Enzo Ide and Rene Rast claimed victory for the WRT Audi team in a main Blancpain Sprint Series race at Zandvoort that was hit by a mid-race rain shower.
Ide held third during the opening stint, and the #2 moved up to second at the pitstops when the Grasser Racing Lamborghini suffered a slow stop after Hari Proczyk had led from pole position.
The lead was handed to the #85 HTP Motorsport Mercedes of Maximilian Gotz and Maximilian Buhk. The rain shower came and went, with some cars taking a gamble on wet tyres that didn’t work out.
Rast applied the pressure to his fellow German Buhk in the greasy conditions, getting past into the lead with a superb move at turns 10 and 11.
Buhk then came under attack from the impressive series newcomers Team Schubert, with Dominik Baumann having taken over from Thomas Jager behind the wheel of the BMW. Buhk appeared to be struggling and spun, before taking time to get back up to speed.
Baumann was now released to catch back up with Rast, but the Austrian was unable to get past and had to settle for second.
The other new entry for this weekend, the Team Herberth Porsche of Jaap van Lagen and Robert Renauer finished in third ahead of Buhk.
Proczyk’s co-driver Jeroen Bleekemolen lost time with a spin after he joined the race, but recovered to finish fifth just ahead of the sister Grasser car of Stefan Landmann and Sascha Halek and the similar Reiter-run car of Peter Kox and Stefan Rosina.
Nelson Piquet and Matheus Stumpf finished eighth in their Team Brazil BMW, ahead of the remaining two WRT cars of Vincent Abril and Mateusz Lisowski (who fitted wets at their driver change) and Laurens Vanthoor and Cesar Ramos (who came back in to fit wets shortly afterwards).
The safety car came out on lap one after the G-Drive Racing Audi of Roman Rusinov tangled with the Bhai Tech McLaren of Fabio Onidi on the start line.
