A Ferrari partner from Piacenza, Porsche's Nurburgring specialist, a Houston dealership team and an Audi works partner, and how each won at Le Mans.
AF Corse (founded 1995), Manthey Racing (1996), Risi Competizione (1997) and Joest Racing (1978) are endurance teams that built their records running Ferrari, Porsche and Audi machinery. Each has won at Le Mans, from Joest's fifteen victories to AF Corse's three straight hypercar wins from 2023 to 2025.
A Porsche 956 with the chassis number 117 won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1984 and again in 1985, run by a privateer team. Only one other team had ever won back to back with the same car: JW Automotive, whose Ford GT40 triumphed in 1968 and 1969. The team behind the 956 was Joest Racing, and its first Le Mans win was the first of what became fifteen.
Joest is one of four endurance teams that sit between the factory and the amateur. AF Corse, Manthey Racing and Risi Competizione each built their record by running Ferrari or Porsche cars, for the factory or for customers.
AF Corse: Ferrari's partner from Piacenza
AF Corse was founded in 1995 in Piacenza by a former driver, Amato Ferrari, who is no relation to Enzo Ferrari and his cars. He retired from the cockpit to concentrate on management and first entered the Italian Superturismo Championship. When that series ended in 1999 he started AF Corse, named for his initials, and within a year Maserati had contracted the team to look after its Trofeo Cup, a one-make series for the Maserati Coupe. That job ran until 2005.
From Maserati to Ferrari GT2
In 2004 Maserati asked the team to run its new MC12 in the FIA GT Championship. AF Corse helped to test and develop the car, ran two at its home event at Imola, and collected two victories before the year was out. In 2006 it came back to the championship in the lower GT2 class with the Ferrari F430. It won on its debut at Silverstone and twice more, one of them at the Spa 24 Hours, and took the class title ahead of the Ferrari rivals Scuderia Ecosse. A new driver line-up and Motorola's sponsorship followed in 2007, and the two cars won nine of the ten events.
When the FIA GT Championship was dissolved in 2010, AF Corse moved into the Le Mans Series with three F430s. In 2011 it entered the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup with new Ferrari 458 Italia GT2 cars and took the GTE-Pro honours, the final round at Petit Le Mans included. At the 2012 Le Mans it beat Corvette, Porsche and Aston Martin in GTE Pro with the number 51 car of Gianmaria Bruni, Giancarlo Fisichella and Toni Vilander. Alongside its own cars it ran a co-branded GTE-Am entry with the NASCAR team of Michael Waltrip, called AF Waltrip, though that sportscar operation closed in 2013 so that the owners could concentrate on NASCAR.
The hypercar years
For 2023 AF Corse teamed up with Scuderia Ferrari in a partnership to field the new 499P hypercar in the World Endurance Championship. The team won the centenary Le Mans that year, Ferrari's first top-class win there in 50 years. It then fielded a yellow privateer entry, the number 83, with Robert Kubica, Robert Shwartzman and Yifei Ye. In 2024 that car led much of Le Mans before a motor-generator unit fault ended its race, and in 2025 the yellow car won.
The run is striking. Each of the three cars, numbers 51, 50 and 83, won Le Mans between 2023 and 2025, so every one of the nine works drivers has now won the race. Fuoco, Molina and Nielsen shared the 50, Pier Guidi, Calado and Giovinazzi the 51, and Kubica, Ye and Hanson the 83. AF Corse currently races in the World Endurance Championship, GT World Challenge Europe, the European and Asian Le Mans Series and International GT Open.
Only one other team had won Le Mans back to back with the same car.
Manthey Racing: Porsche's Nurburgring specialist
Olaf Manthey retired from driving after the 1993 season of the original DTM and joined Persson Motorsport, which ran Mercedes-Benz cars, in 1994. When the DTM folded in 1996 he founded his own team at Rheinbreitbach. On 1 April 2000 it moved to its current home in Meuspath.
Manthey's early results came in the Porsche Supercup. The team made its debut there in 1996 and finished fourth in the teams' standings, then won four consecutive teams' and drivers' titles from 1997 to 2000 with the Dutch driver Patrick Huisman. His four titles remain the most won by any Supercup driver.
Porsche takes a stake
The ownership changed on 15 December 2013, when Raeder Motorsport merged into the team and Porsche acquired a 51 percent majority. According to Hartmut Kristen of Porsche Motorsport, Olaf Manthey had approached Porsche about keeping the team going: he had lost his son in a road accident in 2007, and his daughter did not want to take over. The Raeder brothers, Nicolas and Martin, took management roles and a 20 percent share each, and Manthey kept 9 percent. In 2021 the team became a certified Porsche partner, and in 2026 Porsche bought another 16 percent, lifting its majority to 67 percent.
The Nurburgring 24 Hours
Manthey first competed at the Nurburgring in 1998, winning a VLN race outright in a Porsche 911 GT2 after 3 hours and 25 minutes. It has entered the 24 Hours of Nurburgring every year since 2006, apart from 2012, and holds the record with seven overall victories, a number that Scherer Sport PHX equalled in 2024.
The first win, in 2006, came with a 996-generation 911 GT3 and a line-up of Tiemann, Luhr, Bernhard and Rockenfeller. They set what was then a distance record of 3,832 km (2,381 mi) in 151 laps. The same four won in 2007, 2008 and 2009, and the team won again in 2011. A sixth victory arrived in 2018 and the seventh in 2021, when the race was settled after only nine hours. In 2025 Manthey took pole and crossed the line first, but a 100-second penalty for Kevin Estre's collision with a Dorr Motorsport Aston Martin dropped it to second.
Le Mans and the works programme
Le Mans first saw Manthey as a privateer in 1999, with a Porsche 996 GT3 R, and the team won the LMGT class at the first attempt with Huisman, Uwe Alzen and Luca Riccitelli. It joined Porsche's works programme in the World Endurance Championship in 2013 with the new 911 RSR and scored a 1-2 at Le Mans. In 2015 Porsche and Manthey won the LM GTE Pro FIA Endurance Trophy, and Richard Lietz won the drivers' title. The Manthey name left the entry lists from 2016 to 2023, though the team kept backing Porsche's effort, and in 2022 it prepared two 911 Turbo S cars for use as safety cars.
When the GTE class gave way to GT3 rules in 2024, Porsche chose Manthey again to run its LMGT3 team. The number 91 car, with EMA Motorsport, won its class at Le Mans in 2024, and the number 92, with PureRxcing, wrapped up both titles at the 6 Hours of Fuji. By 2025 Manthey had back-to-back Le Mans wins, and the third entry that year was earned by winning the 2024-25 Asian Le Mans Series title.
Elsewhere, the team won the DTM drivers' and teams' titles in 2023 with Dennis Olsen and Thomas Preining, its first DTM season in 21 years, and again in 2025 with Ayhancan Guven. At Bathurst, it was second on debut in 2023, less than a second behind the winner, and won the 12 Hour outright in 2024.
Tuning for the road
Manthey also runs a tuning department for Porsche 911 and Cayman road cars, many of its upgrades developed with Porsche. Cars it works on typically wear an MR badge. In 2021 Porsche development driver Lars Kern lapped the Nordschleife in 6:43.300 in a 911 GT2 RS with the Manthey Performance Kit, a production car record that stood for three years until Mercedes-AMG beat it in 2024 with the One.
Risi Competizione: Ferrari from a Houston dealership
Risi Competizione started as the racing arm of Ferrari of Houston, a dealership owned by Giuseppe Risi. Doyle Racing, which wanted to replace an outdated sports prototype, used Risi's Ferrari connection to buy two Ferrari 333 SP cars, and the team raced as Doyle-Risi. It won the second race of the season at Las Vegas with Wayne Taylor and Eric van de Poele, and at Le Mans in 1998 it took the class win with an eighth place overall. It then won the inaugural Petit Le Mans outright, and the year ended with the World Sports Car team championship.
After a winless 1999 against Audi, BMW and Panoz in the American Le Mans Series, Giuseppe Risi took full control and rebranded the team Risi Competizione in 2000. After a break in 2001, during which it developed a competition version of the Ferrari 360 Modena, the team returned. In 2002, in partnership with Rand Racing, it swept all ten races of the Rolex Sports Car Series SRPII class with Nissan-powered Lola prototypes. In 2003 its 360 finished second overall at the Daytona 24 Hours, ahead of faster prototypes.
F430 years
The F430 era was the high point. In 2006 Mika Salo and Jaime Melo took four victories and the team championship, and in 2007 the team won eight of the twelve races, including the 12 Hours of Sebring, with Salo and Melo sharing the drivers' title. At Le Mans, the 2008 GT2 class win came 19th overall with Salo, Melo and Gianmaria Bruni, the team's second win from four attempts, and a third class win followed in 2009 at 18th overall. In 2009 Risi also won the GT2 class at Sebring and Petit Le Mans.
Later seasons were more selective. The team ran a Ferrari 458 Italia GTLM in 2014 with Fisichella and Pierre Kaffer, and a 488 GTE in 2016. It took third in GTE Am at Le Mans in 2018, and in 2019 won the GTLM class at Petit Le Mans with Pier Guidi, Calado and Daniel Serra. With the GTD Pro class replacing GTLM, it committed to the full Michelin Endurance Cup in 2022 and won the teams' and drivers' titles with Davide Rigon and Serra in a Ferrari 488 GT3. In January 2024 it took its first Daytona 24 Hours victory, in the GTD Pro class with a Ferrari 296 GT3 and the factory drivers Calado, Pier Guidi, Rigon and Serra.
Joest Racing: from Porsche privateer to Audi's works partner
Reinhold Joest, a former Porsche works racer, founded the team in 1978 and is based in Wald-Michelbach. He started as a driver-owner in a Porsche 908/3, won the European Sportscar Championship, and then moved to 935s that won the Daytona 24 Hours in 1980. With Bob Wollek the team won the DRM in 1982 and 1983. In 1982, when the Porsche 956 was reserved for the works team, Joest fitted a roof to a 936 to enter Group C.
The 956 arrived in time for Le Mans in 1983, and in 1984 Klaus Ludwig and Henri Pescarolo won in the lucky number 7 car. The works team returned in 1985, yet Ludwig, Paolo Barilla and an incognito German businessman known as John Winter won again in chassis 117. A change to Group C rules in 1989, which brought in a 3.5 litre Formula One style engine that privateers could not easily find, sent Joest to the IMSA GTP category from 1990. It won the 1991 Daytona 24 Hours with a five-man crew of Wollek, Pescarolo, Jelinski, Winter and Haywood.
Porsche, Opel and the return to Le Mans
In the 1990s the team developed and raced an Opel Calibra in the DTM, and Manuel Reuter won the ITR Gold Cup at Donington in 1994. Opel took the title in 1996, the last of the ITC. That same year Joest ran a Porsche WSC-95 at Le Mans, a car Tom Walkinshaw Racing had built from an old Jaguar XJR-14 chassis, and won with Davy Jones, Reuter and Alexander Wurz. In 1997 Michele Alboreto, Stefan Johansson and Tom Kristensen won again in the number 7 car, the first of Kristensen's nine wins.
Joest and Audi
In 1998 Joest signed a works contract with Audi, led by Ferdinand Piech, a grandson of Porsche's founder, to build the R8R for Le Mans in 1999. The two R8R cars were reliable but too slow, and finished third and fourth. The R8 that followed won first time out at the 2000 12 Hours of Sebring, then Le Mans, and between 2000 and 2002 it took a hat trick at Le Mans, Sebring and Petit Le Mans and won American Le Mans Series titles each year.
Audi paused its sports car effort at the end of 2002 and Bentley won in 2003 with help from Joest mechanics. In 2006 the diesel R10 won Sebring and Le Mans, and repeated at Le Mans in 2007 and 2008 against Peugeot's 908. Peugeot beat the R15 in 2009, but the revised R15 TDI plus swept the 2010 podium after Peugeot's cars retired. In 2011 the R18 TDI won despite losing two cars in crashes with slower Ferraris. In 2012 Joest-run Audis took the first three places at Le Mans, and Andre Lotterer, Benoit Treluyer and Marcel Fassler became the world endurance champions. The partnership ended when Audi Sport announced in late 2016 that it would leave the World Endurance Championship.
Joest then took over Mazda's DPi programme in IMSA, which brought five victories before the partnership ended in March 2020, and in 2021 helped to run two SCG 007 hypercars for Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, which scored podiums at Sebring, Spa and Le Mans in 2022.
Customer and works-backed endurance teams compared
| Team | Founded | Founder | Manufacturer link | Le Mans highlight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joest Racing | 1978 | Reinhold Joest | Porsche, then Audi works partner 1998 to 2016 | First of fifteen wins in 1984; R8 hat trick 2000 to 2002 |
| AF Corse | 1995 | Amato Ferrari | Ferrari and Maserati | Cars #51, #50 and #83 each won 2023 to 2025 |
| Manthey Racing | 1996 | Olaf Manthey | Porsche, with a 67% stake | LMGT class win on 1999 debut; class win in 2024 |
| Risi Competizione | 1997 | Giuseppe Risi | Ferrari factory-backed | Class wins in 1998, 2008 and 2009 |
Where the four teams race now
Manthey's immediate plans are in North America. In 2026 it entered the IMSA SportsCar Championship with a Michelin Endurance Cup campaign, and Porsche's larger stake in the team dates from the same year. AF Corse's hypercar partnership with Ferrari has run from 2023 to 2025 with a Le Mans win for each of its cars. Risi Competizione's latest result above is its January 2024 win at Daytona.
