Reinke: “Great Potential” for Audi’s GT Racing Future

Photo: Audi

The recent appointment of Rolf Michl as Audi Motorsport’s new boss “holds great potential” for its customer racing division according to Chris Reinke, who is optimistic of a “refocused” future for the brand in GT racing.

The German manufacturer has faced fallout in recent months following a decision made earlier this year to call off its planned LMDh project that ultimately led to its most successful GT3 team, WRT, and multiple factory drivers depart for other programs.

It has been compounded with Audi’s commitment to Formula 1 beginning in 2026, which had initially left question marks over the future of its GT racing programs.

Reinke, who has led Audi Sport customer racing’s efforts since 2016, however, said Michl’s arrival in September to his new post has brought optimism within the department, which is understood to have previously faced an uncertain future.

Michl, the former project manager of the Audi TT Cup, took over the overall motorsport reigns from Julius Seebach, who has since been reassigned to a role in technical development for Audi’s production cars.

“I think we’re en route to get refocused,” Reinke told Sportscar365. “I think the privilege with Rolf is that we have a passionate car guy now as the head of motorsport.

“But being in charge of motorsport in general, obviously the Dakar project takes a lot of his focus and he’s also one of the CEOs of the Audi Sport performance brand.

“It’s not that he restructures the customer racing business as his main focus.

“For sure for the time being, he’s very supportive of the topic because he enriches our doing with the perspective out of marketing — his expertise of where he comes from.

“Therefore, if we have more customer sales, myself [being] engineering-driven, we add now the nice mosaic stone with him coming out of the marketing segment, getting us more integrated into the performance brand on the activation side.

“It holds great potential for us.”

Reinke, however, downplayed that there would be any imminent commitments for a successor to the Audi R8 LMS GT3 platform, which is currently confirmed through the end of 2024.

Michl, who also serves as the managing director of Audi Sport GmbH alongside Sebastian Grams, holds influence on the automaker’s future range of high-performance production car.

“This would push it a bit too far for the moment being,” he said. “But in saying that we have a passionate [Audi Motorsport boss] as well as Sebastian Grams; they’re two car guys.

“For sure they’ll leave nothing untried to define performance cars within the Audi brand of any kind, if they make sense for the company.

“Therefore, I’m hopeful but it’s far too early to have any indication if it will happen or by when it will happen.”

Audi’s customer support roles in GT4 and GT2, as well as the successful second-generation RS 3 LMS TCR car, which is sold out until next August, however, will continue for the foreseeable future.

“The GT3 has always been strategically driven with the prime events we’re able to do with the car. The GT4 and GT2 programs are more customer-based and customer-focused,” Reinke said.

“As long as the demand is high in the market as we see it, there’s no reason to stop it. But that will be more on a year-by-year basis, if the customers are still excited about the product, it will continue.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John