DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Gunnar Jeannette is the first to admit it. He wasn’t a clairvoyant or an amazing psychic when he was searching for the right driver to anchor the No. 77 Porsche 911 GT3 R as AO Racing was about to embark on its Grand Touring Daytona Pro program in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
But now, nearly two years later, the team principal looks like a genius as Laurin Heinrich – a relatively unknown talent before joining AO Racing in 2024 – chases his second straight GTD PRO drivers’ crown.
With three races remaining this season, Heinrich, co-driver Klaus Bachler and the popular Rexy/Roxy Porsche sit third in the standings, 97 points from the lead.
As a WeatherTech Championship rookie last year, Heinrich became the youngest driver in series history to win a pro class title, at 23.
Working alongside a mixture of co-drivers, he won three races and captured the championship by just four points in the team’s debut GTD PRO season.
Partnered for the full 2025 season with Bachler, they’ve won twice (Sebring, along with third driver Alessio Picariello, and WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca) and have three additional top-five results to remain in the points hunt for both the driver and team titles.
But how did Heinrich end up at AO Racing in the first place? Call it a spot-on hunch for Jeannette, the successful driver turned team exec.
Heinrich had been climbing the Porsche junior ranks in Europe, winning the 2022 Carrera Cup Germany championship with six wins in the single-make series. He made a one-off trip to the U.S. at the end of that season to compete in the final round of Carrera Cup North America at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
Heinrich opened the eyes of Jeannette and others, winning the pole for both races and racing to victory in the second. Little more than a year later, at Jeannette’s urging, Heinrich was named to the AO Racing entry in 2024.
“I would be lying if I said I knew Laurin had this much potential when we specifically told Porsche that we wanted him in our car,” Jeannette said. “That being said, I watched Laurin when he came to the Carrera Cup round at Road Atlanta in 2022, and that made an impression. The field there was pretty good already, for American standards.
“When we knew we were shifting the program to GTD PRO (for 2024) and were looking for a driver that Porsche would place with us, we had a list. Laurin wasn’t even on that list because at the time he hadn’t done enough yet. In a conversation with our race engineer, I said, ‘I have a guy I wanted to bring up and talk about. I think he might be the best one out of all of these.’ I said his name, and our race engineer said, ‘I was thinking exactly the same thing.’”
For Heinrich, racing began as a fun way to spend time with his dad, competing at local club events. They purchased a Formula 4 car and ran their own team in the German series in 2017, which fanned the flames of passion for the then-16-year-old Laurin to push onward.
Two years later, he joined the Porsche Super Sports Cup Germany series and won six times in 10 outings to secure the championship. That put him on the manufacturer’s radar, though the 2020 pandemic delayed his progress.
Racing in both Carrera Cup Germany and Porsche Supercup, Heinrich’s biggest break before AO Racing came in late 2021 when he won the Porsche Junior drivers shootout.
The support from Porsche helped him earn the 2022 Carrera Cup Germany crown and the chance to drive in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters series in 2023, gaining valuable seat time if not trophies.
“Throughout Laurin’s Junior career with Carrera Cup and the DTM stuff, he didn’t have enough race wins or any of that kind of stuff,” Jeannette says. “The thing that impressed me is he always moved forward, and he did it in manners that were not clumsy. He didn’t put people off the racetrack and didn’t have lots of contact. If you can move forward consistently in a manner like that, it really says a lot about the potential they have.”
With that in mind, Jeannette landed Heinrich to drive for AO Racing in 2024. Needless to say, it’s worked out.
“Obviously, I was full of expectations doing my first season in IMSA and in general in North America,” Heinrich recalls. “But for sure, you can’t go into IMSA and expect you’ll win it the first time, and fight for it again. It’s a tough championship and everything needs to work perfectly.
“But that’s exactly why I wanted to come to IMSA,” he added. “You’re fighting the best drivers in GT; the best teams and many manufacturers engaged on some of the best tracks in the world. As a driver, IMSA is very appealing. In my situation as a young driver, (I) did one year GT3 racing in Europe and here it’s a perfect platform to show my skills and what I’m capable of.”
Heinrich has definitely shown how capable he is in the race car, but Jeannette says his young steed is even better outside of the Porsche.
“What really impresses me with Laurin, even more so than his talent, is just the type of person he is,” Jeannette relates. “He grew up in a great family, he’s got a great head on his shoulders, and he’s just a genuinely good human being. You can really get behind somebody like that and make sure we’re giving him everything he can possibly have to showcase what he can do. Moving out of driving into the role that I’m in now, when he joined us in 2024, I’ve never been so excited to watch somebody drive a race car than I am with Laurin. That kind of says it all.”
The question becomes, though, with such meteoric talent, how long will Heinrich be at AO Racing’s disposal? He turns 24 next month, is closely monitored by Porsche’s decision makers, and admits the desire to someday race in the manufacturer’s Grand Touring Prototype program. Someday.
“For sure I dream of it and it’s my goal to be in one of those cars racing for the Porsche factory team,” Heinrich said. “But currently I’m in the middle of my GTD PRO season, fighting for a second straight championship, and I don’t want to lose the focus. For sure, it’s a long-term goal. Right now, all my focus is about securing back-to-back championships.”
