Ried makes a comeback – again

Christian Ried will make a comeback in the FIA World Endurance Championship – again.

The 45 year-old German has decided to jump in the racing overalls again, but this time won’t be in a car labeled with his own Proton Competition team name.

Ried will be racing for Iron Lynx Mercedes in their car #61 together with Matteo Cresoni.

Proton Competition has a close collaboration with Iron Lynx, which started back in 2023, where they ran two Porsche 911 RSR GTE cars for the team in the European Le Mans Series and the FIA World Endurance Championship. Iron Dames managed to take the very final win in the GTE era, when they won the season finale in Bahrain.

Despite Proton Competition being synonymous with Porsche for many years, they do have some experience with a Mercedes-AMG GT3 car too. They ran one in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship for WeatherTech Racing, including a win at the 24 Hours of Daytona in 2023.

Photo: Iron Lynx

Proton Competition are active in the FIA WEC under their own name too, where they are running two Ford Mustang GT3’s. Ried was beheind the wheel himself at two events in 2024, when they needed a Bronze-rated driver.

Christian was the only person to have competed in every single FIA WEC race as a driver up to and including the season finale in 2023, where he announced his retirement, and instead wanting to focus on running the team. They are active in the Hypercar category too with a Porsche 963 in the FIA WEC, in addition to the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship in the GTP category, at the endurance races, with the same mode. They will be running the Iron Dames programme in IMSA too, plus the European Le Mans Series, in addition to the Asian Le Mans Series, with a pink car.

Other than Ried and Cressoni, we know that Claudio Schiavoni will be the Bronze rated-driver in car #60 in the FIA WEC, while Maxime Martin will also be driving for the team – with the car number yet to be revealed.

The FIA World Endurance Championship starts on 28 February 2025 with the 1812 Kilometers of Qatar.

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