Porsche Factory Drivers Get Private Rides for 2009 ALMS Season

Porsche has announced that three of its factory drivers will drive for two private teams in the 2009 ALMS Series.
Porsche Factory Drivers Get Private Rides for 2009 ALMS Season
12/19/2008
Updated:
10/1/2015

<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/flylizberg.jpg" alt="Jörg Bergmeister and Wolf Henzler drove this Flying Lizard Porsche RSR to the GT2 championship in 2008.  (Sherwood Liu/The Epoch Times)" title="Jörg Bergmeister and Wolf Henzler drove this Flying Lizard Porsche RSR to the GT2 championship in 2008.  (Sherwood Liu/The Epoch Times)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1832290"/></a>
Jörg Bergmeister and Wolf Henzler drove this Flying Lizard Porsche RSR to the GT2 championship in 2008.  (Sherwood Liu/The Epoch Times)
Porsche has announced that three of its factory drivers will drive for two private teams in the 2009 American Le Mans Series.

“For Porsche, the American Le Mans Series continues to be very important,” said Porsche head of motorsport Hartmut Kristen. “For this reason we are providing our Flying Lizard Motorsports and Farnbacher Loles teams with three of our best GT drivers. Moreover, we will continue to support the teams with Porsche engineers at the track.”

Three-time champion Jörg Bergmeister will team up with former LMP2 pilot Patrick Long in a Flying Lizards Motorsports GT2 RSR. Bergmeister and Long are old friends; they won GT2 at le Mans in 2004, and in 2005 and 2006 they co-drove to win the ALMS GT2 title.

Patrick Long took third in LMP2 in 2008, driving a Penske Porsche RS Spyder. Jörg Bergmeister and teammate Wolf Henzler won the 2008 GT2 championship. With Patrick Long as his partner, Bergmeister is confident he will continue with winning ways.

“I’m looking forward to having such a world class pilot like Patrick as a team mate in 2009. We will do our best to defend the ALMS title for Porsche,” said Bergmeister.

Wolf Henzler, fresh from his success with Bergmeister and the Flying Lizards, will drive for former opponent Farnbacher-Loles in 2009. Henzler is actually rejoining the team, having raced with them in 2005.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to have extended my contract as a works driver and that Porsche has again put me with a top team,” said Henzler. “It’ll be strange in the beginning to race against Jörg. In 2008 we got really close as a team. But when I was faster than Jörg, I was surely very close to the maximum.”

Porsche has competed in the ALMS since its inception in 1999. In that time it has won nine class championships and nine manufacturers’ championships, making it the most successful marque in ALMS racing.