BoP tweaks for Rolex 24 revealed

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emailBy: Marshall Pruett | 15 hours ago

The Balance of Performance adjustments to IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship field have been released for the season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona, and a limited number of technical changes have been made to the cars in its four classes. All modifications are based on the trial BoP settings used at the recent Roar Before The 24 test.

In DPi, Acura and Cadillac have performance-related adjustments to make, with the Acuras losing power, the Cadillacs losing weight, and Mazda being untouched in both regards.

• Acura ARX-05: Turbo boost reduction from 6000 to its 7050 rpm redline, +1.0 liters fuel capacity, up to 79.0L
• Cadillac DPi-V.R: -10 kilos, down to 940 kg minimum weight, +2.0L fuel capacity, up to 75.0L.
• Mazda RT24-P: +2.0L fuel capacity, up to 82.0L.

In LMP2, only the returning Riley/Multimatic Mk 30 chassis has been handed performance adjustments. Those aerodynamic BoP changes, however, are not expected to be necessary as the Rick Ware Racing-entered car was heavily damaged during the recent Roar Before The 24 test. As a result, the RWR Mk 30 would be a surprise appearance at the Rolex 24.

In GT Le Mans, three of the four models have received BoP adjustments, with Corvette’s new C8.R gaining power, Ferrari’s 488 GTE losing power and top speed, and Porsche’s new 911 RSR gaining weight.

• BMW M8 GTE: No changes
• Corvette C8.R: +0.3mm air restrictor (increased flow) to 44.3mm total, and +5.0L fuel capacity, up to 94.0L.
• Ferrari 488 GTE: Turbo boost reduction from 2000 to its 7000 rpm redline, +4.0 degree increase in rear wing angle (more downforce), -1L fuel capacity, down to 87.0L.
• Porsche 911 RSR GTE: +10kg, up to 1280kg minimum weight, and +7.0L fuel capacity, up to 97.0L.

IMSA’s pro-am GT Daytona class has the greatest number of BoP alterations, with Acura’s NSX GT3 facing a stiff hike in weight and modest forfeiture of power. Audi’s R8 LMS GT3 gets a weight break, the sole BMW M6 GT3 loses a healthy amount of power, Ferrari’s 488 GT3 also surrenders power but to a lesser degree, and Lamborghini’s Huracan GT3 will give up some top speed.

• Acura NSX GT3: +25kg, up to 1325kg, turbo boost reduction from 2000 to its 7500 rpm redline, -2.0L fuel capacity, down to 102.0L
• Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3: -4.0L fuel capacity, down to 100.0L
• Audi R8 LMS GT3: -10kg, down to 1300kg.
• BMW M6 GT3: Turbo boost reduction from 2000 to its 7250 rpm redline, -3.0L fuel capacity, down to 102.0L.
• Ferrari 488 GT3: Turbo boost reduction from 2000 to its 7500 rpm redline, and -1L fuel capacity, down to 92.0L.
• Lamborghini Huracan GT3: +4.0 degree increase in rear wing angle (more downforce).
• Lexus RC F GT3: No changes.
• Mercedes AMG GT3: No changes.
• Porsche 911 GT3 R: No changes.

 

Rolex 24 at Daytona entry list finalized

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emailBy: Marshall Pruett | 10 hours ago

The final pre-race entry list for this week’s Rolex 24 At Daytona has been published featuring an anticipated withdrawal and driver roster adjustment.

As RACER wrote on Saturday, the No. 2 Rick Ware Racing Riley/Multimatic Mk 30 LMP2 entry was not expected to return after suffering a heavy crash at the Roar Before The 24 with James Davison on board.

In the revised entry list, the No. 2 has been removed, leaving IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with 38 cars to take the start on Saturday. Eight DPi, five LMP2, seven GT Le Mans, and 18 GT Daytona entries are scheduled to contest the opening round of the season.

With RWR’s withdrawal, two of its drivers have found a new home for the Saturday-through-Sunday race. Sports car regular Mark Kvamme, and Sunoco Challenge winner Johnathan Hoggard, will strap into the No. 47 Precision Performance Motorsports Lamborghini Huracan GT3. The duo will share the V10-powered car with Eric Lux and Brandon Gdovic.

Rolex 24 at Daytona entry list

 

De Angelis looking to build on Rolex 24 opportunity

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emailBy: Marshall Pruett | 19 hours ago

The Rolex 24 At Daytona features an informal tradition of sorts every year with some incredibly young drivers partaking in IMSA’s longest race. At times, it has also felt like a gimmick, but in the case of Canadian teenager Roman De Angelis, his presence at Daytona International Speedway this week is anything but a promotional stunt.

In fact, the 18-year-old serves as one of IMSA’s most decorated up-and-coming stars, having completed the ultra-rare challenge of winning the Porsche GT3 Cup USA and Porsche GT3 Cup Canada titles in the same season. The Toronto-area native is returning to the Rolex 24 for his second attempt at winning the series’ longest race, which is steeped in long odds due to the nature of the new opportunity in front of De Angelis.

Signed to a full-time drive with the brand-new The Heart of Racing team in its equally new Aston Martin Vantage GT3, the expectations for the outfit are understandably modest as it enters its first WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race. For De Angelis, who makes his full-time debut as a professional race car driver with THoR, the realization of a dream comes with the job.

“As someone in my position, it’s something that I’ve always wants to do my whole life,” he tells RACER. “It’s always a dream of mine to be racing in GT; that was always a class that I admired. I love sports car racing. And when I got the call to even do the GT3 cup series back in 2017, that was something that already blew my mind, just to be able to be competing in a series that had so much passion for and so much love for. I guess everything kind of just fell into place more perfectly than I expected.”

As the son of a racer who drove in IMSA’s prototype training categories, De Angelis has a healthy appreciation for the opportunity he’s been given by THoR’s team ownership group, and driver/team principal Ian James. His father’s career was limited to the lower rungs of the sport which, in an unexpected way, has shaped the teenager’s view of whatever lies ahead in the WeatherTech Championship.



“I feel a bit of pressure to perform, but I’m looking at this chance in a different aspect, I think, than most,” he says. “I mean, you never really know how many more race weekends, or how many more years in a race car, you’ll have. Somebody could bump you out pretty quickly. So I’m just trying to take it all in and have the most fun I can, doing what I love for the longest amount of time possible. I always perform better when I’m having fun and enjoying it, so hopefully, it all adds up and I do well.”

As De Angelis embarks on a new chapter in life inside the No. 23 THoR Aston Martin Vantage GT3, he’ll also close an important one as the final months of his freshman year at university are completed at home in Canada. Juggling racing and education has been difficult, as it is for every young driver, but De Angelis credits the experience for accelerating his multitasking skills.

“I wouldn’t be complaining too much if all I had to do is race cars every day for the rest of my life, if it was that simple,” he says. “But school has been important for me, and it’s something that I’ve always enjoyed. I think school has also helped me in racing quite a lot. Just managing time; it’s a massive commitment to do one or the other, let alone doing both. I’m studying engineering now, which is something that has a lot of correlation to racing itself. It’d be pretty cool to be able to build on what I know now in racing and help me with school and vice versa. I had to miss a lot of school days last year with all the Porsche Cup racing, and the teachers didn’t really like me too much, but I passed everything, so that’s important.”

Setting expectations for a new car and team combination is always a challenge for Rolex 24 entrants. With an Aston Martin to tune at North American circuits, and a pit crew to hone in competition, The Heart of Racing will have more work to do this weekend than many of its GTD rivals.

“It’s actually a positive for me to go into a team that’s new, I think,” De Angelis says. “I have very minimal experience in a GT3 car. And the only experience I have with ABS and traction control is with the GT3 car experience I have, which is very minimal. I think being able to learn a new car with a team that’s also learning a new car is something that’s really nice. Because you feel a lot of pressure in general, as an 18-year-old hopping into a full-time ride and with such amazing factory support and stuff like that, but if I were to hop into a team that won a championship the year before, it’s a lot of pressure also.



“I think it’s going to be a learning curve, massive learning curve. Not only for me, but also for the team. But we’re going to look to make it as short as possible, and we’re all there to win races. That’s what we’d like to do. But we really want to go out there and be successful and that’s what we all itch for, is to win. So definitely not going out there trying to just do well, we want to go out there and put out some good results, too. It’s going to be a massive learning curve, but we’ll take what we can get.”

A podium finisher in the GT Daytona class on his Rolex 24 debut in 2019, De Angelis hopes to learn from his proven trio of teammates who’ve led the same kind of long and distinguished careers he wants to emulate. Along with James, he’ll have Alex Riberas and factory Aston Martin driver Nicki Thiim to act as teammates and mentors.

“I think the keyword for Daytona this year is just going to be learning,” he says. “I’m trying to take in as much information as I can from these guys. They have so much experience in GT3 cars and then racing in general. You know, Nicki and Ian have so many years on me and so much experience in racing that, I got to take everything I can from them. And Alex with his experience in Europe and how good his results have been early on. Just take everything I can from them, based on data, video, stuff like that.

“And I think a big thing for Daytona, is I did it last year and I was also with Ian. Ian really helped me a lot, not only to get this opportunity this year, but help me a lot last year in Daytona. I think last year… it was his 19th Daytona or something, and my first. I went in with all the nerves in the world possible, and he was probably one of the calmest guys there.

“He helped me a lot, just to understand that as a young driver you don’t want to get thrown all the way in one weekend. Just keep everything underneath you and you’ll be there in the end like we were. I think no matter what, I’ll always be learning and to have guys with that much experience, like Ian, Nicki, and Alex have done, makes it a pretty good tool to grow.”

Roman De Angelis, The Heart of Racing, IMSA

 

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Taylor Acura tops second practice

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emailBy: Stephen Kilbey | 2 hours ago

Ricky Taylor continued Acura Team Penske’s fast start to the 2020 IMSA Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona in Practice 2, setting a 1m34.904s in the session to go two tenths clear of the field with his No. 7 entry. The No. 6, which topped FP1, didn’t set a competitive lap in a session which saw the pair of Penske Acuras only managing a handful of laps apiece.

Second in the times on this occasion was the No. 77 Mazda once again, Oliver Jarvis setting the best time, a 1m35.119s. The No. 55 sister car made it two Mazda RT24-Ps in the top three after Harry Tincknell’s best effort.

The fastest Cadillac ended up fourth, that was the No. 10 from defending Rolex 24 race winner Wayne Taylor Racing, which was half a second off.

More IMSA!

New motivation for Taylor amid fresh start for WTR

Black Swan Porsche’s Rolex 24 in jeopardy

Montoya, Acura lead opening Rolex 24 practice

In LMP2, Ben Hanley set the pace in DragonSpeed’s No. 81 ORECA, his 1m37.418s just under a second quicker than the No. 8 Starworks example which ran fastest earlier in the day.

GTLM was once again paced by the two Porsches, the No. 912 again the quickest of the bunch with a 1m42.508s from Laurens Vanthoor. The No. 911 ended up second ahead of the two Corvette C8.Rs, which for the second session on the trot made it a 1-2-3-4 for the IMSA GTLM debuting cars which all lapped within a second of one another.

The two RLL BMWs and the Risi Ferrari were both over a second off.

BMW did however enjoy a better time with customer team Turner Motorsports in GTD, the No. 96 BMW M6 GT3 topping the class times with a 1m45.921s. The No. 9 Pfaff Porsche slotted in second with the No. 11 Grasser Lamborghini third.

Related

2020 Rolex 24 at Daytona resource guide

After Practice 1 was held in tricky, wet conditions, the track dried out for the second session, allowing the teams to get some dry laps in before qualifying later this afternoon.

There were no notable incidents on this occasion, though the No. 11 Grasser Lamborghini and No. 23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin will both be forced to join the qualifying session five minutes late after they were found guilty of heading out to the circuit after the session had finished.

UPDATED: Meanwhile, the No. AIM Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 of Kyle Busch, Jack Hawksworth, Parker Chase and Michael De Quesada made a precautionary engine change (pictured below), which will force it to miss the qualifying session.

The team discovered a drop in oil pressure during Practice 2 and opted to bring it into the garage for precautionary engine change. A spokesperson from Lexus told RACER that the team now aims to get the car out for Night Practice tonight.

UP NEXT: Qualifying begins with GTD at 4:15 p.m. ET

 

Ganassi working on WeatherTech Championship return

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emailBy: Marshall Pruett | 7 hours ago

The last time a Rolex 24 At Daytona got under way without Chip Ganassi Racing on the entry list, Daytona Prototypes were making their Grand Am Rolex Series debut, George W. Bush was barely past the halfway point in his first term as president, and iTunes, Apple’s strange new streaming music service, was fumbling through its 2003 debut.

With CGR’s arrival in sports car racing for the 2004 Rolex 24 (pictured), an unbroken streak would continue through 2019, where its swansong as the factory team behind Ford’s GT Le Mans program ended without a follow-up effort being secured. Lacking a new manufacturer partnership to replace the Blue Oval, CGR is notably absent from the 38-car field that will go racing this weekend.

But, if the work being put in behind the scenes pays off, it will be a temporary hiatus — one year and no more — as CGR looks to make a speedy return to factory racing in DPi or GT Le Mans.

More IMSA!

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New motivation for Taylor amid fresh start for WTR

Black Swan Porsche’s Rolex 24 in jeopardy

“We’re moving back in the direction of that, and had meetings recently about moving forward with sports car racing on the same scale as what we’ve had in the past,” said CGR managing director Mike Hull. “Probably with a different manufacturer, and that’s what we’ll work on next.”

Rumors abound on new DPi programs being readied for 2022 when the second-generation rules come into play. At least one new GTLM program is also said to be nearing an announcement. And then there’s one of the most coveted contracts in the series — Acura’s championship-winning DPi effort run by Team Penske, which reaches the end of its three-year term at the conclusion of the 2020 season.

It’s no secret that a number of teams would love to unseat Penske and receive a multi-year contract to takeover the Acura ARX-05 deal, and with its longstanding ties to Honda in IndyCar, CGR has been mentioned as a prime alternative to The Captain’s operation.

Whether it’s Acura or other brands in the DPi or GTLM categories, CGR has retained all but four of its Ford GT crew members, which would make staffing a new IMSA factory program much easier than if it had to start from scratch.

“We plan to be back in sports car racing, so we have to find a balance between our entry situation with IndyCar racing, and then what we would hope would be our entry situation in sports car racing again,” Hull continued. “So you have to look at the resource that we have that makes sense for us for manpower and so on. We’ve been in sports car racing for a long, long time, beginning in 2004, and we intend to be back there. People are hard to find, and proper people are harder to find.”

On a personal level, Hull expects to miss being on the timing stand as a strategist and the non-stop battles that have made the Rolex 24 such a rewarding event for CGR over the years.

“It will be a little different. And we’ve been committed to racing there for a long, long time. I’m going to miss that,” he admitted. “Really going to miss not staying up for 24 hours, but I’m going to be down there at the front end of that event and probably through some of the race weekend, because I have some meetings scheduled about the future for our race team there.

“That’s where everybody seems to gather, although I really dislike having meetings on race weekends like that, but that’s what we’re going to do. And I’ll watch some of the racing, and what I don’t get to watch [live], I’ll watch on television, like the fans do.”



Chip Ganassi Racing, Rolex 24, IMSA

 

Black Swan Porsche’s Rolex 24 in jeopardy

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emailBy: Stephen Kilbey | 4 hours ago

Black Swan Racing’s Porsche 911 GT3 R, entered in the GTD class here at Daytona, may be forced to withdraw from the race meeting early after its heavy incident in Free Practice 1.

Trenton Estep was aboard the car when it had an off towards the end of the opening session of the weekend, team owner Tim Pappas explaining to RACER after practice that it came down to inexperience.

“Trenton unfortunately had a couple of tires on the painted line between the apron and banking,” he said. “He’s new at Daytona, unfortunately those lines are slippery and it caught him out.

“It’s terminal damage unless we can get the parts to fix it from Porsche.”

The part required, Pappas says, is a “front chassis element and clip.” He expressed concern that with it being a new car that there may be limited availability of spares from Porsche.

The team is working on the front of the car regardless, with the aim of making the race.

More IMSA!

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Montoya, Acura lead opening Rolex 24 practice

A Porsche spokesperson told RACER that it is working with the team to analyze the damage, to work out if it can be repaired on site.

Should the Black Swan Porsche not take the start, that would reduce the GTD field to 17 cars and the full entry list to just 37 cars, a record-low for the race.



Black Swan Racing, Porsche, Rolex 24, IMSA

 

Risi team bolsters David act vs factory Goliaths with new Ferrari

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emailBy: Stephen Kilbey | 3 hours ago

While much of the attention in the Rolex 24 At Daytona will be on the performance of Corvette and Porsche in GTLM, with both marques debuting new cars in the race, Risi Competizione’s privateer effort is still a storyline that should be followed.

The American outfit, back with a Ferrari 488 GTE once again, is looking to score its first Rolex 24 victory in its 18th attempt (it has four class podiums to its name), up against the might of three full-factory teams.

For this task it will be supported in part by Ferrari and AF Corse, and run a quartet of factory drivers, with Daniel Serra, James Calado, Davide Rigon and Alessandro Pier Guidi all signed up. Nevertheless, while Risi may look and run like a factory team program, it’s still very much a privateer effort.

Its crew members are more than familiar with Ferrari’s 488 platform, having raced with it since 2016, but the team is running a brand-new evo-spec chassis in Florida, which it took delivery of last December. The team’s older car is also present, but only for photo opportunities.

Risi opted to upgrade the car ahead of this year’s race to give itself the best chance of challenging the other GTLM teams, and had a chance to shake it down at Adria in Italy before the Roar Before The Rolex 24.

At the Roar, the team worked with only two drivers, and focused on getting Serra plenty of laps, as he hasn’t driven in GTLM at the Rolex 24 since 2016.

More IMSA!

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New motivation for Taylor amid fresh start for WTR

Black Swan Porsche’s Rolex 24 in jeopardy

“At the Roar, we had Daniel and James,” the team’s race engineer Rick Mayer told RACER. “I normally would just bring one driver because you don’t need to have all the drivers for that. But Daniel hadn’t had a lot of time in a GT car — he’s had more time in a GT3 — so I wanted to get him a little more acclimated.

“We also had to test the tires, because this year they are brand-new tires that they’re using in the WEC and they’re completely different than last year’s tires. And every GTLM manufacturer has different tires now. There’s no crossovers anymore so we had to turn what we wanted to race on and try to sort our allocation.

“We also wanted to put a few hundred kilometers on the car before the race, because you don’t want to go into these events without ironing out any new car teething issues.”

Mayer feels that the key to success for Risi this week is the weather. The team is hoping that the temperature will stay cool and that rain will fall during the race. Last year, he said in reflection, the team didn’t have the fastest car, but finished second after taking advantage of the rain towards the end.

“Unfortunately it’s supposed to be dry for the race,” explained Mayer. “We have a power disadvantage, and we’re competitive in the wet as it nullifies any outright speed we lack. But we have four of the best pro drivers on the planet so we still have a chance of course.”

With fewer cars than normal — just 38 on the entry list — he says it remains to be seen how this race will play out and how the reduction in traffic will affect the race.

“Usually the cautions here are a result of having gentlemen drivers in fast cars, like Prototype Challenge cars in the past. There are gentlemen in LMP2 cars, but the smaller field may make the race run clearer than usual. The fact that there’s fewer GTLM cars than last year (no Fords) isn’t a big deal though, as it’ll still be a tough race for us.”

All eyes are on a big result here, as looking beyond this week Risi hasn’t got any firm plans for its 488 GTE. A strong finish could go a long way in helping Giuseppe Risi decide what to do next…

Related

2020 Rolex 24 at Daytona resource guide

Ferrari, Risi, Rolex 24, IMSA

 

New motivation for Taylor amid fresh start for WTR

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emailBy: Marshall Pruett | 3 hours ago

Wayne Taylor is experiencing the same sensation most parents feel when their children leave the nest to start a new life away from home.

He and his wife Shelley said farewell to their son Ricky, at least in a professional sense, when he left the family’s Wayne Taylor Racing team in 2018 to join Acura’s new IMSA DPi program with Team Penske. Ricky’s younger brother, the social media savvy Jordan Taylor, remained in the No. 10 WTR Cadillac DPi-V.R to lead the effort and, with Ricky as a newfound rival, beat Acura Team Penske in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

After two seasons of brother versus brother in DPi, Jordan received a similar factory call to the GT Le Mans category with the vaunted Corvette Racing program, where he makes his full-time debut this weekend at the Rolex 24 At Daytona.

His dad (pictured above), and his mom, will also be there, seeking to repeat WTR’s overall victory at last year’s Rolex 24. And for the family patriarch, the first race in almost a decade without one of his boys in the car will be filled with a heavy dose of mixed emotions.

“So many people over the years have asked the question, or sort of surmised, that this team was just me and the kids, and that basically nobody could offer them anything, because they’re always going to be stuck with me,” the champion driver-turned-team owner told RACER. “And that was never the intent. So when we won everything in ’17 and [Ricky] got the offer from Penske, that pretty much was what I had hoped us doing it together as a family was going to provide down the road. That certainly worked out and Ricky is very happy over at Penske, and with Honda.

“And then Jordan, I have to say that he was always the GT guy, but he got so good in prototypes. It took a long time to make that decision to go back from DPi back to Corvette. But then again, it’s this new mid-engine Corvette, and how do you turn down a full factory program with Corvette, because those guys had been around for years and years. They’ve won tons of races, they’ve won some championships. And he’s with [Antonio] Garcia, who’s really good.”

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Montoya, Acura lead opening Rolex 24 practice

The knowledge that his sons are in high-value roles with two factory teams wasn’t enough to stave off the feelings that hit a few weeks ago during pre-season testing. To go racing without his boys would require a new motivation.

“When I went to the Roar [Before The 24], it was really weird,” Taylor admits. “I didn’t think about it, but the moment I arrived at the track I had this really empty feeling in my stomach. And it was really uncomfortable. And I started thinking, ‘What am I doing here?’ But it didn’t take long. And as soon as first practice started, it was as if nothing had changed. We just had changed the names of drivers. So I’m just happy for them that they’ve proved themselves well enough that they both have warranted these really big drives.”

“Our team has always been a family team, but the family is not just Ricky and Jordan and Shelley and I. It’s the crew of people that we have. Travis Houge, our general manager, Brian Pillar the technical director, Chris Finch, our crew chief. I mean, these guys and Bill Mullen and, and Chris Seaman. They’ve all been with me for many, many years. There is a very big family dynamic in our organization.”
The Taylor-free WRT Cadillac DPi-V.R. of Renger van der Zande, Ryan Briscoe, Scott Dixon and Kamui Kobayashi. Image by Barry Cantrell/LAT

WTR will attempt to repeat as overall winners of the Rolex 24 for the third time in four seasons using a radically different driver line-up. With Ricky, who was part of the winning 2017 team in the No. 10 Cadillac, and Jordan, who anchored the 2019 victory, competing elsewhere in the paddock, Taylor signed longtime client Ryan Briscoe, whose career he’s managed along with WTR co-owner Max Angelelli for more than a decade, as the full-time partner for the returning Renger van der Zande.

Five-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon was the highest profile acquisition by WTR, and he’ll join the program for IMSA’s longest races, and for Daytona, Kamui Kobayashi is back to try and earn a second Rolex watch after standing on the top step last year.

“We’ve actually won two out of the last three Daytona 24 Hours, so I’m sure naturally people look at us as the favorite, but there’s so many things that go into this,” Taylor said. “I can tell you this, that we won the race last year because we got lucky because of the conditions and the strategy worked and we won the race. I feel if last year’s race was all in the dry, we probably wouldn’t have won it because we didn’t have a fast car. That was the time when the BoP was definitely off song.

“But I think it’s going to be probably the hardest of all because the cars are pretty evenly matched. We don’t know if anybody else is holding anything back. But I said to everybody and say to my sponsors: I can’t guarantee we’re going to win but what I can guarantee you we’re going to be racing to win it, and that’s all we can do. We do the same thing that we do every year. We’ve got a great crew, great drivers and it’d be really pretty cool if we could pull this off again.”

 

Era Motorsport advances from vintage racing to LMP2 at Daytona

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emailBy: Marshall Pruett | 9 hours ago

The formation of new prototype teams in IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship has been an infrequent occurrence in recent years, which makes the arrival of Era Motorsport and its LMP2 effort an especially welcome addition to the paddock.

Led by team principal and driver Kyle Tilley, the team’s No. 18 ORECA 07-Gibson has been quickly assembled, along with Era’s endurance racing crew, during IMSA’s short offseason. Where most of their LMP2 rivals enter the Rolex 24 At Daytona with years of hardened endurance racing experience to draw from as a unit, Era’s story is charmingly different.

How did a British driver come to meet an American businessman who loved vintage racing, wanted to go faster and, in less than two years, find themselves in the WeatherTech Championship?

We’ll let Tilly uncork that tale.

“I’ve been racing for as long as I can remember, and fortunate enough to race professionally throughout the last 10 years,” he told RACER. “The last thing that I did was Pirelli World Challenge in 2017 with TRG. I’ve always spent a lot of time with vintage race cars, always had a big crush on everything Formula 1-related from the ’70s and Group C sports cars. And I was doing a lot of driver coaching work with a client who at the time had a Formula 5000 car.

“He was wanting me to spend more and more time driving it, and the more I looked at it, the less I was OK with driving it based on some of the prep work on it. When I mentioned it to him, he then said, ‘Well, you should set up your own prep shop.’ So I did, and that’s really what led me to this. I was working as a driving coach in 2018 with Dwight Merriman in TCR and he had a vintage Alfa Romeo which we were doing some historic racing with; we were taking care of it, which then progressed into a Nissan NPT-90 GTP car.

More IMSA!

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“That car’s a monster — absolutely love it too. Dwight loves driving it also. And then we ended up putting Dwight in an LMPC car at Monterey for the Rolex Reunion. And what kind of followed from there, our engineers said, ‘What about putting him in an LMP2 car?’ I jumped at the opportunity but I needed to make sure that Dwight was up for it as well.”

Merriman, the successful tech company founder, welcomed each increase in speed. With the chance to move beyond vintage racing and pro-level touring cars, the leap to LMP2 was formalized with Tilley’s ambitious Era Motorsport team.

“After going backwards and forwards for a few months, we ended up making the decision. I think it was only eight weeks ago that we were going to do this and here we are,” Tilley added. “So it’s been all hands on deck, pull it all together. In some ways, it might seem like a really big jump. To me, it’s not that different to what we’ve been doing. For example, we’re looking after a Pescarolo LMP1; we’ve got the Nissan GTP car, which is far more complicated than the current LMP2s. And I think last count, we’ve got 20 other cars in the workshops all ranging from historic F1 through to recent LMP1s. And we’ve been fortunate enough to put together a really good group of guys for the P2 program.

“We have [strategist] Jeff Braun on board. We have Scott Besst as our race engineer, who might not be as well-known as Jeff, but certainly Scott’s done a lot in Australia with V8 Supercars and he was Ohlin’s IndyCar suspension guy. I brought Ross Needham from Porsche, who is our team manager. And between the three of us, we’ve been flat out. Sleep has been on hold since Christmas.”
Era Motorsport took a low-key approach to the Roar with its ORECA 07, keeping its eyes on the bigger prize. Image by Jake Galstad/LAT

With Tilly and Merriman set for the full LMP2 championship calendar, the team has drafted in renowned French ace Nic Minassian as its top-rated driver, and prototype veteran Ryan Lewis to complete the rotation. Despite all that’s new and unproven with Era, the quality driving squad and the winning history of the ORECA 07 could allow the team to make its presence known during the 24-hour race.

“Ultimately, with testing at the Roar Before The 24, we focused on full-fuel runs and keeping some of our powder dry just because we didn’t see the value in doing a low-fuel, new-tire run just to set a better lap time,” Tilley explained. “Because in the Rolex 24, we’re never going to be on low fuel with new tires, so it didn’t make any sense.

“We were pretty methodical on just working through the balance of the car on full tanks and placing all our energies on setting up the car for the race. I think a podium in Daytona is the goal, but honestly, there’s so many outside factors which we can’t account for. So I’ll be happy just to get to the end of the race, with the car in one piece and having been competitive. But obviously, the ultimate goal for us is the podium.”



Era Motorsport, LMP2, Rolex 24, IMSA, WeatherTech Sportscar Championship