Coupe du Roi


One of the biggest endurances races of the year, the Spa 24 Hours proved to be another successful outing for Audi Sport, with six Audi teams scoring points and winning the brand the Coupe du Roi (King’s Cup) for the fourth time.

As always it was a gruelling affair around the famed Belgium track, with Audi teams in the thick of the action from the very outset. In all, a record 13 Audi teams lined up to contest the 75th Spa 24 Hours, with Audi Sport customer racing fielding three entries all aiming for outright victory. This was the largest Audi contingent after 12 R8 LMS cars lined up for last year’s race, again across numerous categories.

With seven other manufacturers represented, fans were treated to a battle of the best teams, cars and drivers, the lead constantly changing throughout the 24 hours, with two Audi R8 LMS GT3s battling for outright honours throughout the race.

Just two hours into the epic, Team Audi Sport Tresor Orange1 with Ricardo Feller, Mattia Drudi and Dennis Marschall sharing the driving duties were in the lead, followed closely by the #17 Audi of Team Scherer Sport PHX, piloted by Luca Engstler, Kelvin van der Linde and Kurt Thiim.

The lead continually swapped back and forth between teams and manufacturers, with no one team able to establish a decent buffer and move ahead. This made for close racing that continued throughout the race, until the final stages when the podium positions were finalised with Audi having to settle for third outright with the Team Audi Sport Tresor Orange1 team of Feller, Drudi and Marschall.

In all, Audi finished with three cars in the top 10 and another three also finishing in the points to give the brand its fourth Coupe du Roi, or King’s Cup for the best result by a manufacturer across all classes at the race.

“Thanks to our customers for this first-class team result,” said Chris Reinke, Head of Audi Sport customer racing, of the result. 

“It was only due to the good individual results in the classes at different scoring times that we won this valuable award for the fourth time.” 

Audi has previously won the prestigious award in 2014, 2015 and 2016 as well as having claimed the outright victory at Spa four times since 2011. In addition to the outright podium result, several Audi customer teams also recorded outstanding results in their own categories, with dual podiums in the GT3 racing, another in the Gold classification and another in Silver Cup.

Although a fourth outright victory remained out of reach at this year’s race, these multiple podiums across the categories, including third overall, made for a very successful campaign for Audi Sport at Spa in 2023.