Stefan Kuntz

Kuntz in his RTS overalls

Stefan Kuntz (b. 28th January 1988 in Bonn, Germany) is a German racing driver, currently managed by Niko Nurminen.

Early career

After moving to the UK in his early teens he started driving in the Ginetta Juniors, followed by the G50s. A couple of good seasons in BTCC led to a customer SEAT drive, but after so-so results he switched to single seaters series AutoGP, finishing an impressive 2nd in the championship with 3 race wins. He stepped up to Formula Renault 2.0 and had also been hired by Virgin Inter Corse for their F3RWRS programme simultaneously. However, VIC collapsed soon after and his F3RWRS debut came to nothing.

RoLFS

He was then hired by VIC's buyer Scuderia Alitalia to race in the resurrected Rejects of LFS season, on loan at Grands Travaux Inutiles. Despite finishing 20th and last in his RoLFS debut, he took full advantage of the reversed grid system in the sprint race and went on to win it. However, his relationship with GTI turned sour after he was banned for one GP after numerous incidents at the South City sprint race, and he was permanently replaced by Nobushige Fukuda. One win and 12th in the championship was not enough, and he was released by the Scuderia Alitalia young driver programme, after only managing 11th in FR2.0 the same year.

Kuntz would briefly return to RoLFS by being one of the three drivers for Winton Racing's entry in the 2015 Aston 24 Hours endurance event. However, he never actually drove the car as Nathan Nurmester, who drove the car before him, proceeded to cause multiple accidents with an already-damaged car. Winton Racing was disqualified as a result.

F3RWRS

After being sacked by SAGS, it looked like his career was well and truly over, before Niko Nurminen offered him a lifeline by entering him as a guest driver in the 2015 F3RWRS Monaco SuperPrix. However, his race ended when a botched pitstop led to him losing one of the wheels during the race. He was then loaned to Fusion Motorsports to replace underperforming Leandro Moreira from the German round onwards. However, he didn't exactly impress in his first outing as he clashed with team mate Marko Jantscher and finished 29th after starting from 19th position. In the second German race he did a lot better, eventually finishing 8th, his first points finish in the series. At Spa he was again involved in a collision and eventually managed a mere 26th, and in the first Italian race he again clashed with his team mate before finishing 17th. Another poor performance at the second race, where he finished 23rd and nearly lost a position to a Dofasco car, led him to being sacked from Fusion Motorports with immediate effect.

GT-Rejects World Championship

2016

The numerous incidents during his Fusion Motorsports stint in the F3RWRS had ruined his single-seater reputation, so Kuntz decided to instead take the offer to drive for Racing Team Solvalou in the newly-founded GT-Rejects World Championship, sharing a Lamborghini Murciélago with Darren Cardel.

The move would turn out to be good, as the entry would eventually finish 5th at the opening round in Malaysia. However at the very next race in Australia they were off the pace and finished 11th, outside of the points, but were promoted to 10th after Claude Vergne and Fernando Valdes were given a penalty for dangerous driving. At the Italian round they were running well before colliding with Frank Zimmer and Frank van Nifterick, eventually finishing a distant 24th. In both France and Canada they finished 20th, with the latter race being littered by a number of collisions. From the US round onwards Kuntz was swapped to the starting driver position, which immediatedly paid off; they scored the fastest lap and competed for the win, but lost too much time behind lapped cars and eventually finished 2nd. The same result was repeated in Germany, although this time the gap to the winners was larger. At the next race in Great Britain they scored their first pole position but were unable to capitalise on it in the race, finishing 9th. The next race in Belgium was largely similar with only a slight improvement to 7th. After two more points scoring results in Argentina and Brazil, the lineup scored their first win of the season in China. At Fuji Speedway they finished 3rd and scored the fastest lap, while at the season-ending Super GP they finished outside of points in 11th.

2017

Kuntz continued with the same team for the 2017 season, being now permanently promoted to lead driver status and partnered by Aurelien Moll.

Results

Rejects of LFS

Year	Team	Chassis	Engine	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	DC	Pts
2014	Grands Travaux Inutiles	Scaven S11B	Lancia-Judd 3.0 V8	BLA FEA 20	BLA SPR 1	SOU FEA 12	SOU SPR Ret	FER FEA EX	FER SPR EX	KYO FEA	KYO SPR	WES FEA	WES SPR	AST FEA	AST SPR	12th	5

F3RWRS

Year	Team	Chassis	Engine	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	DC	Pts
2015	Nurminen Racing Engineering	Dallara F3R15	Zytek ZT288	AUS1	AUS2	USA1	USA2	TUR1	TUR2	MON Ret	GBR1	GBR2									33rd	1
	Fusion Motorsports	Fusion FM-01	Audi F3-1										GER1 29	GER2 8	BEL 26	ITA1 17	ITA2 23	JPN1	JPN2	SUR

GT-Rejects World Championship

Season	Team	Car	Class	Number	Co-driver(s)	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	Points	Pos.
2016	Racing Team Solvalou	Lamborghini Murcielago R-GT	M	03	Darren Cardel	MAL 5	AUS 10	ITA 24	FRA 20	CAN 20	USA 2	GER 2	GBR 9	BEL 7	ARG 4	BRA 9	CHN 1	JAP 3	HSR 11	74	4th
2017	Racing Team Solvalou	Lamborghini Murcielago R-GT	M	02	Aurelien Moll	ARG 2	BRA Ret	GBR 4	FRA 4	ITA Ret	USA Ret	CAN Ret	GER 1	BEL 1	MAL 6	CHN 2	JAP Ret	HSR		75*	2nd*

*Season in progress