Popular German driver, Marco Holzer has finally been confirmed as an official Porsche factory driver after three years training as a Porsche Junior. The news is no real surprise to those at Stuttgart, nor those outside, but the announcement caps a brilliant twelve months for the young driver.
Having scored his first-ever podium finish at Le Mans in June, Holzer also clinched the FIA GT3 European Team Championship for Prospeed alongside Paul van Splunteren. Holzer now joins the formidable ranks of the likes of Joerg Bergmeister, Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas, Wolf Henzler, Marc Lieb, Richard Lietz, Patrick Long and Patrick Pilet for 2011.
The news was announced as part of the “Night of Champions” season-closing celebration in the Porsche R&D Centre at Weissach, where two other drivers had cause to celebrate. Timo Bernhard, the first driver to win the world's four major long distance races and thus the Motorsport Grand Slam, was selected by a jury of experts as the ADAC Race Driver of the Year. Richard Lietz, who won the GT2 classification at the Le Mans 24 Hours as well as the championship title of the Le Mans Series, received the hefty title of Austrian Race Driver of the Year award by the Austrian Motorsport Association committee (OSK).
Wolfgang Dürheimer, Board Member for Research and Development, praised the excellent performance of the Porsche works drivers: “Aside from the technology of the vehicles and the performance of the teams, our pilots contributed significantly to the huge success that we achieved in 2010. They are the ones who had to make the right decisions within fractions of seconds and deliver their best performances in our cars over many hours.”
