RWS Motorsport is an

auto racing Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles for competition. In North America, the term is commonly used to describe all forms of automobile sport including non ...

team based in

Anger, Bavaria Anger () is a municipality in the district of Berchtesgadener Land in Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. Founded in 1995 by former racing driver and engineer Rudi Walch, the team has been involved in multiple international series, primarily the

FIA GT Championship The FIA GT Championship was a sports car racing series organized by the Stéphane Ratel Organisation (SRO) at the behest of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The championship was mostly concentrated in Europe, but throughout ...

. The team were the vice champions of the N-GT category of the FIA GT Championship in

2000 2000 was designated as the International Year for the Culture of Peace and the World Mathematics, Mathematical Year. Popular culture holds the year 2000 as the first year of the 21st century and the 3rd millennium, because of a tende ...

and

2001 The year's most prominent event was the September 11 attacks against the United States by al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror. The United States led a Participan ...

. Since 2003, RWS has concentrated on

historic motorsport Historic motorsport or vintage motorsport, is motorsport with vehicles limited to a particular era. Only safety precautions are modernized in these hobbyist races. A historical event can be of various types of motorsport disciplines, from road ...

and vehicle restoration, repair, and sales.

History

After racing for

Schnitzer Motorsport Schnitzer Motorsport was a motorsport team based in Freilassing near Munich, Germany. From the early days of its establishment, the team mostly operated an auto racing, automobile racing squad for BMW, and had remarkable results in touring car rac ...

in the 1970s, Rudi Walch became involved with

Brun Motorsport {{Unsourced, date=December 2016 Brun Motorsport GmbH was a Switzerland, Swiss auto racing team founded by driver Walter Brun in 1983. They competed as a Porsche privateer team in sports car racing for their entire existence, running in a multitude ...

as a driver before becoming a technical engineer for the team in 1983. After Brun was liquidated in 1993, Walch acquired much of the former team's equipment as well as hiring former personnel to form RWS Motorsport in 1995. The new team initially competed selectively in the

BPR Global GT Series The BPR Global GT Series (sometimes referred to as the BPR Global GT Endurance Series or simply abbreviated as BPR) was a grand tourer-based sports car racing series which ran from 1994 to 1996 before becoming the FIA GT Championship in 1997. The ...

with a

Porsche 911 GT2 The Porsche 911 GT2 is a high-performance, track-focused sports car built by the German automobile manufacturer Porsche from 1993 to 2009, and then since 2010 as the GT2 RS. It is based on the Porsche 911 Turbo, 911 Turbo, and uses a similar twin ...

, a car which they would campaign for several years. In 1997 the BPR series became the FIA GT Championship, and RWS with Italian drivers Luca Riccitelli and Raffaele Sangiuolo competed in the bulk of the races in the season. RWS concentrated on the inaugural

GTR Euroseries The GTR Euroseries was a short-lived auto racing series which ran in 1998. It was created as an alternative to the international FIA GT Championship, while combining elements of the former BPR Global GT Series. The GTR Euroseries was created by Pa ...

for 1998, a series intended for teams with amateur drivers, before returning to FIA GT in 1999 with the father-son duo of Horst Felbermayr and Horst Felbermayr Jr. The team also added

sports prototype A sports prototype, sometimes referred to simply as a prototype, is a type of Auto racing, race car that is used in high-level categories of sports car racing. They are purpose-built auto-sports race cars, as opposed to production-car based or s ...

racing in the SportsRacing World Cup with a

Riley & Scott Riley & Scott Cars Inc. was an American auto racing, racing constructor and racing team that primarily provided chassis for various forms of motorsport, but worked primarily in sports car racing. It was founded in 1990 by Bob Riley and Mark Scott. ...

BMW Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, trading as BMW Group (commonly abbreviated to BMW (), sometimes anglicised as Bavarian Motor Works), is a German multinational manufacturer of vehicles and motorcycles headquartered in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Th ...

with Riccitelli joining Günther Blieninger, and ran a partial season of the

American Le Mans Series The American Le Mans Series (ALMS) was a sports car racing series based in the United States and Canada. It consisted of a series of Endurance racing (motorsport), endurance and sprint races, and was created in the spirit of the 24 Hours of Le M ...

after one-off visits to the

Rolex 24 at Daytona The 24 Hours of Daytona, also known as the Rolex 24 At Daytona for sponsorship reasons, is a 24-hour sports car endurance race held annually at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. It is run on the Sports Car Course layout, ...

in the United States the previous years. In 2000 Porsche introduced the new 911 GT3-R for the FIA GT Championship's new N-GT category. RWS, with new drivers

Philipp Peter Philipp Peter (born 6 April 1969 in Vienna) is a race car driver from Austria. He started in junior formula cars with the highlight winning the Austria Formula 3 Cup in 1992. He represented Austria in the 1990 EFDA Nations Cup and also raced in ...

and

Dieter Quester Dieter Quester (born 30 May 1939) is an Austrian former racing driver. Quester participated in 53 24-Hour Races. He competed in a single Formula One race in which he finished ninth. Starting with motorboats in the 1950s, he became part of the Fo ...

and the backing of Quester's sponsor

Red Bull Red Bull is a brand of energy drinks created and owned by the Austrian company Red Bull GmbH. With a market share of 43%, it is the most popular energy drink brand as of 2020, and the third most valuable soft drink brand, behind Coca-Cola and ...

, purchased two new cars. The team introduced their new purchase at the

where they finished tenth overall and second in the GTU class. Back in Europe, the team won FIA GT races at

Circuit Zolder The Circuit Zolder, also known as Circuit Terlamen, is an undulating motorsport race track in Heusden-Zolder, Belgium. History Built in 1963, Zolder hosted the Formula One Belgian Grand Prix on 10 separate occasions in the 1970s and 1980s, ...

and

EuroSpeedway Lausitz The Lausitzring (formally known as the Dekra Lausitzring for ownership reasons) is a race track located near Klettwitz (a civil parish of Schipkau, Oberspreewald-Lausitz district) in the state of Brandenburg in northeast Germany, near the ...

en route to second in the teams' championship and Riccitelli finished second in the drivers' championship. Quester and Riccitelli paired up for 2001, winning at

Brno Circuit The Masaryk circuit () or Masarykring, also referred to as the Brno Circuit, refers to two motorsport race tracks located in Brno, Czech Republic. The original street circuit was made up of public roads, and at its longest measured . The track i ...

before following it up with a 5th place finish and class victory at the

Spa 24 Hours The 24 Hours of Spa is an endurance racing event for cars held annually since 1924 at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Stavelot, Belgium. It is currently sponsored by CrowdStrike. History The Spa 24 Hours was conceived by Jules de Their and ...

. The team finished the season tied on points with

JMB Competition JMB Racing is a racing team from Monaco that competes in sports car racing. It was founded in Nice, France, in 1995 as JB Racing by Jean-Michel Bouresche and Jean-Pierre Jabouille. It was renamed JMB (Bouresche's initials) in 2000 after Jabouille l ...

for the N-GT Championship but were deemed second place on the tie-breaker. Riccitelli finished second in the drivers' championship while Quester was third. RWS split their season in 2002, campaigning the GT3-R in the N-GT category for Russians Aleksey Vasilyev and

Nikolai Fomenko Nikolay Vladimirovich Fomenko (, born 30 April 1962) is a Russian musician, comic actor, professional motor racer, former president of Marussia Motors and former engineering director of Marussia F1. Biography Born in Leningrad on April 30, ...

while also developing a variant of the GT3-R for the GT category for Riccitelli and Quester. The resulting 911 GT, which featured an enlarged and more powerful motor, struggled and was abandoned after the third round of the season, while Quester and Riccitelli later moved to another team within the series. The N-GT campaign netted a fourth place championship result. Vasilyev and Fomenko increased their involvement in the team in 2003, bringing Russian

Yukos OJSC "Yukos Oil Company" (, ) was an oil and gas company based in Moscow, Russia. Yukos was acquired from the Russian government by Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Bank Menatep during the controversial "loans for shares" auctions of ...

title sponsorship as they returned to a two-car N-GT entry, but the season was winless and the duo would take their sponsor and move to

Freisinger Motorsport Freisinger Motorsport is a German company which has tuned, restored, and raced Porsches since 1967. Founded by Manfred Freisinger in Karlsruhe, the company now is run by his son Manfred Freisinger Jr. Since 1992, the company has competed interna ...

in 2004. RWS would then turn to the restoration of racing cars and road car repairs, occasionally competing in historic racing and support of other racing teams. An RWS-backed

SEAT León The SEAT León (), also spelled Leon in some other languages (named after the city of León, Spain, León, which also means "Lion" in Spanish), is a small family car built by the Spanish car manufacturer SEAT since October 1999.ETKA The first ...

won the TCR category of the 2016 24 Hours of Nürburgring.

References

{{reflist 1995 establishments in Germany Auto racing teams established in 1995 German auto racing teams Companies based in Upper Bavaria American Le Mans Series teams FIA GT Championship teams Red Bull sports clubs and teams FIA Sportscar Championship entrants