Markus Winkelhock

Winkelhock was to move with Münnich Motorsport to the World Touring Car Championship for 2013, however he left the team before the start of the season in order to focus on his GT racing commitments, and was replaced by defending champion Robert Huff.

Since 2013, he has more or less settled in the Blancpain Endurance Series and also won the 2017 Nurburgring 24 hours sportscar race.

In 2011, he competed in the FIA GT1 World Championship for the All-Inkl.com Münnich Motorsport team alongside team boss Marc Basseng driving a Lamborghini. They won the championship the following year, the team having switched to the Mercedes SLS due to a change in the regulations.

Due to Christijan Albers's departure from the Spyker F1 Team, Winkelhock was called in for the 10th race of the season, the European Grand Prix. Winkelhock started last on the 22-car grid alongside team mate Adrian Sutil. But on the formation lap with the rest of the field on dry-weather tyres, the team made a last-second decision to call Winkelhock into the pits to switch to the full wet tyres. When pouring rain forced almost all the others to pit at the end of the first lap, Winkelhock was able to move into the lead, passing some cars as they pitted, and even passing Kimi Räikkönen on the track as the Finn tip-toed around to the pits, eventually building a lead of 19 seconds by the end of the second lap. By lap 4 he had a lead of 33 seconds over Ferrari's Felipe Massa in 2nd place.

Winkelhock returned to the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters after he lost his Spyker seat, and has remained in the series, driving for Team Rosberg, for 2008 (12th), 2009 (10th) and 2010 (12th).

He was re-signed for 2007 by the team, which by then had been renamed as Spyker F1. He also made a brief return to the DTM in 2007, starting three races.

Following Christijan Albers's departure from Spyker after the 2007 British Grand Prix, Winkelhock was confirmed as his replacement for the European Grand Prix on 18 July. The deal was only for one race with Sakon Yamamoto set to race for Spyker for the rest of the season.

Despite leading his debut race, the Spyker team eventually opted against giving Winkelhock a drive for the remainder of the 2007 season for sponsorship reasons, and instead decided to give the drive to former Super Aguri driver Sakon Yamamoto.

On 24 January 2006, Marcus Winkelhock was confirmed a test and reserve driver in the Midland F1 team, (formerly Jordan Grand Prix) for the 2006 Formula One season. He participated in Friday test sessions for the team at the Bahrain, Australian, German and Hungarian Grands Prix.

Winkelhock switched back to single-seater racing in 2005, joining the World Series by Renault with Draco. He won three times but there were also some less than shining moments – notably when he crashed at Monaco in qualifying and on the first lap of the race.

He switched to touring car racing in 2004, with a season in the DTM in an AMG-Mercedes CLK. But he failed to score a point all year with the Persson team.

In 2001, Winkelhock joined the German Formula 3 Championship, where he remained until the championship became the F3 Euroseries in 2003. His record was fifth overall in 2001 (three wins), seventh in 2002 (one win) and fourth in 2003 (two wins).

Born in Stuttgart, Winkelhock won races in a string of junior formulae including Formula König, German Formula Renault and the Formula Renault Eurocup from 1998–2000.

Markus Winkelhock (born 13 June 1980) is a German professional racing driver, who has taken part in one Formula One Grand Prix, which he briefly led. He is the son of Manfred Winkelhock and nephew of Joachim Winkelhock, both of whom were Formula One drivers in the 1980s. Having switched to sports and touring car racing, he has also won the FIA GT1 World Championship in 2012 with team-mate Marc Basseng.