JOINING PORSCHE RANKS

Santa Barbara, CA — Park Place Motorsports will return for a fourth season as a Porsche team in IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with a brand-new #73 Porsche 911 GT3R for the GT Daytona class. Patrick Lindsey will return for the full season along with recently announced Porsche factory driver Jorg Bergmeister while, as predicted by RACER earlier this month, up and comer Matt McMurry will join the team for the Patron North American Endurance Championship rounds.

“Our team’s relatively short history in endurance racing has been marked with ultra competitive speed and the perception of being the little team that could,” said Lindsey. “After this past season in which we captured two wins, two poles and an additional podium finish, I feel we have shed the image of the little team that could for that of a consistent front-runner; much more fitting of our namesake, Park Place. 2016 will be a challenging year with such competitive teams and driver lineups, but we are up to the challenge.”

At the young age of 18, McMurry has already started 103 races and has numerous accolades to his budding racing career, the most notable being his achievement of being the youngest driver to start and finish the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Team engineer John Horton put McMurry to the test when he asked the young driver to jump into a car he was unfamiliar with and drive around a track he had never seen before in a test for the team in November. “Matt was very quick initially – you can tell there is a lot of raw talent there,” said Horton. “Then he diligently progressed to an extremely fast lap time which got our attention!”

“Being brought into the Park Place Motorsports and Porsche family, alongside its fast and experienced driver lineup, is a huge honor and that type of opportunity I’ve been working toward,” said McMurry. I love listening, learning and then applying all the knowledge in competition, and I can’t wait to get started in the all-new 911 GT3R.”

Park Place Motorsports is an extension of Dallas-based Park Place Dealerships, which represents luxury brands Porsche, McLaren, Bentley, Maserati, Rolls-Royce, Bugatti, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Lexus, Infiniti, Lotus, Volvo and Smart. “Porsche has a great heritage in the racing world and our clients are most certainly racing enthusiasts,” said Patrick Huston, general manager of Park Place Porsche in Dallas.

“Through Park Place Motorsports, we can demonstrate the capabilities of the vehicles on and off the track. We are excited to continue this partnership with Patrick Lindsey and the entire team.” Ken Schnitzer founded Park Place Dealerships in 1987 with a single Mercedes-Benz dealership on Oak Lawn in Dallas. Today, Park Place operates 18 full-service dealerships representing the top luxury brands.