Mercedes Motorsport has officially bid farewell to Raffaele Marciello, who from next year will no longer be the representative of AMG in endurance and GT racing around the world.
Last weekend the “Champions United” evening took place, in which the Star drivers who achieved various successes in the 2023 season through Customer Racing support to customer teams were rewarded.
Among these, ‘Lello’ received the trophy for his triumph in the Endurance Cup of the GT World Challenge Europe achieved at the wheel of car #88 of the Akkodis-ASP Team teamed with Timur Boguslavskiy and Jules Gounon.
“I am touched, as a farewell gift I was given the Spa-winning car which I drove as a model and AMG made a very emotional film for me”, commented Marciello, who had been with Mercedes since 2017 and is now preparing to land at the court of BMW M Motorsport.
“We had another great evening together. I am very grateful to Mercedes-AMG because without them I wouldn’t be here now.”
Photo by: SRO
#88 Akkodis ASP Team, Mercedes-AMG GT3: Raffaele Marciello, Timur Boguslavskiy, Jules Gounon
Already at the end of last season, the Swiss-Italian had admitted that he wanted to face new challenges on the prototypes in 2024; after an initial approach to Lamborghini, the scenarios changed when a nice offer arrived from the Bavarian company, which will be able to announce him as a new member of its lineup of competitors once the commitments with Mercedes, including the FIA GT World Cup, are over of Macau next weekend.
In the meantime, a test was held in Valencia for the youngsters followed by the Stuttgart manufacturer and at the end of the various tests Lorenzo Ferrari and Frank Bird earned the chance to race the Gulf 12h, scheduled for the weekend of 8-10 December as the last stage of the Intercontinental GT Challenge.
“The impressions from the sessions at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo were absolutely promising, I can’t wait to see Frank and Lorenzo behind the wheel of our Mercedes-AMG GT3 in Abu Dhabi,” said Stefan Wendl, Head of Mercedes-AMG Customer Racing.
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