The Latest Breaking News from Lucas Auer

This year's Le Mans 24 Hours is the first for which LMGT3 cars will be eligible. Where in the previous GTE era professional drivers allied to manufacturers other than Aston Martin, Corvette, Ferrari and Porsche were frozen out, this year five new marques have been added to the aforementioned quartet,…

However, the German manufacturer has retained all three of its full pro drivers for the year, with nine-time race winner Lucas Auer, Nurburgring and Macau GT victor Maro Engel and former GT World Challenge champion Luca Stolz all staying on in the category.

Although it hasn’t signed a like-for-like replacement for its previous star Raffaele Marciello, who has switched to rival brand BMW, multiple new names will campaign the Mercedes-AMG GT3 in factory capacity across a wide variety of championships this year.

Having already won the penultimate race of the season on Saturday to stretch his advantage to 27 points, Preining wrapped up the title in qualifying on Sunday after beating his title rival Mirko Bortolotti to pole position by 0.006s.

The 911 GT3 R proved to be one of the more competitive cars at the beginning of the year, with a 1-2-3-4 result led by Christian Engelhart at Oschersleben prompting rivals to describe the DTM as a ‘Porsche Cup’ series.

Although Bortolotti held the lead from pole position at the start, he was unable to pull away from the chasing pack as he did at the Nurburgring a fortnight ago, with 20kg of success ballast on his Lamborghini keeping Feller in the hunt.

Emil Frey Ferrari driver Aitken led nearly the entire race from pole position, save for the pitstop phase, beating the SSR Performance Lamborghini of Mirko Bortolotti by 2.3s after one hour of racing at the 4.35km circuit.

Emil Frey Ferrari driver Aitken led nearly the entire race from pole position, save for the pitstop phase, beating the SSR Performance Lamborghini of Mirko Bortolotti by 2.3s after one hour of racing at the 4.35km circuit. Kelvin van der Linde finished third for Abt Audi, making it three different…

SSR Performance driver Bortolotti was unable to take the start in the second race of the weekend after the technical issue that first appeared in qualifying couldn't be fixed in time for the formation lap. 

Mercedes factory driver Auer had looked set to score a first victory of a 2023 season that he began by injuring his back at Daytona, the Austrian taking the lead from polesitter Ricardo Feller on lap seven.

SSR Performance’s Bortolotti was unchallenged in the hour-long opening contest at the former German Grand Prix venue, resisting two safety cars periods and a brief rain shower to take the chequered flag by 1.1s over Winward Mercedes’ Lucas Auer. Championship leader Thomas Preining completed the podium in third.