Lechner – a racing success machine.

How does Team Lechner Racing feel about being Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup’s series champion during the 2010s? Well, let’s just say they do not embrace a ‘resting on one’s laurels’ attitude, let alone accept it. Walter Lechner Sr. has invested too much in adopting and enforcing his philosophy to his team: Racing ahead since 1975. The only goal for Team Lechner Racing is to continue their winning streak into a new decade.

So, what’s the secret behind Team Lechner Racing’s success? For Walter Lechner Sr., that’s not a straightforward one-sentence answer. We recently had an entertaining conversation with him, during which he took us on a fantastical journey – from the pitlanes of the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup, to his own waiter training at Vienna’s Hotel Sacher, to a Salzburg Disco in the 1970s. Then on a cruise ship destined for America, through restaurants of Paris and London. We talked tire deals with Bernie Ecclestone in Austria and then back again to 2020 and the company’s headquarters in Faistenau. Hats off to a life lived to the fullest!

Lechner is a man who thinks and moves quickly. You could say it’s an occupational hazard. He speaks of motorsports with passion and commitment, and like his management style, with an attention to detail. Everything from race planning, team organization, the role of sponsors in his view, plays a critical role. Lechner’s assumption is rather simple: success and support go hand-in-hand. But it wasn’t until Lechner was in his late 20s that he discovered racing, participating during his holidays.

As mentioned earlier, in 1973 Walter Lechner ran a very successful disco in Salzburg, Austria. And while he enjoyed the perks of the scene, there simply was no time for vacation and the lifestyle afforded him “no life of his own.“ Then one fateful night, Lechner was having a chat with two of the club’s guests and one mentioned that he could take a race driving class during a long weekend. Bull’s Eye! This was exactly what Lechner was looking for. His first racing school visit changed his life forever.

And so it was to be, Walter Lechner said goodbye to night club life and hello to race car driving. Keep in mind, Lechner valued self-sufficiency and knew that in order to race, he would need financial stability. He knew that successful teams were fast teams, and the reason they were fast was because they did not need to make compromises due to a lack of funding. Regardless of whether Lechner was behind the wheel or acting exclusively as the team manager, the leap from restaurants to racing would only be possible if he was able to combine his passions with financially responsible behaviour. Being consequent to this philosophy has been a successful investment.

Luck has certainly played a part in Lechner Racing’s success. A combination between meeting the right people, and making the right deals has trickled down to having unparalleled success on the race track. Take for example Franzi Meier who has evolved from being a young mechanic and ‘gear head’ into a highly skilled engineer providing track data analysis. Or when in 1980 Lechner took over the same driving school where he drove his first laps in 1973, proving his entrepreneurial luck.

Having an instinct for pure driving talent can be attributed to the learnings that come directly from the driving school, accelerating the readiness of both cars and drivers for the track. Lechner Racing introduces top drivers to the cockpit early on, giving the team an extensive range of both quality and consistency, a pairing that has made them almost exclusively unbeatable in the past decade. Even if some years were scarce, they have still taken home seven Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup victories.

Lechner Racing has won three of their last seven titles within the past decade with Michael Ammermüller at the wheel. As a BWT Lechner Racing Team driver, Ammermüller is a perfect fit to Walter’s vision. He embodies a success-oriented mindset when he races. This translates not only into extremely fast lap times, but also into his willingness and ability to take risks that lead to the ultimate goal – overall victory.

Lechner manages a racing team that is so well organised, it is like a (huge) telemetry recorder. It requires absolute precision with all things technical, communicative and organisational while remaining modular in design. Lechner racing currently has three team entries featuring and six drivers in the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup: BWT Lechner Racing, Lechner Racing Middle East and Momo Megatron Lechner Racing, all of which have been extremely successful and proving their formula to be correct.

Lechner Racing is led by Team Manager Walter Lechner Sr., and originates from Faistenau, near Salzburg, Austria.

The color pink, which has been showcased on Lechner’s flagship, BWT Lechner Racing the past years, signals one thing: success. But it also gives a nod to another important facet of the Lechner team – the pure joy of racing. As crucial as being disciplined and calculating, so is having fun. Afterall, it is this indescribable joy of racing that caused a young man from Vienna 40 years ago to uproot his life and become a race car driver. There was, and continues to be, a passion that burns for motorsports. Exactly what you’d expect from a habitual series winner.