Team

Joest Racing

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Joest Racing is a German sports car racing team established in 1978 by former Porsche works racer Reinhold Joest. Their headquarters are in Wald-Michelbach, Germany. Prior to their partnership with Audi, Joest Racing was primarily a Porsche team, winning four 24 Hours of Le Mans races between 1984 and 1997. Between 1998 and 2016 the team was strongly linked with Audi Sport, assisting with the development of their sports prototypes, most notably the Audi R8, which won Le Mans from 2000 to 2002. Audi and Joest also won several teams' championships together in both the American Le Mans Series and the FIA World Endurance Championship. Joest Racing have additionally assisted Mazda and Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus with their DPi and Le Mans Hypercar efforts respectively.

As a combined driver/team owner, Reinhold Joest first raced a Porsche 908/3 in the European Sportscar Championship, winning the driver's title. He then switched to Porsche 935s, winning the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1980. The team won the DRM back to back with driver Bob Wollek in 1982 and 1983. During the 1982 season, while the Porsche 956 was only available to the works team, Joest adapted a roof onto a Porsche 936 to enter the Group C World Endurance Championship, racing the car into the 1983 season until they received their 956 prior to Le Mans.

In 1984, in the absence of the works team, Joest Racing scored the first of their fifteen wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, with Klaus Ludwig and Henri Pescarolo driving their "lucky #7" car, a Porsche 956 chassis number 117. In 1985, with limited factory support, they defended their title with Ludwig, Paolo Barilla, and incognito German businessman "John Winter" driving the same chassis. This made Joest the second team to score back-to-back wins with the same car, after JW Automotive, whose Ford GT40 Mk.I won in 1968 and 1969. Joest also won the ADAC Supercup title for teams in 1986, 1988, and 1989, with Wollek winning the drivers' cup in 1989. They secured the Interserie title for drivers with Winter in 1985 and Bernd Schneider in 1991, and the teams' title in 1991.

In 1989, the FIA introduced a 3.5-litre Formula One engine rule to Group C, which disadvantaged privateer teams like Joest as suitable engines were scarce. Existing Group C cars such as Joest's Porsche 962s were given higher weights and lower fuel allocation to make them less competitive. The team shifted to the IMSA GTP category beginning in 1990, winning the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1991 with Wollek, Pescarolo, Frank Jelinski, "Winter", and Hurley Haywood. As the Porsche 962 was outpaced by Nissans, Jaguars, and Toyotas, the team's victories dried up. In 1993, with Nissan and the TWR Jaguar team having withdrawn, Joest scored the car's last IMSA victory at the Road America 500 due to Toyota's absence.

In the 1990s, Joest Racing developed and raced an Opel Calibra in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft (DTM). They won the ITR Gold Cup at Donington Park in 1994 with Manuel Reuter, after the leading Alfa Romeo of Alessandro Nannini was disqualified for running out of fuel. The team continued to succeed as the series became a full-fledged international championship (ITC), winning the title for Opel in the final year of the series in 1996.

In late 1995, Tom Walkinshaw Racing was commissioned by Porsche to produce a WSC car, resulting in the Porsche WSC-95, based on the TWR 1991 Jaguar XJR-14 chassis with a flat-six Porsche engine. For 1996, Joest were chosen to run the WSC-95s at Le Mans as backup for Porsche's works 911 GT1s, winning the race with Davy Jones, Manuel Reuter, and Alexander Wurz. They returned in 1997 without works support, again in the same car numbered #7. The winning drivers were Michele Alboreto, Stefan Johansson, and Tom Kristensen, with Kristensen scoring the first of his nine Le Mans wins. Joest attempted a third straight win in 1998 but neither car finished, while Porsche itself prevailed.

In 1998, Joest Racing signed a works contract with Audi Sport — its CEO being Ferdinand Piëch, a grandson of Porsche — to support their effort at the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans. Joest helped build and develop the Audi R8R. Audi also supported an LM-GTP entry, the R8C, developed by Racing Technology Norfolk, but the R8Cs never worked properly, leaving the two Joest R8Rs to finish 3rd and 4th behind a BMW V12 LMR and a Toyota GT-One.

Audi and Joest then developed the highly successful Audi R8, winning its maiden race at the 2000 12 Hours of Sebring before going on to win at Le Mans. Between 2000 and 2002, the R8 took a hat-trick of wins at Le Mans, Sebring, and Petit Le Mans, alongside American Le Mans Series titles in each year. Audi scaled their sports car operation down at the end of 2002 to focus on the Bentley Speed 8 for a year, with Joest mechanics supporting that car's 2003 win. In 2004, Audi returned to DTM, officially backing Abt Sportsline, with Joest and Abt fielding Audi A4s.

In 2006, Joest began racing the diesel-powered Audi R10, winning the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. They replicated that performance in 2007 and again in 2008, both times against Peugeot's diesel 908 HDi FAP coupé. In 2009, Joest and Audi introduced the Audi R15, but reliability issues allowed Peugeot to finish first and second at Le Mans. Audi reworked the R15 for 2010 under the R15 TDI Plus designation; unexpected Peugeot reliability failures resulted in a clean sweep of the Le Mans podium by the three Joest Audis, which also ran farther than the former 1971 race record.

In 2011, the Audi R18 TDI won the 24 Hours of Le Mans despite losing two cars to crashes with GT Ferraris. That same year, Audi Sport Team Joest won the Bathurst 12 Hour at Mount Panorama Circuit with Marc Basseng, Christopher Mies, and Darryl O'Young leading home teammates Mark Eddy, Craig Lowndes, and Warren Luff in a 1–2 finish, the margin between the two cars being 0.7141 seconds after 12 hours.

For the first part of 2012, following the collapse of the Peugeot racing programme, Audi ran near-unopposed in the FIA World Endurance Championship. The R18 TDI won the 2012 12 Hours of Sebring in its last race, while the Audi R18 Ultra and R18 E-Tron Quattro variants won further rounds. At the 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans, Joest Audis took the top three positions — two R18 E-Tron Quattros first and second, one R18 Ultra third. Audi secured the LMP1 Manufacturers' Championship, and André Lotterer, Benoît Tréluyer, and Marcel Fässler won the Drivers' World Endurance Championship. In late 2016, Audi Sport announced their withdrawal from the FIA World Endurance Championship.

On 18 July 2017, it was announced that Joest Racing would take over operation of the Mazda RT24-P Daytona Prototype International (DPi) entry in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship for the 2018 season. Mazda had withdrawn from the remainder of the 2017 season to allow Joest to develop the then-uncompetitive DPi. During their partnership, Joest helped Mazda score five victories at Watkins Glen, Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, Road America, Sebring, and at Daytona for the WeatherTech 240. They also secured a second-place finish at the 2020 24 Hours of Daytona. The partnership was terminated at the end of March 2020 when Mazda moved to Multimatic Motorsports.

In 2021, Joest Racing worked with Podium Advanced Technologies to assist Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus' Hypercar programme, entering two SCG 007 LMH hypercars in the 2021 FIA World Endurance Championship. Glickenhaus scored podiums at the 2022 1000 Miles of Sebring, the 2022 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, and the 2022 24 Hours of Le Mans, along with two pole positions at Spa and Monza.

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