Hyundai will bring its most prominent team to the Nürburgring Nordschleife to contest this year’s Nürburgring 24 Hours (May 30-June 2). Three Hyundai Elantra N TCR cars stand ready to chase the team’s fourth consecutive class win.
The cars’ crews hail from three continents, including the defending class winners and champion Hyundai Motorsport customer drivers from some of the most competitive TCR series.
The three cars – set to carry the #830, #831 and #832 during the endurance racing weekend – will be led by Mikel Azcona, Marc Basseng and Manuel Lauck aboard the #830 car. These three drivers combined to win the TCR class in 2022 and 2023, while Basseng and Lauck also achieved victory at the 2021 Nürburgring 24 Hours in the Elantra N TCR’s debut at the legendary endurance race.
The Hyundai-Motor-America-
The BHA team returns to the Nordschleife in 2024 with a different driver lineup: Mason Filippi and his teammate, 2023 IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge series champion Harry Gottsacker, will make their second start in the TCR class.
They will be joined by Canadian Mark Wilkins, who will make his 24 Hours debut. 19-year-old Bryson Morris completed the team for the Qualifiers weekend in his first Nordschleife start with a TCR car, although the final driver for the 24 Hours weekend is yet to be confirmed.
All new for 2024 is the #832 entry, set to be driven by four stars of the TCR China Series: Hongwei Cao, Rainey He, Andy Yan and Zhang Zhen Dong. Cao emerged with the 2023 national series title in his first year driving the Elantra N TCR after a tense season finale on the streets of Macau in November. Cao will share the car for the Nürburgring 24 Hours with his 2023 Hyundai N squad teammates, He and Yan.
The team will be completed by Dong, who competed in TCR China last year with the Z Speed team, finishing eighth in the highly competitive series with a pair of podium appearances. His efforts helped the Elantra N TCR clinch the Car TCR Model of the Year honours in the national series.
The team and drivers all competed last weekend at the N24 Qualifiers. They finished the weekend with a perfect 1-2-3 in class in Saturday’s four-hour race as Azcona, Basseng, and Lauck took victory in front of the North American and Chinese teams.
The #830 team recovered from a puncture on Saturday and won the class. Similarly, Filippi suffered a puncture early in the race aboard #831 but brought the car back to the pits without further damage. The car would complete the podium ahead of the Chinese-crewed car in fourth.
The three-car TCR team for the Nürburgring 24 Hours further advances the close connection between Hyundai N, the Nürburgring, and the race. Fittingly, Hyundai’s N per Hyundai division name is derived from the legendary German circuit and Namyang, South Korea—home of Hyundai’s global R&D centre.
Hyundai maintains a technical centre within sight of the circuit, where it conducts extensive testing of every new road car model as part of its ongoing development.
Hyundai Motorsport has developed a solid and successful link with the Nürburgring 24 Hours. All three TCR designs built by the Customer Racing department have scored class podiums in the Nürburgring 24 Hours, with Elantra N TCR race cars emerging victorious in the last three years.
The trio of Elantra N TCR teams for the 2024 race aims to add to this incredible record. However, the Nürburgring 24 Hours is widely recognised as one of the most extreme challenges in motorsport. A combination of the unforgiving 25km circuit, famously varying weather conditions, a vast range of performance within the 140+ cars on track, and the difficulty of driving through the night remain unparalleled in modern racing.
The Hyundai Driving Experience i30 Fastback N in the VT2 Front-Wheel-Drive class will complete the official lineup teams. In 2023, the team dominated the class, winning by an impressive nine laps, though their advantage was as much as double that margin before a late technical problem. The team for 2024 will include two of the winners from last year, experienced drivers Marcus Willhardt and Michael Bohrer.
They will be joined by journalist-racer Jens Dralle, who returns for a second year with the team at the Nürburgring 24 Hours after driving a second car in 2023. The team will be completed by Korean Junior driver Gyumin Kim, who has already proven his talent as the Hyundai N Festival winner in his home country last year before helping the team to class podium finishes in the first two NLS races of the season earlier in April.
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