[3][4] As a combined driver/team owner, Reinhold Joest first began to race a Porsche 908/3 in the European Sportscar Championship, winning the driver's title.

In 1984, in absence of the works team, Joest Racing would score the first of their fifteen wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, with Klaus Ludwig and Henri Pescarolo driving their "lucky #7" car a Porsche 956, chassis number 117.

In 1985, the works team returned, and despite having little factory support, they defended their title with Ludwig, Paolo Barilla and incognito German businessman "John Winter" driving the #7 chassis number 117 again.

The team would instead compete in the IMSA GTP category beginning in 1990, winning the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1991 with Wollek, Pescarolo, Frank Jelinski, "Winter" and Hurley Haywood.

In 1993, the Nissan and TWR Jaguar team had withdrawn, and the AAR Eagle Toyota would continue to dominate the series final year.

They first won the ITR Gold Cup at the Donington Park round in 1994 with Manuel Reuter driving, when the leading Alfa Romeo of Alessandro Nannini was disqualified for running out of fuel.

They would continue to have a successful career there by the time the series became a full-fledged international championship (ITC), winning the title for the final year in 1996 for Opel.

Audi scaled their sports car racing operation down at the end of 2002,[5] preferring to focus their attention on the Bentley Speed 8 for a year, allowing it to win in 2003 (with support by Joest mechanics).

In 2004, Audi returned to DTM touring car racing, now officially backing up the Abt Sportsline effort which had been called "private" since 2000.

In an answer to the 2009 issues, Audi reworked the R15 for 2010 (under the R15 TDI plus designation) with a higher reliability factor; unexpected Peugeot reliability issues of the 908 HDi FAP forced all four cars (including one by Oreca) to retire before the end of the race and resulted in a clean sweep of the podium in the 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans, with all three cars running farther than the former 1971 race record, despite that the R15s were not using the V10 TDI engines at full and were not running faster than the four 908s.

The R18s failed to win any of the other races in the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup that year, however, handing the team and drive titles to Peugeot.

While handing the other three rounds to Toyota, Audi would win the LMP1 Manufacturer Championship 2012 and helped Andre Lotterer, Bernoit Treleuyer and Marcel Fässler to become Driver World Endurance Champions 2012.

[7] On 18 July 2017 it was announced that Joest Racing would take over the operation of the Mazda RT24-P Daytona Prototype International (DPi) entry in the IMSA Weathertech SportsCar Championship for the 2018 season.

[9] During their partnership, Joest Racing was able to help Mazda score five victories in the series, winning at Watkins Glen, Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, Road America, Sebring, and at Daytona for the WeatherTech 240.