A legendary team at home in North America, Hull has enjoyed bringing CGR to unfamiliar territory—where its name carried no weight—and making its presence known.


Ford’s factory program will be bowing out with a selection of retro liveries at Le Mans this weekend. Image by Ehrhardt/LAT


“When we went to Le Mans the very first year with all four cars running in the race, I don’t know that the competition thought too much about us,” he said. “It was just the first year of racing there, and I’m sure they thought, ‘Those guys are going to have a lot of issues, particularly the people from the United States because they don’t understand how to race here. They’re going to go through all the teething issues that they go through in the first year based on the experiences that they’ve had over time.’ So I think we were probably overlooked, which helped us.”

The questions regarding CGR on its winning 2016 debut weren’t reserved for its rivals.

“When the race was over, there was a great comment from Chip, and it was from one of the Ford family members. He said to Chip, ‘I didn’t think we could win.’ Like the first year, right? Chip said, ‘I did.’ That may not seem like a big deal, but we worked really, really hard to be ready. Frankly, we thought, and it’s very accurate, it’s a very huge mountain to climb for an IMSA team to go to Le Mans, and it would be a very big mountain to climb for a WEC team to come and race at IMSA at the beginning, simply because of the way the race itself is administered and what you have to do to race, in this case, at Le Mans.”

Having won The Rolex 24 At Daytona and Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring on numerous occasions, CGR’s knack for race strategy required a rethink at Le Mans, which has added to its depth of knowledge.

“What Le Mans does is it rewards raw speed for 24 hours, the least amount of time in a pit lane,”Hull said. “Racing in the United States is about that, but it’s somewhat regulated because [in the case of a full-course yellow] the pit lane closes in the United States, which allows everyone to pack up, and it allows lapped cars to get their lap back. Whereas at Le Mans, you don’t race like that. It’s really a terrific place to race because if you have a fast car and you’re flawless, you’re going to be at the front at the end no matter what. If you fall behind at Le Mans, there would need to be a lunar eclipse for you to catch.

“So the only way you’re going to catch up is for the people that are leading to fall out of the race. So you race as hard as you can at Le Mans if you’re behind, even if you’re on the lead lap, in hopes that your competitors have an issue so that makes up the time deficit.”

With one final run at Le Mans for the Ford GTs, Hull will revel in the experience.

“It’s a totally different way to race, and I love it because you just race your car as fast as you can,”he continued. “You have drivers who rotate through the car who understand that basic concept, and if they’ve grown up racing in IMSA, it’s way, way different than what they’re used to doing.

“So that part, in itself, winning in the first year, the American team winning in the first year, to me was extraordinary because it goes against a lot of the things that we do in preparation for a race in North America in sports car racing. I think we’ve done a really good job with that with both the WEC team and the IMSA team, and we’ll go to Le Mans with that same attitude and see what it gives us this year.”

​Enjoy the full conversation with Rushbrook, Hand, and Hull below:




Chip Ganassi Racing, Ford GT, Le Mans/WEC, Podcasts