Jetalliance Racing
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| Founded | 2006 |
|---|---|
| Team principal(s) | Lukas Lichtner-Hoyer |
| Former series |
FIA GT Championship Le Mans Series FIA GT4 European Cup Intercontinental Le Mans Cup |
Jetalliance Racing is an Austrian racing team which currently competes in the FIA GT Championship. Founded by Lukas Lichtner-Hoyer, former CEO of Jetalliance airlines, in 2006 under the name Race Alliance Motorsport, the team has run two privateer Aston Martin DBR9s in FIA GT as well as making appearances in other racing series. Lichtner-Hoyer is one of the team's four drivers, joined by Karl Wendlinger, Ryan Sharp and Alex Müller.
Debuting in the 2006 season, the team would be amongst the earliest customers of the new DBR9s, running two cars with Red Bull backing for a majority of Austrian drivers, such as Karl Wendlinger and Philipp Peter. The team would also occasionally employ a Porsche 911 GT3-RSR for competition in the smaller GT2 class as well as a BMW M3 GTR for the Spa 24 Hours. The Aston Martins would struggle, with Wendlinger and Peter's car being the only one for the team to score points all season. However the team would manage one victory at Mugello. This helped the team gain a sixth place in the team's championship, while Peter and Wendlinger would tie for 14th in the driver's standings.
2007 saw improvement from the renamed team, even though they lost the backing of their primary sponsor Red Bull. Ryan Sharp replaced Peter while the team would abandon their Porsche to fully concentrate on the Aston Martins. A second victory would come at Monza, followed by the team leading early in the Spa 24 Hours before mechanical issues forced them to drop out. The team would improve to fourth in the championship following another victory in Italy, this time at Adria. At the next round of the FIA GT Championship in Brno Wendlinger qualified the #33 DBR9 in third place and finished in second place behind the #2 Vitaphone Racing MC12. At the penultimate race of the 2007 season in Nogaro the #33 car got beaten in qualifying for the first time by the #36 car driven by Robert Lechner. Lechner qualified the #36 car in second place behind the #1 Vitaphone Racing MC12 of Thomas Biagi, the gap between the two cars was 0.000 seconds (Biagi was on pole because he did his lap before Lechner). Meanwhile, Wendlinger had qualified the #33 car in third place. The results from Nogaro for the two Jetalliance cars were: fifth place for the #33 car with Wendlinger and Sharp and ninth for Lechner and Lichtner-Hoyer. The last race of the 2007 FIA GT Championship season was in Zolder, during qualifying the #36 car first jumped into pole position only to beaten by his team mate in the #33 car, Karl Wendlinger who was 0.716 seconds quicker than Lechner who ended up in third place behind the #12 Playteam Sarafree MC12. The results of the last race at Zolder were: #33 Wendlinger/Sharp in first place and the #36 car with Lechner/Lichtner-Hoyer in ninth place partly due to Lechner spinning when exiting one of the corners early on in the race.
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