Born : January 2 1955
Biography Hartmut Kristen
Hartmut Kristen was born in Berlin He joined the company in 1983 at the marketing department. In 1991 Hartmut Kristen moved to the company today known as Porsche Cars North America and promoted to Vice President of Marketing for Porsche Cars North America. Immediately Hartmut Krisen focused on getting the Porsche RS Spyder project underway. In 1994 Hartmut Kristen was named Vice President of Sales and Marketing Special and Race Vehicles at Porsche’s R&D Center at Weissach. The first project that Hartmut Kristen was involved in was the Porsche 993 GT2, the model being based on the 993 Turbo to be launched in March 1995. Board approval came in August and the car was first shown at the 1994 Essen Motorshow.
Throughout the Porsche 993 lifecycle the customer racing department did not only sell the racecars to the customer but also the road cars. The Porsche 996 GT3 road car was the first special GT model to be sold through the Porsche dealer network like any other Porsche road car. Only the Porsche GT1 was the responsibility of the customer racing department. Hartmut Kristen remembers it wasn’t an easy job to sell 25 of the street legal Porsche 911 GT1’s at a price of 1.25 million DM at the time. Regulations stipulated that 25 cars had to be produced to be race legal, nothing was mentioned about selling them. However, Porsche needed the money of these cars to continue the race program. 1996 is another year with a highlight for Hartmut Kristen : under his management, PMNA Porsche Motorsports North America acquired ANDIAL.
In 2004 Hartmut Kristen is promoted to Vice President of Porsche Motorsport North America . In this role he not only made his mark in top motorsport, for instance with the Porsche RS Spyder sports prototype in the American Le Mans Series and with the innovative 911 GT3 R Hybrid. Another winning model was the 911 GT3 RSR, with which customer squads scored many class victories most notably at the Le Mans 24 Hours.
In addition to expanding Porsche’s customer racing activities worldwide, which he regarded as the “backbone of Porsche motorsport“, the promotion of talented young race drivers was also something very close to his heart. Under his direction, arguably the most comprehensive youth development programme in motor racing emerged. In 2013, Hartmut Kristen led the new Porsche 911 RSR works-campaign to a double class victory at Le Mans. For him and his team, the 2014 season began with the successfully modified 911 RSR clinching wins in the USA at the long distance classics of Daytona and Sebring.
October 1st 2014, Dr Frank-Steffen Walliser (44) takes over as the new Vice President of Motorsport at Porsche AG.
