Daniel Blickle - From a late entrant and underdog to an endurance race winner with W&S Motorsport
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Daniel Blickle - From a late entrant and underdog to an endurance race winner with W&S Motorsport

Daniel Blickle entered motorsport late in life. At the age of 36, he fulfilled a long-held dream, namely to race on the Nordschleife. Back in 2015, the 44-year-old entrepreneur from Albstadt in Swabia did his first laps under the guidance of W&S Motorsport and has remained loyal to the team to this day. His career as a gentleman driver within seven years is therefore all the more remarkable, as Blickle can add victory in the Cayman GT4 Trophy by Manthey Racing 2021 (Cup3) and, as the highlight, victory in the Cup2 class as part of the newly created Porsche Endurance Trophy Nürburgring (PETN) in 2022 in the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup 992 to his motorsport CV, in addition to two runner-up titles in the Nürburgring Endurance Series (NLS).

In the winter of 2015, initial talks took place between Daniel Blickle and the team bosses of W&S Motorsport Daniel Schellhaas and Patrick Wagner to plan the entry into the RCN in 2016. At the beginning of 2016, the racing licence was renewed and in March, the first race on the Nordschleife followed as part of the test set-up drive. In April 2016, Daniel Blickle entered the Rundstrecken-Challenge Nürburgring (RCN) as a single starter in a production-based BMW Z4. In just his third race entry, Blickle finished in the top 30 of the RCN and two more races later he climbed onto the podium at the Nürburgring for the first time. 

Blickle recalls: "For me as a newcomer, the RCN was already a big challenge, as I had neither competed in races nor had any great experience on the Nordschleife before. But thanks to the coaching of the experienced Nürburgring drivers Daniel Schellhaas and Patrick Wagner, I quickly found my way around and was able to achieve relatively good results in my very first season. In the end, I have to say that starting in the RCN on a production-based car was exactly the right way to get started, because the comparatively low-performance, production-based car didn't overtax me and I learned to drive a clean line. That helped me a lot in the further course of my 'career' on the Nordschleife." 

Debut in the VLN 

The following year, Blickle took the next step together with W&S Motorsport and competed for the first time in the VLN Endurance Championship in a Porsche Cayman. In the series' debut season, he managed to secure podium finishes with the racing team from Ofterdingen and gain valuable experience for the next season. In 2018, the knot burst and after further podiums, Daniel Blickle was able to celebrate his first class victory. Further trophies in the V5 class followed in 2019 and the driver from the Swabian Alb, who had matured further in the meantime, then decided to move up to the GT4 class for the next season. 

"Daniel's development has already been tremendous in this short time and moving up to the next class was obviously the right step. He was always ambitious, highly concentrated and open to criticism and suggestions for improvement. In this respect, Daniel really never differed from professionals who spent the whole day at the race track. The fact that he runs a successful company in his everyday life and only did motorsport as a hobby on the side was not noticeable even then. His loyalty and commitment to the team was and is one of the pillars of W&S Motorsport, and we are very grateful to Daniel for that!" explains Daniel Schellhaas. 

"Daniel and Patrick have been super supportive all these years and built up Team W&S Motorsport from a hobby project to a highly professional racing team in record time. When I entered the VLN at the end of 2016, I helped out with a loan to buy a race trailer, but that has long since been paid back," Blickle laughs. "I think we have grown together, also from the challenges we have always faced. I wanted to progress every season, and Daniel always gave me drivers to learn from and who also challenged me with their performances. That was always an inspiration and motivation for me to continuously improve myself as well. Patrick always had the cars perfectly under control from a technical point of view, and we won many races simply through absolute reliability. In addition, I always got on very well with the entire crew, regardless of the position. The good atmosphere in the team is certainly also a factor in the success of W&S Motorsport." 

In 2020, Patrick Wagner and Daniel Schellhaas' team brought four Porsche cars to the Green Hell. After three years in the production car, Blickle climbed into the Porsche Cayman GT4 for the first time, which competed in the SP10 class against GT4 bolides from various manufacturers. But directly after the test drives at the beginning of the season, the Corona pandemic and the first lockdown forced the team to take a break. It was not until the summer that the first race could be held under special conditions and without an audience around the Nordschleife. Here Blickle only just missed his first class podium, which he was then deservedly allowed to climb after another fourth place in the second race after the third round of the season. At the 6-hour race in August, he managed second place in the SP10. The already shortened VLN season was then ended prematurely due to the second Covid-19 wave. 

"Daniel mastered the switch to a GT4 racing car superbly. The Cayman GT4 has a lot more power than the production-based Cayman he drove before. He has learned more and delivered strong results despite the shorter season," said Patrick Wagner. 

Champion of the 2021 Cayman GT4 Trophy by Manthey Racing 

In the Porsche one-make competition, the Cayman GT4 Trophy by Manthey Racing, Daniel Blickle competed in 2021 together with 2011 VLN champion Tim Scheerbarth and Max Kronberg from Berlin. With flawless races, a strong team performance and a lot of ambition, the trio crowned themselves Trophy winners at the end of the season and missed out on overall championship victory by a hair's breadth. "Nobody would have thought at the beginning of the season that we had put together such a strong package and were able to dominate Cup3 like this. The drama at the season finale, where three cars still had a chance to win the championship, was indescribable and the disappointment of not having won the overall championship, despite having led for a while, was huge at first. In the end, I thank everyone for a great result in this season and in the fiercely contested Cup. Fix the crown, look ahead and attack again next year," was Blickle's summary after the final race of 2021. 

In 2022, he proved that he had more than fixed his crown: The Porsche one-make cup was extended to include the Cup2 with the fast Porsche 911 GT3 Cup 992 in addition to the Cup3 class with the Cayman GT4 and was now held as the Porsche Endurance Trophy Nürburgring. Blickle, together with the team and his driver colleagues, also mastered this step up in the powerful racing cars from Weissach in a first-class manner and they held their own against tough competition from experienced drivers. The new Porsche 911 GT3 Cup was able to consistently finish in the top 20 from the first NLS rounds onwards and the AVIA racing-designed car with the #120 already finished the first races on the podium. 

Blickle got his first taste of international racing in the summer of 2022 when he made a guest start in the W&S Motorsport Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS Clubsport in Belgium at the legendary Formula 1 circuit in Spa-Francorchamps. Together with his colleague from the previous year, Max Kronberg, he competed in the SRO Championat de France FFSA GT race series and the duo managed third place in the Am classification in the second race. 

He described his impressions afterwards as follows: "It was my first time at Spa-Francorchamps and it was a great experience. So far, I have mainly driven on the Nordschleife and endurance races. It was nice to gain sprint race experience here. Thanks to my teammate Max and the team for giving me this chance. We were able to improve constantly over the course of the race weekend and even fought for victory in the Am class in the first race. But unfortunately a puncture put a spanner in the works. In the second race, we were again able to run at the front and clinch a podium finish with third place in class." 

2022 on mission to defend the title 

The knot in the PETN on the Nordschleife then finally burst at the 2022 6-hour race and with a finish in the top 10, the team celebrated the class victory. At the following 12 Hours of Nürburgring, the victory was repeated and the drivers climbed accordingly high up in the standings. The battle for the Cup2 championship intensified after the penultimate round, when Blickle and the team finished in second place. The decision was not made until the second round of the NLS at the beginning of November. With a brilliant victory and fifth place overall in the field, Daniel Blickle put on the crown as the best driver in PETN and once again as NLS runner-up. 

"The pressure in Cup2 was very high right from the start and we first had to get used to the new Porsche, which we obviously managed well. After David strengthened us in the cockpit, the results were right, also thanks to Tim's great performance. The basis for this was definitely the team, which prepared the car perfectly for us at all times and we had hardly any technical problems and not a single retirement. This combination was rewarded in the end. It was also perfect on a human level," Blickle sums up the past season. 

"I think that was also a key to success, when you have a good time together, it just works better. The opponents in Cup2 were a whole new level and the air was very thin. I'm incredibly happy about the result, also for the whole W&S Motorsport team. But I'm also relieved that the pressure has been released at the end of the season. Runner-up twice in a row, Cayman Trophy won, Cup2 won. I don't think it will get any better than that. So next year I will take a creative break to spend more time with my family and only get into the cockpit sporadically for some races." 

Daniel Blickle will spend a lot of time with his wife and daughter in 2023 and travel the world. He wants to gather new experiences and impressions with a motorbike tour through South America. However, he does not rule out occasional racing in the NLS and then wants to remain loyal to the team of Patrick Wagner and Daniel Schellhaas. For more than seven years, he has had much more in common with W&S Motorsport than just a business relationship.

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Contact person

Julia Spacek

PR & Team Management

Mail.: julia.spacek[at]ws-motorsport.de

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