Third Team title in a row for Haupt Racing Team in the ADAC GT Masters. Focus on youth development: From kart to DTM with HRT. “Road to DTM” winner Finn Wiebelhaus: Promotion to the DTM the clear goal.
Three, two, one – Haupt Racing Team. Team champions for a third year in a row in the ADAC GT Masters, two of the team’s drivers claim the title in the Drivers’ Championship in 2025, and one of them also wins the “Road to DTM”. And the team from Drees, near the Nürburgring, achieved all that in its first season with the Ford Mustang GT3. New champions Finn Wiebelhaus (19/Obertshausen) and Salman Owega (20/Cologne) started the 2025 season in the number 1 car and won three races. At the wheel of the #2 Mustang were Jonathan Cecotto (26/VEN) and Dennis Fetzer (24/Gießen), while Max Reis (18/Ramstein) and Niklas Kalus (20/Duisburg) shared the driving duties in the #3 car. “Road to DTM” champion Wiebelhaus secured two pole positions, while Reis, Kalus and Cecotto each won one qualifying session. In total, Haupt Racing Team finished on the podium on ten occasions. It also claimed the maiden victory for the Ford Mustang GT3 in the ADAC GT Masters, and indeed the car’s very first race win in Europe, at the team’s home event at the Nürburgring.
“I believe we had the best and most balanced pairs of drivers in the ADAC GT Masters, which makes things much easier,” says HRT Managing Director Ulrich Fritz, going on to reveal how the team managed to be so successful in the Ford Mustang GT3’s first season. “It is all about developing the understanding of the car from day to day, event to event, and taking the drivers with you on that journey. In the end, they must also understand how to drive the car fast and be successful. We managed to do that together with the engineers.”
Haupt Racing Team was founded in 2020 by former DTM driver Hubert Haupt. Over the course of its relatively short history, the team has already enjoyed a lot of success, including winning the DTM championship in 2021 with Maximilian Götz, himself a former ADAC GT Masters champion. Haupt Racing Team has lined up in the ADAC’s GT3 series since 2023, wining the Team title three times in a row during that time. HRT won all its previous titles with the Mercedes-AMG GT3, so it came as a big surprise – greeted with euphoria by the fans – when the team announced it would be switching manufacturer at the end of the 2024 season. 2025 was to be a development year, in which HRT would learn a lot in cooperation with Ford, and was charged with ensuring that the car would be competitive. “Given those circumstances, it is quite a distinction for the whole team to have won such a prestigious championship,” says Fritz, proudly. The team takes advantages of synergies with the DTM, where it also lines up with two Ford Mustang GT3. All the data is made freely available, in order to allow the young drivers to pick up as much knowledge and understanding as possible.
Wiebelhaus to complete the “Road to DTM”
Working with young drivers is of great importance for Haupt Racing Team. A cooperation with the SIM-ON kart team, which was launched in 2025, means HRT now accompanies the entire “Road to DTM”. The cooperation yielded immediate success, with Lars Ramaer winning the X30 Seniors title in the German Kart Championship (DKM). In the ADAC GT Masters, Finn Wiebelhaus is the “Road to DTM” winner. If it is up to HRT Managing Director Fritz, the young German will take full advantage of this accolade and complete his journey to the top of the ADAC pyramid. “We believe in this system and it would be a great honour for us, if Finn were to become the first to have embarked on the “Road to DTM” and made it to the very top,” says Fritz, making their goal clear. “I believe he has what it takes a as a driver to succeed, but there are obviously many other factors that come into play. We are working on those and trying to help Finn. However, I obviously cannot confirm anything yet in that regard.”
Another thing set to continue is the team’s involvement in the ADAC GT Masters. After three Team titles in a row, winning the Drivers’ Championship and the “Road to DTM”, HRT plans to start in the ADAC’s GT3 series again in the coming season. “We are totally committed to developing young drivers and, with this in mind, the ADAC GT Masters is important to us as a platform for youth development,” Fritz explains. “We have now won three titles in a row, which is something we are very proud of as a team. We are certainly not happy to simply make up the numbers now. However, other teams also want to win in this series, and are capable of doing so. For this reason, we must remain humble. We must see whether our driver pairings are as good and how competitive the car is, as we will be receiving an Evo package for our Ford Mustang GT3.”
