Porsche retirements and new hires etc

Porsche held their annual season-ending party in Stuttgart, where the 2019 season was closed down, and looking forward to 2020. When you say Porsche – at least for the last twenty years – you often think about Jörg Bergmeister and Timo Bernhard. These two will go into retirement now, but will still be present at Porsche, becoming brand ambassadors. Bergmeister will be helping out on new road car development, while Bernhard will continue running his own KÜS Team75 Bernhard team in ADAC GT Masters. 43-year-old Bergmeister and 38-year-old Bernhard have…

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Bortolotti and Niederhauser hired by Audi

Audi Sport has announced their GT works driver for the 2020 season. There were just ten drivers in the programme in 2019, but that has been extended to twelve. Mirko Bortolotti and Patric Niederhauser are the new employees to race in the Audi R8 GT3 Evo cars all over the world. Niederhauser has been racing Audi cars on/off since 2017 in things like the ADAC GT Masters, but now he is directly under contract with Audi Sport. He won the 2019 ADAC GT Masters title with Kelvin van der Linde…

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Manthey Racing wins a very wet VLN3 race – a 1-2-3 finish destroyed by a penalty given after the race

After the weather conditions at the Nürburgring already had badly affected VLN1 and VLN2, VLN3 finally was finally a complete 4hours race – however, it still was a tricky race again, due to the weather situation. After a few laps, already anticipated heavy rain kicked in, making it a very difficult race for the drivers. Just after a few laps, the GT3 field and other classes saw some reduction of cars, with quite some sliding and spinning one the wet track and hitting the barriers. Manthey Racing’s Porsches seemed to…

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VLN Endurance Championship on Nürburgring – Race #3 this Saturday, will it finally be a complete race?

The VLN Endurance Championship 2019 on Nürburgring has been having a tricky start into this season. Race #1 and #2 were badly effected by weather conditions, which yet are not that unusual for the Eifel area in the March/April period. VLN 2, two weeks ago, wasn’t even a race. The weather forecast had predicted the possibility of snowfall on Saturday afternoon for about 2 hours after the race start. Friday practice and Saturday morning Qualifying took place without any issues, though it had been quite cold. As always, according to…

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ROWE Racing beats Manthey for the first VLN 2019 race victory in the last lap

VLN Race #1 of 2019 is in the books. And ROWE Racing has won the first race of the season with a strong finish by John Edwards in the ROWE BMW M6 GT3 #99, who managed in the very last lap to take the lead back from Patrick Pilet in the Manthey Porsche GT3 R #912. The day started with the so typical Eifel weather – in surrounding areas and even at parts of the track like Brünnchen, there was some glance of early morning sun – but the higher…

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VLN Endurance Championship Nürburgring 2019 – an exciting start in the season

The VLN Endurance Championship will kick off the season with VLN 1 this week Saturday, March 23rd. Despite the BoP Discussion for GT3 in SPX and SP9 classes, which is still boiling in the background, fans can look forward to a massive turn up at the Ring. The preliminary starters list has 170 cars registered, with 25 GT3 cars in SP9, 2 more GT3 in SPX, and over 10 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup in the other classes. Only Wochenspiegel Team Monschau, as previously announced, will stay absent with its two…

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Last minute change of BOP for GT3 cars in VLN Endurance Championship (SP9 and SPX Classes) could lead to GT3’s disappearing from the Nordschleife

Emotions have been cooking up boiling hot over the last couple of days with drivers, team principals, and fans in the VLN Endurance Championship at the Nürburgring. While a few weeks ago the issue of too fast lap times of the GT3’s on the North Loop (Nordschleife) was only a topic discussed in some statements (open letter of the DMSB, the German Motorsport Association, followed by statements made by the Race Director of VLN), it was believed from all sides it would not lead to further action. However, the tide…

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Max Kruse Racing enters the complete VLN season 2019 with Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR, targets TCR win

Max Kruse Racing will enter the complete VLN season 2019 with its VW GTI TCR, and targets the TCR class win for 2019. The team was founded in 2018 by the German pro football player Max Kruse (SV Werder Bremen) together with driver Benjamin Leuchter, and  had in its debut season a quite successful campaign in the German ADAC TCR series, with Benjamin Leuchter achieving some podium positions and finishing 8th in the overall classification as best Volkswagen driver. The team had also deployed the VW Golf TCR in the…

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Glickenhaus will return to the Nürburgring in 2019

The Scuderia James Glickenhaus will return to the Nürburgring in 2019 with the SCG003C for a final appearance this season – to race in VLN 1 in March, plus the Nürburgring 24 Hours Qualification race in May, and the Nürburgring 24 Hours main race in June. The team had shared this intention already back in 2018, yet they now confirmed the plan with more details. And they have also some more of their exciting future plans. The car, which in former years had appeared in yellow-, black/carbon-, and white liveries,…

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Bentley not to compete in VLN and Nürburgring 24 Hours in 2019

Bentley Motorsport has decided to not compete in VLN and the Nürburgring 24 Hours race 2019, just like in the previous year. But it might be possible that they will return the following year with the new Continental GT3. That is at least what Brian Gush, Bentley’s Director of Motorsport, said – according to Motorsport-Total.com. „At this moment there are no plans that we would race on Nürburgring. However, we would like to do that in the coming season.” Brian Gush also mentioned that this plan for the coming year would…

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Return of the Toyota Supra to Nürburgring 24h after 17 years

After 17 years of absence, a Toyota Supra will hit again the track of Nürburgring at the Nürburgring 24h of 2019. The new Toyota Supra, which was tested in the VLN Endurance Championship in the last race of 2018 at the end of October, will enter the 2019 Nürburgring 24h to race in class SP8T.  Gazoo Racing will lead the mission, the selected drivers will be Masahiro Sasaki, Uwe Kleen, Herwig Daenens und Hisahi Yabuki. Gazoo Racing will deploy again in the SP-Pro category the Lexus LC Gt3, too. Drivers line…

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Nissan to enter Nürburgring 24h and VLN 2019 with three Nissan GT-R GT3s

Nissan GT-R GT3 fans certainly have been very happy to hear the news from Nissan that three Nissan GT-R GT3s will participate in this year’s edition of the Nürburgring 24h race, and some of the VLN Endurance Championship Races. Two of those cars will be deployed by KC Motorgroup Ltd (KCMG), which had recently raced in the Bathurst 12h at Mount Panorama in Australia. Driver line up will be Edoardo Liberati, Josh Burdon, Philipp Wlazik and some still to be announced drivers. German racer Wlazik is the only member of the crew with…

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VLN and ILN reach agreements in constructive dialogue

The VLN Organisation have been having constructive discussions with the ILN (Interessengemeinschaft Langstrecke Nürburgring, meaning interest community endurance Nürburgring, which are representatives of the teams). ILN recently had raised several points of criticism against some suggested changes concerning the new entry call regulations for the VLN 2019 season. It seems that the right compromises have been agreed now by both parties. Photo: Swoosh Motorsport Communications / Stefan Schneider The points that got agreed, are the following. Firstly, VLN has released the previously reserved and yet not needed advertising space above…

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Falken Motorsports enters in its 21st year at the Nürburgring with a new Porsche 911 GT3 R (991.2)

Falken Motorsports starts the 2019 VLN season with the new Porsche 911 GT3 R (991.2), which they already tested at the end of the 2018 season in VLN Race #7 as first Porsche Customer Team. The new specs car continues to use a 6 cylinder Boxer engine which delivers about 550 hp, and has improved aerodynamics. At the test during VLM Race #7 in 2018, the new specs car reached the performance levels of its predecessor model straight away, without previous set up work. Photo: Falken Motorsports The driver line-up for the…

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AVIA racing and Sorg Rennsport racing together with a BMW M4 GT4 in VLN 2019

The news concerning team-, driver, and car changes in the VLN Endurance series for 2019, keep flowing in these days.  AVIA racing and Sorg Rennsport have announced a new partnership last weekend.  They will collaborate for racing in VLN, deploying together one BMW M4 GT4 and one BMW M240i Cup. Photo: MedienKollektiv AVIA racing has been active in motorsport since 2011, with several successes in VLN and in the Nürburgring 24 Hours.  For some years, the highlight of the AVIA racing program had been the Aston Martin Advantage V8 GT4.…

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Konrad Motorsport confirms to race complete VLN 2019 season with new Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo

Konrad Motorsport has confirmed today with a post on their Facebook page, that they will be racing the entire VLN Endurance Championship season 2019. Konrad Motorsport will use the new Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo, to compete in the “Green Hell”. Photo: Swoosh Motorsport Communications / Stefan Schneider.  

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GetSpeed Performance confirms Mercedes AMG Customer Program for 2019. J2-Racing move up to GT3 class.

We already reported last Saturday, January 26th 2019, about this potential plan.  It now has been officially confirmed by GetSpeed Performance, that they will be changing from Porsche to a Mercedes AMG Customer Program for 2019, racing with AMG GT3 and GT4 cars in the VLN Endurance Championship and in the Nürburgring 24 Hours.  GetSpeed Performance yet will also expand their activities into other series.  They will deploy up to 10 AMG GT GT3 and GT4 in total, and in addition to VLN and N24h, participate with two AMG GT4…

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VLN 2019: GetSpeed Performace planning for a Mercedes AMG program? Steve Jans moves to Phoenix Racing.

As the VLN season start comes closer, more and more news are released concerning plans for 2019 for teams, cars, and drivers.  One of these news has still not yet been confirmed by the respective team.  But it seems that colleagues of ‘dailysportscars’ have picked up information that GetSpeed Performance, who have been racing in VLN and Nürburgring 24 Hours with Porsche Cars – entering SP9 in 2018 with a Porsche 911 GT3 R – are planning for a move to a Mercedes AMG program in 2019.  GetSpeed Performance would…

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Recently retired Schnitzer BMW Team principal Charly Lamm dies suddenly at the age of 63

Only two months after his retirement as team principal of the Schnitzer BMW Team – right after the Macau Grand Prix which Augusto Farfus won for Schnitzer in a BMW M6 GT3 – Charly (Karl) Lamm has died rather suddenly at the age of 63 years on Thursday January 24th, 2019, after a very short but severe illness. Photo: BMW Motorsport This news today has put a large part of the motorsport world in shock and sadness.  Team Schnitzer, BMW Motorsport, drivers, fans, and even BMW’s competitors, issued statements on…

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ROWE RACING to compete with 2 Porsche 911 GT3 R in the 24 Hours of Spa and in the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup 2019

The German team ROWE RACING announced this week that they will return to the Spa 24 Hours race on July 27th-28th, 2019 – the place of their biggest successes, with a victory in 2016 and 2nd place in 2018 – with two Porsche 911 GT3 R, and six Porsche works drivers and Porsche Young Professionals.  The driver line up for one of the Porsche 911 GT3 R in Spa will be Le Mans Winner Nick Tandy (Great Britain) together with 2 French drivers, Frédéric Makowiecki and Patrick Pilet.  The second…

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