Two significant players in Porsche customer racing are among the first to announce their plans for the inaugural season of the Porsche Carrera Cup North America. One, Molitor Racing Systems (MRS), is a longtime entrant in international Porsche one-make racing but new to the North American market. The second, 311RS Motorsport, is a United States-based relative newcomer to the sport which already has multiple wins with the brand. The two teams join Team Hardpoint EBM – who announced the first Porsche Carrera Cup North America entry on October 16, 2020, just weeks following the formation of the series – to make a formal announcement of participation.
In a February 15 release, Molitor announced the purchase of two new Porsche 911 GT3 Cup race cars to compete in the debut season of the top one-make racing category on the continent: Porsche Carrera Cup North America. The driver lineup for the program is yet to be finalized.
Founded in 1993 and with 18 years of competition experience in Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup and Carrera Cup, MRS GT-Racing is based in Lonsee-Luizhausen, Germany. Managed by founder and team principal KarstenMolitor, MRS GT-Racing has won multiple Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup races as well as the Porsche Carrera Cup since 2003. In addition to Porsche Carrera Cup North America, the team is also exploring participation in the Porsche Sprint Challenge North America as well as other Porsche-related North American efforts.
A few days after the MRS declaration, the second team announcement of the week came from 311RS Motorsport. The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based operation will take the step from a single-car entry in the SRO GT America GT2 championship into a two-car Porsche Carrera Cup North America program led by 2009 GRAND-AM Rolex GT Sports Car Champion Leh Keen (Dublin, Georgia) and 2020 SRO GT America GT2 champ Ryan Gates (Minneapolis, Minnesota). Keen is a popular veteran of the sport making his return to the competitive cockpit of a Porsche in 2021 while Gates earned an impressive sweep of victories in the SRO GT2 category last year. Keen has become closely tied to the Porsche brand over the years. Working with Porsche Cars North America, he entered the Guinness Worlds Records by driving a Porsche Taycan Turbo S to the fastest top-speed (102.65 mph) ever recorded indoors. The Georgian has 13 IMSA series victories including GRAND-AM and GTC class championship driving Porsche privateer race cars.
Teams will have their first on-track taste of the new Porsche 911 GT3 Cup race car on March 8 – 9 at Sebring International Raceway for an open test managed by Porsche Motorsport North America (PMNA). The first season launches on March 18 – 19 at Sebring.
Karsten Molitor, Team Principal, Molitor Racing Systems.
“We´re working hard on everything. We decided to take the harder way as we want to install MRS here in the US and we are not doing any kind of collaboration. We need to take care of all the details by ourselves. That includes truck and trailer transport for the race cars, the workshop, finding local employees, building up the MRS administration and most importantly, finding the right drivers. It was an ambitious plan from the very beginning. To establish the original MRS team here in the U.S., we’re ready to go the extra mile, ready to work a lot for it. We´re coming to stay and we´re coming to have the most possible success. I’m personally looking very much forward to our very first competition here, we are putting in the effort to make this debut as successful as possible. I hope we´ll see lots of good racing this year.”
Source. Porsche
PlanetPorsche 
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