Lars Kern is not exactly a racing household name. The 31-year-old German is competing in his first Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona at Daytona International Speedway, driving a Porsche 911 GT3R in the GTD class for Pfaff motorsports.
Though he's not super high-profile yet, Kern’s picture pops up all the time (Autoweek posted his picture on multiple occasions in just the past few months). But he is always inside the car, setting records in Porsches around The Green Hell, the Nordschleife of the Nürburgring.
It all started with an SUV: Kern took less than eight minutes to lap the circuit in a Porsche Cayenne Turbo S several years ago,
“It was my first record (at the time) over there and it wasn’t on purpose, actually," Kern said this weekend at Daytona. "The plan was to get an 8:10 (8 minutes 10 seconds) or something and the first flier was 8:03, and I was like, ‘I think we can go sub eight,’ and they said, ‘I don’t know if we’re allowed to, but we should try it!’ and it was a 7:59.7 or so.”
That paved a path for Kern to go on and lap Porsche’s quickest GT cars and set records (at the time) in the GT2RS, 6 minutes 47.3 seconds, And more recently in a Manthey-Racing modified GT2RS, a crazy-fast 6 minute 40.3 second time.
“We added a lot of downforce,” Kern said, “Our (Porsche) engineers already knew what we could do, but it if comes to a production car development, it’s so difficult because you have to talk to the styling guys, the packaging guys, the cost guys, to everybody, and in this case, it was just about the performance.”
In addition to lapping street cars around the Nürburgring, Kern also runs endurance races GT3 cars there.
What is similar to him between Daytona and the Nordschleife?
“In endurance racing, if you compare 24 hours racing on the Nürburgring and Daytona, it’s quite similar because you have to have a car which is handling easy on the limit," Kern says. "Because if you have to fight, on the Nordschleife it’s even worse than Daytona, but it’s the same as the street cars you have to feel comfortable in the car so that’s basically the similarity between everything because if you’re feeling comfortable, you’re fast.”
And what about the tracks themselves? Daytona is also very high speed -- is it similar to driving in Germany?
“No because Nordschleife is very fast and flowing,” Kern says.
Despite this being his first Daytona 24-hour race, Kern is a veteran endurance racer. But he’s used to being the fast one.
“The main difference for me is that at the Nürburgring 24 hours, the GT3 cars are the fastest class -- meaning I’m flashing (to move out of the way) all the slower cars,” Kern says. "And here, it is the slowest class. So I am going to get flashed a lot.”
That may be, but it won’t be long before we see him set more records for Porsche, and that brings him satisfaction, but perhaps not in the way you’d expect.
"My wish is always to make the cars as good as possible," Kern says "When I see clients smiling when they drive their Porsche, this is my satisfaction.”
At the Rolex 24, look for Kern in the No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R car.
