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dicembre 19, 2018 - Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport

Customer Racing: 2018 season review: Mercedes-AMG Customer Racing celebrates most successful motorsport season to date

Comunicato Stampa disponibile solo in lingua originale. 

The year 2018 will go down in Mercedes-AMG Customer #racing history as the biggest and most successful season to date: over 160 Customer #racing Teams from all over the world raced the GT3 and GT4 cars from Affalterbach and scored 367 podium finishes and 138 victories from 387 races. These achievements were crowned with over 40 championship titles including the Blancpain GT Series titles for Raffaele Marciello (ITA) and the AKKA ASP Team as well as the Intercontinental GT Challenge drivers’ title for Tristan Vautier (FRA). During the Mercedes-AMG Customer #racing end-of-season celebration, the brand-internal champions were crowned at the end of November: #huberthaupt (ProDriver), Valentin Pierburg (Driver), AKKA ASP Team (GT3 Team) and BLACK FALCON (GT4 Team).

  • Victoryin FIA GT Nations Cup at Bahrain crownsmost successfulseason for Mercedes-AMG Customer Racing
  • Race victories and title wins in all major GT formats
  • End-of-season celebration with prize-giving for the brand-internal champions
  • A new record donation for ‘Passion for Good’ initiative through race kilometres by the Performance Teams

The 2018 GT #racing year ends like it has begun: with victory for Mercedes-AMG Motorsport. Last weekend’s FIA GT Nations Cup in Bahrain saw the RAM #racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 driven by SalihYoluc and AyhancanGuven (both TUR) claim victory and thus came full circle after the first win of the year in January 2018 by Abdulaziz Al Faisal (KSA), Yelmer Buurman (NED), #huberthaupt (GER) and Gabriele Piana (ITA) for BLACK FALCON in the 24-hour race at Dubai. These two achievements bookend a season that can hardly be exceeded in terms of highlights.

Octuple title successin Blancpain GT Series

This season’s outstanding achievements include the performance in the European Blancpain GT Series that produced an octuple title success for Mercedes-AMG Motorsport: Raffaele Marciello claimed the overall drivers’ title while Yelmer Buurman, Maro Engel (GER) and Luca Stolz (GER) came out on top in the Endurance Cup. The teams’ title went to the AKKA ASP team while BLACK FALCON claimed the Endurance Cup. The best Pro-AM drivers in the Endurance Cup were Lewis Williamson, Chris Buncombe and Nick Leventis (all GBR) with the STRAKKA #racing Mercedes-AMG GT3. In the Sprint Cup, Raffaele Marciello and Michael Meadows (GBR) were crowned the new championsand in the Silver Cup category, Nico Bastian (GER) and Jack Manchester (GBR) won both the overall and Sprint Cup titles. Both duos raced for the French AKKA ASP Team.

With these results, the performance and sports car brand from Affalterbach was by far the most successful manufacturer in the 2018 Blancpain GT Series.

A class of its own inendurance racing 

In endurance #racing, the Mercedes-AMG GT3 once again underlined its convincing performance potential in the 2018 season: in the Intercontinental GT Challenge (IGTC) that includes four major endurance races, Tristan Vautierclaimed the drivers’ title in the season-ending 8-hour race at Laguna Seca Raceway. His SunEnergy1 #racing teammate Kenny Habul (AUS) secured the bronze class title. A milestone for the IGTC success was the 1-2 in the 10-hour race at Suzuka by the Performance Teams GruppeM #racing and STRAKKA #racing.

Apart from the IGTC, the cars from Affalterbach were also successful in other endurance races. In the classic event at the Nordschleife, the Nürburgring 24-hour race, BLACK FALCON shone with a double podium finish in adverse conditions: second place for Adam Christodoulou (GBR), Maro Engel, Manuel Metzger and Dirk Müller (all GER) and third place for Yelmer Buurman, Thomas Jäger, Jan Seyffarth and Luca Stolz (all GER). Next to the already mentioned victory at Dubai, BLACK FALCON also scored a 24-hour race win at Circuit of The Americas (COTA): at the track in Texas, Bret Curtis, Scott Heckert, Mike Skeen (all USA) and Yelmer Buurman emerged as the winners. In the same race, Adam Christodoulou and Charles Putman, Charles Espenlaub and Joe Foster (all USA) raced the PROsport Performance Mercedes-AMG GT3 to the 24H Series (‘Championship of the Continents’) teams’ title. Earlier, the three Americans had already sealed the European 24-hour series title in the final round at Spa-Francorchamps mid-October.

In the North-American IMSA WeatherTechSportsCar Championship, Mercedes-AMG Team Riley Motorsports managed to win the Tequila Patrón North American Endurance Cup (TPNAEC) for the second year in a row. In the hard-fought endurance cup of the US sports car series, Ben Keating (USA), Jeroen Bleekemolen (NED) and Luca Stolz also won the drivers’ title and the manufacturers’ titles for Mercedes-AMG.


Further information in the press release to download

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