Car Collection Audi, Porsche Entries are “Completely Split”

Car Collection Motorsport has gone to great lengths to separate its Audi and Porsche entries at this weekend’s Nürburgring 24 including different hotels for the two crews.

The German squad is running two cars in the SP9 class: the factory-supported No. 22 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II and a Porsche 911 GT3 R entered under the Lionspeed GP name.

Team manager Denis Ferlemann told Sportscar365 that the crews are “completely split” for the event so that no information transfer takes place between the rival GT3 brands.

The Audi and the Porsche are situated ten pit garages away from each other and their entries are being treated internally as different teams altogether.

“We need to split the organization and team management completely,” said Ferlemann.

“We have team management for the Porsche team and for the Audi team. We have completely different mechanic crews, around 25 in total split [between] both cars. The engineering crews are completely different.

“Also, the engineers on the Porsche never worked with an Audi in a different program, and the other way around it’s the same. So our Audi engineers are not working with the Porsche in another series like GT World Challenge where we are running a Porsche.

“It’s completely split. We have different trucks and working tents.”

Ferlemann, who is working on the Audi entry, added that the level of separation even extends to catering and accommodation.

“They can talk to each other, but they have different catering, so even during lunch and dinner the mechanics and engineers are not together,” he said.

“They have different hotels. We are like two teams of Car Collection.”

Car Collection is not the first team to run cars from two different GT3 manufacturers at the N24, with Falken Motorsports being the most notable recent example when it fielded a Porsche and a BMW M6 GT3.

Although Falken had two markedly different cars that required separate crews and meetings, the entries could communicate on topics such as weather and tire choice.

Car Collection, however, wants to ensure that no such information gets shared between Audi and Porsche, particularly when its entry with the former is manufacturer-supported.

“Even if it’s just weather data,” said Ferlemann. “If our team owner or me has a radio where we can hear Audi and Porsche, we could share weather information.

“We just want to avoid that Audi or Porsche are saying that we are using data from the other manufacturer. We were directly quite open that we don’t want to.

“We had a meeting with Audi and Porsche where we sat together and spoke about how we’re going to manage the concept. For both manufacturers it was OK.

“Our team owner, Peter Schmidt, is not using a radio this weekend, just to be really sure that no data is going into one or the other direction.”

The split approach could end up having sporting benefits for either Car Collection entry during the race, in terms of pit lane logistics.

“You have a problem with refueling,” Ferlemann suggested. “What do you do if both cars come into the garage at the same time?

“If another car is already there, you have just one fuel pump free and both cars are coming… you have to decide which car will pit and which one will not.

“We just want to avoid that. It’s why we split the teams completely to not have any mess.”