“We must keep pushing, push even further now that we are the target, now that we are in the crosshairs of the competition, and we need to get as many customer cars on track as we can, to win in as many countries as possible.”
This was Wolfgang Dürheimer, Chairman and CEO of Bentley Motors speaking at the company’s Motor Sport Awards, an informal gathering to celebrate its first year in competition with the Continental GT3. This is the man who, when first arriving in Crewe after leaving Audi, asked: “So where is the motor sport department?”
Step forward highly respected engineer Brian Gush, the man who masterminded Bentley’s victory at Le Mans with the glorious Speed 8 in 2003. The GT3 racing campaign was launched in September 2012 and, in partnership with Malcolm Wilson’s M-Sport WRC team in Cockermouth, Gush and his engineers set about building a new racing Bentley.
The rest, as they say, is history, the team scoring its maiden victory at Silverstone in May of this year and going on to finish second in the Blancpain Endurance Series.
“Second place gives us some room for improvement,” said Brian Gush as the team celebrated an encouraging first season at Bentley’s new CW1 showroom in Crewe on Thursday night. (CW1 is the factory’s post code). “Today we have signed a contract with the HTP team who will switch from Mercedes to Bentley in GT3 next season, so that’s tremendous news after an incredible year. M-Sport has done an incredible job, from shaking hands on the partnership to getting the first car took just seven months. The pressure was on and they have done an impressively professional job for a team that had never done any circuit racing.”