26 cars and eight brands: that’s the short summary for the upcoming ADAC GT Masters season. Even stronger than in the past, there is a strong discrepancy between All-Pro and All-Am lineups for 2014.
As we have already reported reigning champions Daniel Keilwitz and Diego Alessi have been split up, but both are staying with Callaway Competition. Daniel Keilwitz gets two new teammates in Oliver Gavin and Andreas Wirth, while Gavin will sub for Wirth at some of the races due to Wirth’s business commitments. Diego Alessi will get newcomer to the series Patrick Assenheimer to his side. Can either of those two repeat their championship season in their beleaguered Corvette Z06.R GT3? Callaway Competition will field two additional ‘Vettes: Jeroen Bleekemolen is going to partner Toni Seiler for some of the races, with Andreas Simonsen taking his seat when he is not available, while Remo Lips and Lennart Marioneck will share the final Callaway Z06.R. After doing guest appearances for some of the races last year, RWT Racing Team is back for a full season attack, with Sven Barth and Gerd Beisel sharing the driving duties.
In total there are seven Porsche 911 GT3 Rs on the entry list. Schütz Motorsport is doubling its car stable and expanding to two 911s, with the lead car seeing Jaap van Lagen and Christian Engelhart sharing driving duties. Antonios Wossos and Wolf Nathan will share the other one. Farnbacher Racing has two cars for Mario Farnbacher/ Nathan Marcom and Sebastian Asch/ Philipp Frommenwiler signed up. Last year’s championship runner-up, Robert Renauer, is back for another attack, sharing his family-run Porsche with Norbert Siedler. The other two Tonino Team Herberth 911s will attack the Gentlemen Trophy with Herbert Handlos/ Alfred Renauer and Dominic Jöst/ Florian Scholze.
Prosperia C.Abt is back with three Audi R8 LMS ultras and plans to pair three rookies with three hotshots in René Rast/ Kelvin van der Linde, Nicki Thiim/ Fabien Hamprecht and Markus Winkelhock/ Stefan Wackerbauer. Single Audi entries come from Yaco Racing for Rahel Frey/ Philip Geipel and MS Racing running under the kfzteile24 APR Motorsports banner for Daniel Dobitsch/ Florian Stoll.
There are four Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3s on the entry list and basically all of them could fight for the overall championship. At HTP Motorsport Heinz-Harald Frentzen is partnered with youngster Luca Stolz, while Maximilian Buhk and Maximilian Götz will try and keep on going from the recent win in the Blancpain Sprint Series. Zakspeed is back in motorsport and it has partnered with another blast from the past in Klaus Ludwig, who has placed his son Luca in the SLS, sharing it with Alon Day. After years of concentrating on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, doing just one guest appearance in the Spa 24 last year, Rowe-Racing is mounting a full season attack on the ADAC GT Masters with Jan Seyffarth and Maro Engel.
Schubert Motorsport is the only team relying on the BMW Z4 GT3 and their driver line-ups have almost stayed the same. Jens Klingmann joins Max Sandritter for the full season, while Dominik Baumann and Claudia Hürtgen will try to keep going their good form shown in parts of last season.
Single-car entries come from Reiter Engineering with their SaReNi Chevrolet Camaro GT3 for Thomas Enge and Albert von Thurn und Taxis. Blancpain Racing is also part of the entry list with Peter Kox and Marc Hayek sharing their Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 FL2. After a one-year hiatus, the McLaren MP4-12C GT3 is back in the championship; MRS Racing fielding a lone 12C for Florian Spengler and Ryan Sharp.
The season kicks of this weekend at Oschersleben, with a total of 16 races over eight weekends scheduled, finishing at Hockenheim in October.
Sören Herweg
