🇩🇪 Michael Bartels

Michael Bartels was an elite professional racing driver competing in endurance sports car racing and Formula 3 single-seaters across a twelve-year career. He raced primarily for Vitaphone Racing Team in the FIA GT Championship between 1998 and 2009, driving shared-driver endurance machinery and latterly attempting Formula 3 and International Formula 3000 as a younger driver. His rating of 5,967 places him among the strongest professionals of his era.[1]

Bartels won the FIA GT Championship three times, in 2006, 2008 and 2009, taking thirteen wins and thirty podiums across sixty-eight starts in the series. He was most competitive in endurance racing; his single-seater record comprised five podiums from thirty-one International Formula 3000 starts with Pacific and one Macau Formula 3 appearance. His FIA GT career spanned twelve seasons and ended with the 2009 championship, in which he took five podiums and two wins from eight rounds to secure the title.[2]

In the FIA GT field Bartels raced regularly against Karl Wendlinger, a former FIA GT champion and Formula 1 driver; the two were closely matched across their meetings. He also finished ahead of Emmanuel Collard, a WEC and FIA GT regular, and once ahead of Mark Webber, an elite professional and WEC LMP1 world champion who competed in the series alongside his Formula 1 career. Bartels finished on the podium ahead of Mika Häkkinen, a two-time Formula 1 world champion, once during his endurance racing career.