Vanthoor, Picariello, Preining, Heinrich and Ye to represent Porsche on streets of Macau…
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Photo: Porsche
Porsche has revealed its full lineup for next month’s FIA GT World Cup, as it prepares to enter five of its 911 GT3 Rs for the end-of-season event on the streets of Macau.
The Weissach marque will be represented by two-car efforts from Chinese teams Absolute Racing and Origine Motorsport (formerly R&B Racing) and a single car fielded by Schumacher CLRT as it bids for a first World Cup win on Nov. 14-17.
Representing Absolute will be 2016 World Cup winner Laurens Vanthoor in the No. 25 car and his fellow countryman Alessio Picariello in the No. 911 (liveries pictured top).
Origine will be represented by Leo Ye Hongli, who helped the team to the Fanatec GT Asia title last month, and last year’s DTM champion Thomas Preining.
Laurin Heinrich, whose participation with Schumacher CLRT was announced earlier this month, is the sole Macau rookie in the Porsche lineup.
A five-car stable represents a reduction of two cars compared with Porsche’s Macau effort last year, with Kevin Estre, Matteo Cairoli and Earl Bamber not returning.
Porsche motorsport boss Thomas Laudenbach told Sportscar365 he is hoping for a stronger showing at Macau this year after a difficult weekend for the brand in 2023, when Vanthoor was its top finisher in sixth place.
“I would say we clearly have cars on the grid that can win,” Laudenbach said. “And the boundary conditions, which is the Balance of Performance, and I’m normally very careful with saying that, but it was not in our favor [last year].
“Not to blame anybody, it’s very difficult if you don’t have a complete series with the car and it’s such a special track. I would just like to see that we have competitive boundary conditions and then I’m confident that we hopefully can win that race.
“We should be well equipped with [the number of cars]. We have a lot of Asian teams that want to race there. And Macau as a single event is for sure a big one in Asia. So I’m really pleased that we have so many cars on the grid.”
Porsche junior Alessandro Ghiretti will also be making his Macau debut next month in the Greater Bay Area GT Cup for GT4 machinery at the wheel of a 718 Cayman GT4 RS Clubsport entered by Z.SPEED Motorsport.
Davey Euwema contributed to this report
Jamie Klein is Sportscar365’s Asian editor. Japan-based Klein, who previously worked for Motorsport Network on the Motorsport.cоm and Autosport titles, covers the FIA World Endurance Championship and SUPER GT, among other series.
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