31 cars entered for ADAC GT Masters season opener

ADAC GT Masters is heading into another season with more than thirty cars on the grid.

31 are currently announced for the season opener, which will run this weekend at Motorsport Arena Oschersleben near Magdeburg.

Aust Motorsport Audi #3 has done a bit of a scoop, getting Daniel Keilwitz and Sebastian Asch, who both are ADAC GT Masters Champions. The team will only run a single car this year, so they can put full focus on this entry. The previous seasons have been a two-car team, with one being filled with potential podium candidates, while the other has been more inexperienced drivers.

Phoenix Racing Audi #4 has taken over 2019 Champ Patric Niederhauser from Rutronik Racing, while he will be joined by Jusuf Owega. Owega has finished third in both ADAC GT4 Germany and GT World Challenge Europe sprint, and could turn out to be a very successful duo. Phoenix doesn’t usually do things half-heartedly.

Schubert Motorsport #10 are back with their BMW M6 GT3, with Jesse Krohn and Nick Yelloly as their drivers. Both have a lot of experience with the M6 model, and are probably the fastest combo in  BMW GT3 car.

Team Zakspeed Mobil Krankenkasse Racing will once again run two Mercedes cars. #19 will be run by previous Champ Jules Gounon and a not yet announced co-driver. #20 will have Constantin Schöll and Hendrik Still as its drivers. Schöll has previous experience onboard an Bentley, while Still made his debut with the team towards the end of 2020.

MRS GT- Racing will run their favourite brand – Porsche. Car #14 will be raced by Maximilian Hackländer and Mick Wishofer, who are both new to the 911 GT3R mode, after several seasons in Audi cars. The Duo is most likely not in the championship hunt in the strong field, but could potentially grab a few podiums here and there.

Montaplast by Land-Motorsport will stick to running two Audi R8 LMS cars. #28 will be run by previous Champion Christopher Haase and Luca-Sandro Trefz. The #29 will have Ricardo Feller and Christopher Mies sharing the drive time. Trefz is brand new to ADAC GT Masters, but finished third in the ADAC GT4 Germany Championship, and second in Nürburgring 24 Hours in the SP10 category. The three others – some of the best Audi drivers out there. Mies was the very first ADAC GT Masters Champion back in 2017, while Feller previously has raced for both Land-Motorsport and Mücke Motorsport in the series. He is still yet to win his first title.

Team WRT Audi will run Dries Vanthoor and Charles Weerts in #32, just like they did in 2020. The drivers for car #30 are not yet named.

Yaco Racing #54 will also bring an Audi, but with Norbert Siedler and Simon Reicher being the (almost) new combo. They had a single outing in 2020, but other than that, we primarily associate Siedler with Porsche, and a couple of Lamborghini years. Reicher is a young Austrian, hoping to be as successful and well paid as his fellow countryman, in the coming seasons.

Car Collection Motorsport will run under their own name this year, after several years of collaboration with the EFP team. They will bring a single Audi R8 LMS, with Florian Spengler and Markus Winkelhock as the drivers. Spengler raced for the EFP team in 2018 and 2019, while Winkelhock did so in 2020. So they know exactly what they have got in the driving seats, and that will hopefully bring some good results.

MANN-FILTER Team Landgraff-HTP WWR and a new and complicated name for the well-known ADAC GT Masters hold. They will race the yellow Mamba colours, but with #70 on the side, instead of their previous number 47. Maximilian Buhk and Raffaelle Marciello are both well-known faces in the team, even though it’s quite a few years since Buhk last was a part of the outfit. Marciello has raced for them on-off, and both drivers have strong connections to Mercedes.

Callaway Competition Corvette #77 will run Marvin Kirchhöfer and Jeffrey Schmidt. While Schmidt raced for them last year, we have to go back to 2018 and 2019 to find Kirchhöfer as a full-season driver. The pairing will try to win the title for the team, who last won in 2017 with Jules Gounon as the full-season driver, while Daniel Keilwitz lost out on the title, after breaking a leg in a testing accident for another series.

Profi-Car Team Honda has found a teammate for Dominik Fugel in car #88. That will be Norwegian racer Marcus Påverud, who previously has raced DS3 Cup in Denmark, followed by seasons in TCR and GT3 cars. It could potentially be a tough year for them, since they are the only Honda team in the series, and none of the drivers has previously raced in this category. But if Lady Luck smiles upon them, we might be in for a surprise.

Team Joos Sportwagentechnik Porsche #91 has chosen to join for the full season. Marco Holzer has been paired up with Johannes Stengel, and while Holzer is a Porsche specialist, there still some learning for Stengel. He did however win the SP7 category in the Nürburgring 24 Hours in 2020 in a Porsche Cup car.

Last but not least, we have last year’s Champions, SSR Performance #92. The Porsche had to give up Christian Engelhart for KÜS Team75 Bernhard, but has added 2018 Champion Matthieu Jaminet as his replacement, while they stick to Michael Ammermüller from last year. So if there is any doubt of how fast a Porsche can go – look no further.

Please look at our previous two articles about the other driver announcements for this year, which can be found here and here.

The ADAC GT Masters will run a race on both Saturday and Sunday, and can be followed on the series website, with both German and English commentary. Unfortunately, it’s still a non-spectator event, due to the current COVID-19 regulations in Germany.