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ROWE Crew to Run SunEnergy1 Mercedes

MCG, the team behind ROWE Racing, to run Kenny Habul’s SunEnergy1 Mercedes…

Photo: SRO

The team behind ROWE Racing will run Kenny Habul’s SunEnergy1 Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 in the International GT Open.

Motorsport Competence Group will add a third GT3 manufacturer to its program this year with the SunEnergy1 Mercedes of Habul and Thomas Jaeger, which was announced in a full GT Open campaign earlier this month.

MCG’s main programs are its Porsche and BMW entries in the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup and VLN, where it operates as ROWE Racing on account of its sponsor, German oil and lubricants company ROWE Mineralölwerk.

The team previously ran the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 before its switch to BMW machinery in 2016.

“We’re running a car for [SunEnergy1] in the GT Open,” team principal Hans-Peter Naundorf revealed to Sportscar365.

“That’s not with the ROWE Racing project, it’s with a different project.

“The GT3 Mercedes is not very different to the SLS Mercedes GT3 car. I’ve done it a long time, and they were looking for a team that was running it properly and we said we could do it.”

MCG becomes the sixth team to run a car for SunEnergy1 in the last 12 months, following on from Scott Taylor Motorsport, Riley Motorsports, AKKA ASP, HTP Motorsport and Black Falcon.

Team Looking for More Customer Programs

Naundorf says the team is looking to establish additional customer programs away from the ROWE Racing brand which exclusively runs factory-backed BMWs and Porsches.

“It’s an interesting thing because since 2016 we’ve only done manufacturer racing,” he said.

“The racing world keeps changing a little bit and we just wanted to try and do customer sport, pay drivers, gentlemen drivers.

“With the BMW we didn’t find anyone who wanted to drive the car despite the car being good at a couple of racetracks like the Nürburgring and Spa.

“This is completely outside of the ROWE Racing project but we’re looking for Silver cars, Pro-Am cars and Am cars. Then you instantly have other races open like [Gulf 12 Hours], [24 Hours of] Dubai and so on.

“First of all, there’s the 24H Nürburgring and then 24H Spa. Then we’ll have a look what’s there for the rest of the season.

“For sure, we can imagine running another car in GT Open, it makes sense.”

Jake Kilshaw is a UK-based journalist. He is a graduate of Politics and International Relations.

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