Space-jumper Felix Baumgartner plans his next adventure
By Jamie White – Head of Communications
Following his extraordinary jump from space in 2012, extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner is tackling his next big challenge – this time on the race track.
The Austrian will obtain a racing license and become a race driver with the Audi race experience team on the Nürburgring-Nordschleife.
Klaus Demel, Head of the Audi Driving Experience, said: “It’s fantastic that we’re cooperating with Felix this year. As an extreme athlete, Felix has been thrilling millions of fans around the world with his daring actions that combine ingenuity and exceptional technical demands.
“Now we’re familiarising him with our sport and offering him a professional environment with our team. We are very excited about this new, joint challenge.”
The Audi race experience makes it possible for Audi’s customers with sporting ambitions to enter racing. But never before has the programme – which has been running since 2010 – had such a prominent driver as Felix.
As a guest entrant, Baumgartner has been gathering some racing experience in recent years during occasional runs in the one-make cups of the Volkswagen Group.
The 44-year-old is completing an extensive preparation program before competing in the 24-hour race at the Nürburgring on June 21st/22nd.
His team-mates are equally prominent: The five-time Le Mans winner Frank Biela, the three-time Le Mans winner Marco Werner as well as the GT and sports car pro Pierre Kaffer will be his colleagues in the cockpit.
Felix said: “This task is totally exciting and I’m looking forward to driving races in an Audi.
“During initial tests in the road-going Audi R8 I got to know the Nürburgring, and in the Audi R8 LMS ultra I’ve clocked a few kilometres on various tracks as well. I regard this task as one of the major projects in my life. The environment is perfect, the atmosphere is fantastic, and I feel really well taken care of by the Audi race experience. But it’s also clear that I’m basically starting from scratch because this sport is new for me.”
Mystery shopping and performance improvement company, Douglas Stafford, works with Audi UK, providing a bespoke range of mystery shopping programmes to include video mystery shopping, telephone mystery shopping and electronic mystery shopping.
Follow mystery shopping and performance improvement company, Douglas Stafford:
on Twitter @DouglasStafford
on Facebook facebook.com/douglasstafforduk
