🇩🇪 Joel Sturm

Joel Sturm is a German professional racing driver, FIA Gold graded, competing in international endurance racing. He races GT3 cars across the major sportscar championships; his principal team is Manthey PureRxcing, for whom he secured the 2024 World Endurance Championship title in the LMGT3 class. He also competes for other operations including Car Collection Motorsport, Proton Competition and Dinamic GT SRL across longer-distance and national-level events.[1]

Sturm has contested six seasons of indexed racing from 2021 onwards, with 67 starts across eight series. His record in multiclass and single-class endurance racing, where he shares cars with co-drivers, encompasses two wins and eleven podiums. The 2024 WEC campaign marked his breakthrough, yielding two wins and six further podiums across eight rounds and the season championship. His earlier seasons saw occasional podium finishes in ADAC GT Masters in 2022 and the Nürburgring 24 Hours, establishing him within the professional endurance ranks before his title success.[2]

Sturm races regularly against established professionals graded at his own level and above. Fabian Schiller, a Gold-graded professional with 41 GT World Challenge starts and 20 in the Asian Le Mans Series, is closely matched with him across multiple seasons. Dennis Marschall, a Platinum-graded professional and one of the most experienced drivers in the index with 67 GT World Challenge starts, remains competitive in the same meetings. His wins in the 2024 WEC, where he finished ahead of Max Verstappen on two occasions, came against the grid's strongest opposition; Verstappen, a four-time Formula 1 world champion, races occasionally in endurance events alongside his primary single-seater programme.