entering the 24 Hours of Daytona, which begins with the Roar Before The 24 test from January 4-6, before the race itself on the weekend prior to the Bathurst 12 Hour (January 24-27).
Christopher Mies broke the official outright Mount Panorama lap record just under a fortnight ago when he clocked a 1:59.2910s in an unrestricted Jamec Pem R8 run by Audi Sport Customer Racing Australia during the Challenge Bathurst event.
Next year’s Bathurst 12 Hour takes place on January 31-February 3.