It depends on where you are in the world as to where you might have come across the name Laurin Heinrich, because he's raced nearly everywhere. That is, if you’ve come across his name. My first introduction to the young Porsche driver was Petit Le Mans, 2024, just after his IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship win in the GTD Pro category with the #77 AO Racing Porsche 911-Rawr, Rexy. I, too, wondered who this young driver was, originally expecting him to be an older, seasoned professional.
Seasoned professional he is, even at the young age of 23, having graced the podiums of some of the top tier racing series in Europe and the US in just a few short years, including Porsche’s German Carrera Cup, DTM, and most recently, IMSA. And if it had not been for a string of good will and fortune, as well as a global pandemic — we might not know this young driver who brought AO Racing’s “Rexy” Porsche to win a series championship.
Racing was a hobby, not a career path, at least in the beginning for the young German. It was something to do with his father in their down time. But the novelty of “driving around in circles without competition got a bit boring,” as Heinrich explained in an interview with Motorsport.com, and the two made the jump to try out competing, entering a low-level club sports regional championship. It went well enough, he managed to claim a few championships. Then they took a brief next step in trying a “real” car — a Formula car.
“I thought it was just to get this experience — to drive a race car for once because I knew we didn’t have the funding to go to a race team and pay them to race one season.”
His father surprised him, buying an old, used Formula car to make an attempt to compete. Their small karting team, who helped with the mechanical side of things, came to aid in the Formula endeavor for free. There were no engineers or management. “It was just my father, me and three mechanics,” Heinrich shared.
“We came to the races against the big European teams to also compete in Formula 4. …we were more than a hobby team, but with the resources we had, it was tough. We did one year like that. I got my first experiences on big race tracks, racing cars – which was great. But we didn’t have the funding anymore to continue. So, the dream was over. I can say it was a break [now], but at that point, I didn’t know that we would continue again.”
After the break
Heinrich used his unintended break to finish his schooling. The timing worked out because shortly after, a friend offered the young German teen his Porsche Cup car so he could compete in Germany’s Porsche Sprint Challenge GT4 series – part of Porsche Sports Cup Deutschland. There also happened to be a new team (the Speed Monkeys) that didn’t have a car, and Heinrich conveniently had a car, but didn’t have a team. The pairing proved prosperous as Heinrich would make his Porsche debut that year and win the 2019 Sprint Challenge championship at the age of 18.
Then it was on to German Carrera Cup, which is one of the crown series of the dozen or so Carrera Cups held globally, for obvious reasons. Heinrich explains that the guys in the front of the field there are also Supercup winners — the best of the best — giving a young driver a good reference as to where you are skills-wise. But even the best racers aren’t guaranteed a ride next season. And initially, he wouldn’t have a seat in Carrera Cup for 2020. But the pandemic paused and changed everything for the world, and especially, Heinrich.
“One thing that actually helped me, I would say, now in hindsight, was COVID,” he said. “We had more time to find sponsors and the season didn’t start in March like it [usually] does. It started in September, which was very late. It was just September, October, November, done” so that means also less races. The budget was cheaper to get a seat and we could use the time to push hard and find sponsors who believed in me.
“I could do the year. I finished multiple times on the podium [and] became the rookie champion. In the end, that helped me secure a very good seat in the Porsche Supercup and the German Carrera Cup the following year. I got more attention from sponsors, from teams, so things got a bit easier, you know, to finance everything.”
Earlier in the interview, Heinrich refers to his success in competitive karting as a moment when the “snow ball started rolling,” which if that was the start, then the 2021 season was when the snow ball became massive and moving at a near alarming rate. Heinrich won his rookie championship in Supercup that year. He also won his first races in the German Carrera Cup. He calls it a very successful year. Oh, and he was only 19. But he adds that he turned 20 in September — and that was when he received his invite to the Porsche Junior shootout, a yearly gathering of some of the best young Porsche drivers (not official factory, just who drive Porsches in the Porsche series) from around the world to compete for the chance to be a Porsche Junior driver.
“I knew that was my chance, and that was always my dream,” he notes. Then casually adds, “It was good. I managed to win it.”
The young championship-winning GT Porsche driver
The young driver who managed success with his small karting and Formula 4 crew was now officially a Porsche Junior driver. He would thrive on the support of Porsche, with additional training tools (as Junior drivers are afforded in the program) to make him a better all-around driver for hire. The German brand would be his key to running in DTM – a huge moment for a German driver. Somewhere in there was his first taste of endurance races too, with the 24 Hours of Spa, managing a fifth place finish. He shrugs it off in the interview, but the rest of us in the room understand that’s a fairly impressive finish in a debut outing.
2022 was also when he had his first taste of American racing with the North American Carrera Cup. Running two races, he won the last race of the season starting from pole.
“It sort of made me fall in love with racing in the United States, because I liked the paddock, I like the tracks, the atmosphere here— it’s a bit more pure racing, you know, compared to what we have in Europe.
“The race on track is a bit more raw. I mean, it’s tough sometimes, but it’s the racing we fall in love with when we come to the karting track when we are young. So I don’t want to say this is cutting-level racing, just how racing against each other here is just unique.”
He’d spend another full year of racing GT overseas before he got a call from Gunnar Jeannette of AO Racing, needing a driver for his soon-to-be GTD Pro Porsche 911 “GT3 Rawr” affectionately known as “Rexy” for the 2024 season. And if you can believe it, it was a dream of Heinrich’s to drive Rexy. “I think it’s funny — it’s cool, he tells me. “And I think Rexy looks super mean.”
With Heinrich, the team won three races that season, and after a rough start to the final race of the season at Road Atlanta (Petit Le Mans) with Heinrich struggling with a faulty cable on the steering wheel, he would manage to bring Rexy home for a championship winning title – by four points.
This year, while Daytona would not be the ideal start to the season (note Rexy’s golden braces helping to correct his smile after an overnight incident) Sebring surely made up for it. Not only did Rexy and AO Racing take home the win, Heinrich broke the IMSA GTD Pro race-lap record at Sebring, not just once in the #77 car, but twice within the last hour. When I asked him at Sebring about the car and how he managed to make it move so quickly, he aptly responded “I wanted to drive away from the others, and I managed to do it.”
It’s something you could certainly attribute to how he’s found the amount of success he has managed over his entire career thus far.
