The Lithuanian representing the “Liqui Moly Team Engstler Motorsport by NordVPN” team shares the “Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2” car this season with American John Paul Southern.
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The Salzburgring round was one of two “Endurance” format weekends this season. Normally, “ADAC GT Masters” races last one hour, but in Austria, both Saturday and Sunday, the athletes competed for 80 minutes. In longer races, not only speed on the track but also tire management, strategy, and two mandatory pit stops in the service zone become more important.
On Saturday, the first race of the weekend, the crew of J. Karklys and J. P. Southern finished in eighth place. In the race held under changing weather conditions, the Lithuanian crew showed a steady pace and finished among the top ten fastest.
Sunday started even more successfully for J. Karklys. In qualifying, the Lithuanian completed a 4.241 km lap of the Salzburgring track in 1 min. 17.465 sec. and recorded the fifth fastest result. He was 0.421 seconds behind Kian Bloom, who took pole position, and only 0.095 seconds behind the third starting position.
This was J. Karklys’s best qualifying result this “ADAC GT Masters” season.
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In Sunday’s race, the Lithuanian also showed a competitive pace, but a technical problem complicated the fight for a higher position. The gearbox did not engage when braking into the first corner, so J. Karklys had to go off track and lost three positions.
Despite the incident, J. Karklys and J. P. Southern recovered and finished the 80-minute race in ninth place.
“The results may not fully reflect our speed because the pace was really good all weekend. The most pleasing was Sunday’s qualifying – we were less than a tenth of a second behind third place, so we showed that we can fight with the fastest. We wanted more in the race, but on Sunday, the gearbox did not engage when braking into the first corner, we had to go off track and lost three positions. Still, we leave Austria knowing that we have speed. Now we want to finish the season strongly at Hockenheim,” summarized J. Karklys about the weekend.
The 2026 “ADAC GT Masters” season consists of six race weekends. Four of them are sprint format, and two are endurance format. After Salzburgring, only one round remains in the championship.
The season finale will take place on October 9–11 at the legendary Hockenheimring track in Germany, together with the final DTM championship weekend.
