Joest Racing

[FIRE]

In the last couple of seasons Joest Racing has been running the Glickenhaus hypercar(s). Before that they were shortly involved with Mazda in IMSA.

What's the future of the German team? Reinhold Joest himself is in his mid 80s. Is there a Joest Junior involved or someone else who's taking over the team?

[CTD]

Originally Posted by FIRE

In the last couple of seasons Joest Racing has been running the Glickenhaus hypercar(s). Before that they were shortly involved with Mazda in IMSA.

What's the future of the German team? Reinhold Joest himself is in his mid 80s. Is there a Joest Junior involved or someone else who's taking over the team?

The fact that none of the major manufactures chosen them to be partners, shows that Joest is sadly just a shadow of their 90s/00s form.

My thought is that they are slowly closing down operations.

[chernaudi]

To be fair, they were tied to Glickenhaus, and even though it was easy to assume that they'd be squeezed out of the WEC LMH class by the factory backed teams eventually, why would Joest shop around for a new program when tethered to one already?


Mind you, I'm still of the opinion that Champion out-shined them in the late days of the R8 program and during the R10 program, and I believe that Wolfgang Ullrich (head of Audi Sport at the time) said something similar in the past.

[CTD]

Originally Posted by chernaudi

To be fair, they were tied to Glickenhaus, and even though it was easy to assume that they'd be squeezed out of the WEC LMH class by the factory backed teams eventually, why would Joest shop around for a new program when tethered to one already?


Mind you, I'm still of the opinion that Champion out-shined them in the late days of the R8 program and during the R10 program, and I believe that Wolfgang Ullrich (head of Audi Sport at the time) said something similar in the past.

There is no doubt in my mind that Joest would have the option in the contract with Glickenhaus, to leave for another larger scale program. Besides a contract with a big manufacture, would have been signed before Glickenhaus (especially if it was of germanic origin )

[chernaudi]

Audi stuck with Joest because they were a local team, and it was certainly easier to work with a team based in Germany rather than south Florida as Audi's program became first more European centric, then worldwide with the WEC.


I still rate Champion as a bit better during the latter part of the R8 days and the R10 era, though that could be bias. Also didn't help that Joest being rusty at Sebring in both '07 and especially '08 came from just doing 2 races a year until '08 (Sebring and LM), while Champion did the ALMS except Sebring. Practice does make (almost) perfect, and Joest improved rapidly in '08 once they got into the swing of the LMS that season.


The Sebring wake up call and LMS running did make LM '08 possible. And I think that Glickenhaus would've been up you know where without Joest.

[FIRE]

Originally Posted by CTD

The fact that none of the major manufactures chosen them to be partners, shows that Joest is sadly just a shadow of their 90s/00s form.

My thought is that they are slowly closing down operations.

I can imagine their long standing partnership with Audi hindered them in teaming up with a another manufacturer. Maybe if they were located in the US it would have been seasier.

They didn't do much racing in GT3, solely concentrating on LMP1.

I agree with you about slowly closing down. Shame to lose these big names (like Schnitzer) but that's life.

[veeten]

Then again, they did work with the Mazda DPi.

[PhilipR]

How big was the team before Audi and after Audi partnered with them?

Joes was always a small team in the 90s right? I wonder if Audi partnering with them lead to an infusion of money and personnel and as the partnership ended the money and most staff went away as well(how many were Joest and how many were Audi employees?). if true makes me think the smaller team found it difficult to attract new partnerships in Europe or WEC. Surprised they did not go LMP2 to keep their hand in the game.

Not sure how much they provided to the Mazda DPI programme and how many staff from Joes were on that team

[broadrun96]

They ran the Mazda program and was on the trucks, they took over development and moved the car from cautiously finishing with Speedsource to winning with the joker updates before it was finished with Multimatic after the contract ended in 2020 with Joest. They were the operational arm on track

[Tique]

They do a bit of historic racing.
According to their linkedin account, they are between 11 and 50 empoyee
Their turnover looks pretty flat during the last years
https://www.northdata.de/Joest+Racin...tadt+HRB+41265

[Speed-King]

Originally Posted by PhilipR

How big was the team before Audi and after Audi partnered with them?

Joes was always a small team in the 90s right?

No, they were heavily involved in the crazy-ness of mid-90s DTM, winning the championship for Opel in 1996 with Manuel Reuter. At the same time, they were running the Porsche WSC and winning Le Mans in 1996 and 1997- though they only got full-ish factory backing for that program in 1998 when they didn't win.