With the GTE era coming to a close in just two seasons’ time it’s unusual to find a new customer team committing to the time-limited formula.
One team breaking that mould though is newly established Chinese squad R&B Racing, and owner Bob Yuan, a regular competitor in the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia, with their confirmed acquisition last month of one of the initial batch of 10 Porsche 911 RSR-19s (an 11th car was built for Herberth Motorsport’s Le Mans bid earlier this year).
Sitting alongside the four cars fielded by Proton Competition, the pair for customers of Team Project 1 and single cars for Mike Wainwright’s GR Racing, Morris Chen’s HubAuto Corse and Andrew Haryanto at Absolute Racing, the destinations for the initial ten cars are now all known.
For Bob Yuan, the RSR is the continuation of a lifelong passion.
“I saw my first Porsche in 2006, when I went abroad to study, a Targa 4 or a Targa 4S parked in front of my apartment building, and was filled with wonder at how a car could be so beautiful.”
After returning to China, Yuan’s father purchased a 911 C2S 997.2 for him, and it wasn’t long before he took it to the track. “My Friend Bao [Jinlong, reigning three-time Porsche Carrera Cup Asia Presented by AximTrade Pro-Am champion] had a 997.1 Targa 4, so we had to meet up to introduce our cars to each other. Afterwards, Bao said he was going to practice racing, so I decided to join him and it all went from there.”
Having raced in a host of series including the China Touring Car Championship, Yuan made his Porsche Carrera Cup Asia debut in 2016, taking home the Pro-Am championship in his maiden season. Following this early success, and always ready for a new challenge, Yuan graduated to the Pro class in 2017 and has appeared in the series every year since.
With his new 911 RSR, Yuan has established a new Chinese racing team R & B Racing. With Asian teams already making an appearance at Le Mans thanks to Porsche Motorsport Asia Pacific Ltd., Yuan has his sights set on a 2023 debut in the world’s most prestigious GT event.
And the team are fully aware that a one-off application to race at Le Mans is unlikely to be successful – Options are being examined to add additional races, or even a full FIA WEC season, to the planning process.
The R&B Racing car, for now at least then, remains the only un-raced example at present but it also represents a significant step forward commercially for Porsche Motorsport Asia Pacific Ltd., the organisation established as its own independent entity in June 2021 after functioning as an internal department of Porsche China since its inception in 2017.
The new company was established in Shanghai’s Jiading Comprehensive Bonded Zone, where both Shanghai International Circuit and the Porsche Experience Centre Shanghai are located.
Jiading has become the home of Chinese motorsport, and with the Chinese Mainland a tricky trading market to navigate, the Comprehensive Bonded Zone offered very significant benefits.
For the first time, Porsche is now able to sell race cars to Chinese customers directly in local currency. And racecars can, subject to the restrictions of their race permit, be raced and run, under bonded tax-free conditions whilst stored in Jiading Comprehensive Bonded Zone, and be legally brought out for individual races (depending on the length of the race permit), testing (14 days maximum) and Bonded Display (6 months maximum).
