ADAC GT Masters champion Diego Alessi was right at the top of the table last year and is already in pole position, at least as far as the starting line-up for the 2014 season is concerned. In late December, Alessi and new team-mate Patrick Assenheimer were confirmed as the first driver pairing for the 2014 season, competing in a Corvette Z06.R prepared by Callaway Competition. After three years at the side of Daniel Keilwitz and their joint title win last year, the Italian is now faced with a new challenge as he aims for future success along with junior driver Assenheimer.

Alessi is looking forward to working with the 21-year-old from Heilbronn, who has just moved up from the MINI Trophy and was a frequent visitor to the Callaway pits last year and a keen observer: "Patrick is fast and has talent. He is new to GT racing, so we will certainly not put any pressure on him. My job is to support him in the best possible way so that he can realise his full potential."

The personal goals of last year´s champion turn on making a success of working with Assenheimer: "I wouldn´t wish to make any predictions about the possible outcomes. A racing driver´s main aim must always be to do his utmost. My objective is to work with Patrick, so that we as a team can continue to improve our performance from race to race. That will take a little while, because learning to handle a GT car takes a long time, especially during a stressful race weekend, and the best way to go about things is to have a progressive approach. Where we finish at the end of the season depends largely upon how good I am as a teacher, but I feel very relaxed about this new challenge."

Alessi will not change his approach or the way he prepares for the new season on account of this fresh challenge: "I always go about preparing for a new season with the aim of giving the maximum both when out on track and when working with the team. Nothing is going to change this year in that respect. My goal remains the same, namely, to always achieve the best possible result for us. We will see what that means ultimately as the season progresses."

But after 48 races and eight victories together in the ADAC GT Masters, it will now be a new and unusual experience for Alessi to have former team-mate Daniel Keilwitz as an opponent. "Driving against Daniel will definitely hurt a bit and the thought that I will probably have one or two scraps with him out on track this year seems most odd. However, I will certainly not be able to be aggressive towards him in the scraps, not just because we shared a car for three years but because we got on extremely well with one another the whole time. Daniel and I are two of a kind, which is probably why we worked so well together these past three years. Though we no longer share a Corvette, we are still team-mates at Callaway Competition, pitching for the same team, with common aims and objectives."

While Alessi´s team-mate might be new, Callaway Competition´s Corvette Z06.R is extremely familiar to him. Since all GT3 cars will remain technically unchanged for the start of the 2014 season, Alessi believes they have an excellent chance of achieving good results in the Corvette: "We were very competitive in the season second half last year. The circuits in the first half of this year´s season should really suit us, in theory, so I´m confident that we will be very competitive at the start of the season."