DTM championship-winning team SSR Performance loses team boss Mario Schuhbauer: What’s behind it and why there’s hardly anyone left from the successful team
The DTM championship team SSR Performance, which won the title last year with Lamborghini and Mirko Bortolotti and then withdrew from the traditional series, is losing team boss Mario Schuhbauer. The team announced this in a press release. The 29-year-old, who was born in the Sauerland region and had been working for the Munich-Freimann-based racing team since April 2021, wants to pursue new opportunities in the future.
“I have received several inquiries, and even officials from Formula 1 have contacted me,” Schuhbauer is quoted as saying. “Nothing has been decided yet, but I am looking forward to a new big challenge.”
We do not know which Formula 1 teams are involved. However, his departure should come as no surprise, as SSR Performance has still not announced a new racing program for 2025 after withdrawing from the DTM, even though the season is already in full swing.
SSR 2025 without racing program, championship team breaks up
The withdrawal from the DTM after crowning the three-year program with the title win also had to do with the high costs, which is why the company wanted to focus more on customer racing. Rumors about participation in the GT World Challenge Europe or the GT Open series did not materialize.
And a race with the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo and an electronic steering system from Paravan has not yet been confirmed. To our knowledge, the team’s last race took place at the end of January in the GT Winter Series in Portimao.
With Schuhbauer’s departure, the only remaining member of the DTM championship-winning team besides the truck drivers is Marcel Schmidt, who joined from BMW Team Schubert at the end of 2023 and served as Nicki Thiim’s technical director and race engineer in 2024. He is currently working in the series sector, where SSR Performance, similar to Manthey, develops performance kits for sports cars. The Grasser team in particular has taken advantage of the SSR downsizing and brought key employees on board.
Team owner: “Focus currently on vehicle development”
“With Mario, we are losing an outstanding leader. He is a team player with the highest level of commitment who has achieved great things on his own initiative,” said team boss Stefan Schlund, praising his long-standing team manager.
“Our focus at SSR Performance is currently on vehicle development, and Mario, who is still young, wants to return to the wide world of motorsport, which is completely understandable. We cannot offer him that at the moment, but we will always maintain a positive relationship,” said Schlund.
Schuhbauer, who initially joined SSR Performance as sales manager and succeeded former Porsche board member Wolfgang Hatz as team boss in October 2021, led the team into the DTM in 2022, when it secured its first pole position and victory at Spa-Francorchamps with the Porsche 911 GT3 R, driven by Dennis Olsen and supported by Manthey.
Schuhbauer: “We were a great, close-knit team.”
He succeeded in forming a powerful team, especially after the brand switch to Lamborghini in 2023: In 2023, they fought with Bortolotti for the title until the very end and finished as runners-up, before finally clinching the DTM crown in 2024 in a duel with Abt Audi driver Kelvin van der Linde – the first Lamborghini team ever to do so.
“A big goal for me was to win the DTM championship,” says Schuhbauer. ”I spent four years building up the team. The employees, the logistics, the site management—Stefan Schlund placed a lot of trust in me. Fortunately, I was able to repay that trust with success.”
Even today, he still gets “goosebumps” when he thinks back to winning the title at Hockenheim. “We were a great, close-knit team, where every single person deserved the trophy.” Now he is “very excited to see which race tracks my future will take me to. My time at SSR Performance has shaped me, and I will be forever grateful to Stefan Schlund.”
