Group C: The Rise and Fall of the Golden Age of Endurance Racing: Konrad and Kremer
By Marcel Hundscheid / Speed-O-Graphica
We continue our Group C retrospective with a look at racing teams Konrad and Kremer and their corresponding cars, the Konrad KM-011 and Kremer CK5 and CK6.
Konrad KM-011
The Konrad KM-011 was the result of a partnership between Konrad Motorsport and Italian manufacturer Lamborghini. Franz Konrad was a former racing driver who founded Konrad Motorsport back in 1976. Besides his active racing career he entered the World Sportscar Championship with a Porsche 962 back in 1990 and 1991.
As his Porsche 962 wasn’t allowed to run under the rules for the 1992 season, his choice was to use a customer chassis or to build his own car that was compliant with the new 3.5 liter formula. As both the World Sportscar Championship and Formula 1 applied to the same engine rules Konrad decided to use an available engine from Lamborghini. The Italian manufacturer was owned by Chrysler in that particular period. Both Ligier and Modena used a Lamborghini V12-engine in their Formula 1 campaign.
KM-011 was the result of Geoff Kingston’s design, making its debut during the 5th round of the 1991 World Sportscar Championship at the Nürburgring. The car was driven by Franz Konrad himself as well as Stefan Johansson. The pair failed to qualify the car, so Konrad entered his Porsche 962.
Konrad managed to qualify his KM-011 at the next round in Magny-Cours, but due to technical problems his race lasted only 18 laps. After a single appearance at a round of the Interserie championship at the Nürburgring, the car would never enter a future race.
Kremer CK5 and CK6
Before Porsche made their Porsche 956 available for customer teams, privateer teams would create their own version of the Porsche 936 Spyder, although fitted with a roof. The Kremer brothers from Cologne in Germany, famous for their versions of the legendary Porsche 935, made up one such team.
Kremer’s CK6 was born just a few years after the earlier CK5 and was based on the Porsche 962C. Kremer developed a new chassis using an aluminium honeycomb construction based on drawings provided by Porsche. Although the first car appeared in 1986, Kremer started to label their development as CK6 from 1988. CK6-cars were used until 1993.
