Manthey’s first season in the IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup has already yielded a GTD Pro class win in this year’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, and earlier this week, Manthey announced driver changes for its return to IMSA in next week’s Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen.
Due to clashes with the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa on the same weekend, Ricardo Feller, Thomas Preining, and Morris Schuring will be in Belgium – so Manthey has added longtime Porsche works drivers Michael Christensen and Richard Lietz to the team, alongside talented youngster Loek Hartog, who will make his IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship debut at Watkins Glen.
Christensen and Hartog will join Klaus Bachler in the GTD Pro #911 “Grello” Porsche 911 GT3 R that won at Sebring, while Lietz will drive alongside Ryan Hardwick and Riccardo Pera in the GTD #912 Manthey 1st Phorm Porsche.
Christensen was part of the Porsche Penske Motorsport factory Hypercar programme in the FIA World Endurance Championship from 2023-2025 but has continued to make occasional IMSA appearances during that time: The most recent of which came with fellow Porsche GTD Pro customer team AO Racing, where the Danish veteran contributed to the team’s 2024 championship run.
A previous class winner at Daytona, Sebring, and Le Mans, Christensen drove for the Manthey-operated Porsche GT Team in the WEC for six years, winning Le Mans in 2018 and the 2018-19 GTE Pro series title.
Though new to the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, Hartog has already starred with Manthey in last year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 2025/26 Asian Le Mans Series. The 23-year-old Dutchman won the Porsche Carrera Cup North America title in 2024, and has split time in 2026 between the Asian Le Mans Series, GT World Challenge America, Europe, and Asia, the Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie, as well as the China GT Championship.
Lietz makes his second start in the #912 Manthey Porsche this year, returning for the first time since the Rolex 24 At Daytona. The Austrian driver is a two-time Daytona class winner and overall winner at the 2015 Petit Le Mans in Road Atlanta, but is coming off a disappointing Le Mans 24 Hours in which mechanical problems sunk his bid for a seventh class win at the event.
The complete entry list for next Sunday’s race at Watkins Glen is expected to come out this week.
Images © Jack Webster / dailysportscar.com
