Christian Zugel

Christian Zugel (born June 6, 1960 in Stuttgart ) is a German racing driver and entrepreneur. Zugel took part in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) in 2012 . He is the CIO and founder of the wealth management company Zais Group .

Career

Zugel was interested in motorsport from a young age , but his family could not give him the financial support he needed for racing. Instead, Zugel worked in the financial services industry . First he works for JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Frankfurt am Main and London , in 1991 he moved to Singapore . In Asia, Zugel made his first experiences in amateur racing. After moving to the United States for work in 1995 , he went freelance in 1997 and founded the Zais Group , an asset management company .

In 2004 Zugel resumed his motorsport career in the United States, initially taking part in amateur races in a Porsche . In 2006, Zugel took part in a major motorsport race for the first time in the Daytona 24-hour race . Together with John Burke , Ryan Eversley and Gunnar Jeannette he reached the 38th place out of 70 starters. In the next period, Jeannette acted as a driving instructor for Zugel, who took part in historical car races.

In 2010 Zugel decided to compete in professional motorsport. Together with Jeannette and Elton Julian , Zugel competed in the LMPC class of the American Le Mans Series (ALMS) for the Green Earth Team Gunnar . During the season Zugel switched to Genoa Racing , as Jeanette and Julian had better chances of winning the LMPC standings without him. Zugel finished sixth in the LMPC ranking with two podium finishes. He also competed in three races of the Cooper Tires Prototype Lites Championship . 2011 Zugel stayed with Genoa Racing in the ALMS and finished the season in eleventh place in the LMPC classification. He also took part in the Le Mans Series in Europe . There he started three races for Genoa Racing with Julian and Jens Petersen in the FLM class, the equivalent of the LMPC class. They were twice on the podium as second and came third in the FLM ranking.

In the two years Zugel had developed an enthusiasm for Le Mans prototypes in LMPC vehicles and, together with Julian, tried to get a cockpit in the newly founded FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). After Zugel was in contact with eight racing teams, he decided on an LMP2 cockpit at Greaves Motorsport in a Zytek Z11SN - Nissan . Zugel and Julian got Ricardo González as teammates. In the first run of the 2012 season , the trio reached seventh place. In the 2012 24-hour race at Le Mans , the three racing drivers achieved twelfth place overall. During the season Ricardo González was once through his brother Roberto González jr. so that Zugel finished 26th in the drivers' world championship at the end of the season together with Julian.

Personal

Zugel is married and has two children. He lives in Holmdel , New Jersey , United States.

statistics

Career stations

• 2010: ALMS , LMPC (6th place)
• 2010: Cooper Tires Prototype Lites Championship, L1 (23rd place)
• 2011: ALMS, LMPC (11th place)
• 2011: Le Mans Series , FLM (3rd place)
• 2012 : FIA World Endurance Championship (26th place)

Le Mans results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
2012	Greaves Motorsport	Zytek Z11SN	Ricardo González	Elton Julian	Rank 12

Sebring results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
2010	Green Earth Team Gunnar	Oreca FLM09	Gunnar Jeannette	Elton Julian	Disqualified
2011	Genoa Racing	Oreca FLM09	Eric Lux	Elton Julian	Rank 27
2012	Greaves Motorsport	Zytek Z11SN	Ricardo González	Elton Julian	Rank 9
2013	Greaves Motorsport	Zytek Z11SN	Eric Lux	Tom Kimber-Smith	Rank 8

Web links

• Christian Zugel's career statistics at driverdb.com (English)
• Christian Zugel's career statistics at speedsport-magazine.de (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "ZAIS GROUP, LLC". (No longer available online.) Zaisgroup.com, archived from the original on December 17, 2013 ; accessed on November 9, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Who On Earth Is .... Christian Zugel. (No longer available online.) Dailysportscar.com, formerly in the original ; accessed on November 9, 2012 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
3. ↑ Eric Uhlfelder: "Best 100 Hedge Funds". barrons.com, May 19, 2012, accessed November 9, 2012 . 
4. ↑ Sebastian Fränzschky: "Greaves announces driver". Motorsport-Total.com, January 6, 2012, accessed November 9, 2012 . 
5. ^ "Christian Zugel". Motorsport-Total.com, accessed November 9, 2012 .