Porsche Confirms Factory Driver Lineup for N24

Porsche announced on Friday that it will provide factory support and nine works drivers to customer teams Manthey Racing, Frikadelli Racing Team and Falken Motorsports at next month’s Nürburgring 24.

The German manufacturer will support three of its customer teams at the endurance classic, providing nine works drivers and two “young professionals.”

This comes as a change from last year’s race, in which Porsche placed eight of its factory drivers in the two Manthey-run factory cars, while competing against its customer teams.

It will split nine of its factory drivers across four customer-run Porsche 911 GT3 Rs, with two Manthey cars and one each from Frikadelli and Falken.

Falken and Manthey will also each run one car without factory drivers.

Joerg Bergmeister, Michael Christensen, Romain Dumas, Richard Lietz, Frederic Makowiecki, Sven Mueller, Patrick Pilet, Laurens Vanthoor and Dirk Werner have all been selected as part of the manufacturer’s N24 lineup.

In addition, young drivers Matteo Cairoli and Mathieu Jaminet will join the third Manthey car, running in the Amateur category.

“We’ve made the conscious decision to back our customer teams rather than compete against them in the VLN races and at the Nürburgring 24-hour race,” commented Sebastian Golz, Project Manager GT Customer Motorsport.

“We’re supporting them by supplying works drivers as well as technical assistance.

“The expertise of our teams Falken Motorsports, Frikadelli Racing and Manthey Racing combined with our support and the concept of the 911 GT3 R have underlined in the VLN1 and VLN2 preparation races that we’re currently on the right path.

“We claimed pole position and overall victory at both of these events and also won the amateur classification.

“With our customer squads we’ll now take on the challenge of the Nürburgring 24-hour race and the strong opposition from other manufacturers’ works teams.”

No. 12 Manthey Racing:
Matteo Cairoli – Mathieu Jaminet – Otto Klons – Robert Renauer

No. 30 Frikadelli Racing Team:
Klaus Abbelen – Sabine Schmitz – Andreas Ziegler

No. 31 Frikadelli Racing Team:
Klaus Bachler – Michael Christensen – Lucas Luhr – Norbert Siedler

No. 44 Falken Motorsports:
Joerg Bergmeister – Martin Ragginger – Laurens Vanthoor – Dirk Werner

No. 59 Manthey Racing:
Sven Mueller – Hari Proczyk – Reinhold Renger – S. Smith

No. 911 Manthey Racing:
Romain Dumas – Richard Lietz – Frederic Makowiecki – Patrick Pilet