The yellow Manthey-EMA Porsche “Grello” is an absolute crowd favourite: Team boss Nicolas Raeder tells how the car got its name
On the Nürburgring-Nordschleife, the bright yellow Porsche 911 GT3 R nicknamed “Grello” has been a crowd favourite for years. And following the return of the racing team from Meuspath to the DTM, the number 91, piloted by Thomas Preining, has also won the hearts of fans there – not least because of the sporting successes of the Austrian, who became the sovereign mid-season champion of the 2023 season.
But how did “Grello” actually get his distinctive name? To answer this question, team manager Nicolas Raeder has to go back a good ten years. To be more precise, to 2013, when Nicolas and his brother Martin Raeder merged their own racing team with the company founded by Olaf Manthey.
“We took over from Olaf, who said it can’t go on like this, come up with something new,” Raeder recalls in an interview with ‘ran.de’. “At some point we thought about what we would do as a successor to Olaf Manthey’s yellow and green car,” Raeder continued.
Row after row of successes with the “fat one “
The yellow-green car from Manthey Racing also has a nickname: The “Fat One”. Between 2006 and 2011, the team celebrated five victories in the 24-hour race at the Nürburgring with various versions of the Porsche 911 in this livery, four of them in a row from 2006 onwards.
But in 2013, the search for a successor for the fat car was not yet acute. Because due to its commitment as Porsche works team in the GTE Pro class of the World Endurance Championship (WEC), Manthey took a few years off on the Nürburgring-Nordschleife and concentrated on entries for customers.
2016 the team returned to the Nordschleife with factory support. The two 911s used in the 24-hour race showed in rudiments of the typical yellow and green colours again, but predominantly wore a black, white and grey pattern that was not very attractive to many observers.
2017 saw the birth of “Grello “
That’s why Manthey went back to the classic livery. “The idea was to already do something reminiscent of it, but maybe a bit more gaudy and modern,” says Raeder. “Then we had various ideas, and then the car stood there looking so gaudy and garish, and ‘Grello’ came out of that.”
But how did the team come up with the name “Grello”? “I once had a mountain bike, the colour was called ‘Grello’. That was 30 years ago, maybe even 35 by now,” says Raeder. And the name was already found.
2017 was the first time the car was used under this name. “We told people that, and the fans took it over,” says Raeder. “It’s amazing what it’s become. “
The first success in the 24-hour race at the Nürburgring in the current era of Manthey Racing, however, was not celebrated by “Grello”, but by his predominantly green brother “Greeno”, with which the team won the race in 2018. This car and its design were revived in the DTM in 2023 with Dennis Olsen’s starting number 90.
2021 also saw the great hour of “Grello” on the Nordschleife – with the overall victory in the 24-hour race, which lasted only nine and a half hours net due to a long interruption.