The Heart of Racing is ticking all the boxes.
It seems like the team has been here forever. And in some respects, it sort of has. The current iteration of The Heart of Racing, however, has existed only since 2020. What began as a single-car Aston Martin Vantage GT3 effort in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTD category has expanded to GTD PRO, to SRO Pirelli GT4 America and GT America, to Formula Drift, to the 24 Hour Series and most recently the FIA World Endurance Championship, with the team making its first start at the 24 Hours of Le Mans two weeks ago.
With its first season championship in hand, the GTD team title and the driver championship for young Canadian racer Roman De Angelis, Heart of Racing is looking to the future while also celebrating passing $10 million raised for Seattle Children’s Cardiology Research Fund.
“For a couple of years there’s been an ambition to do more stuff on a global scale,” explains team principal and driver Ian James. “We tried to get a WEC entry at the beginning of this year but we didn’t quite get that — we were first reserve. We got the opportunity to take over the [Paul] Dalla Lana entry so we grabbed that, but I think there’s just a desire to do the big races, the big championships around the world and [WEC] is part of the expansion.
“We did Spa last year, the 24-hour race, and we’ve done Dubai the last couple of years,” he notes. “I think any of the big prestige races are on our list and I expect that at some point we’ll do all of them at one stage or another.”
The previous iteration of The Heart of Racing was run through Alex Job’s Porsche outfit. After a three-year absence from IMSA competition, Gabe Newell, Yahn Bernier and James relaunched the team as its own concern with Aston Martin machinery. The team has grown from that single-car GTD effort to running across several series. Alex Riberas and Ross Gunn make up the GTD PRO effort in the No. 23 GTD PRO Aston Martin Vantage GT3. De Angelis and Marco Sorensen are in the GTD-class No. 27. James, Riberas and Danial Mancinelli were the driving squad for the Le Mans effort (pictured, top), run by Northwest AMR. Gray Newell is now partnering with De Angelis in SRO Pirelli GT4 America (after more than a year driving with James in the series), and driving solo in GT America. New this year in GT4 America is a second car driven by the winners of the team’s first female driver shootout, Hannah Grisham and Rianna O’Meara-Hunt. And Darren Kelly drives the team’s Aston Martin Vantage drift car in Formula D.
There’s a lot going on with The Heart of Racing team. But in GTD at least, it’s kind of business as usual, banking the overall GT victory in the Rolex 24 at Daytona with De Angelis, Sorensen, James and Darren Turner to open their title defense. De Angelis and Sorensen followed that up with a second-place finish at Long Beach to sit third in the class points heading into a race they won last year, the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen. Considering where the No. 27 team was at this point last season – De Angelis was winless, sitting fifth in the points with a big gap to the lead – it’s a pretty good position to be in.
“I think the fact that we were in it last year after the start that we we had kind of proves that you’re sort of always in the hunt,” says De Angelis. “That’s kind of the good thing with IMSA – it always comes back to you. I think as a team at The Heart of Racing, we’ve proven that we’re a championship-winning team, I think we have one of the strongest lineups on the grid, both in the PRO and in the Am class. The last few rounds obviously weren’t ideal — we had really good pace, got a good car, we had a good strategy; we just need to build on the weekends that we’re there.”
After competing with a variety of other drivers in 2022, mostly Maxime Martin who has moved on to BMW, De Angelis has Sorensen alongside him for the season, James joining in for the longer endurance races.
“I’ve been pretty lucky with all the teammates I’ve had. You know, I went on to be really good friends with Maxime, with Ross and now with Marco, so it obviously helps to have that bond with your with your teammate,” explains De Angelis, who also captured the Sprint Cup title in 2021 with Gunn. “And you know, when you both kind of share the same passion and drive you want to win races together and you want to also perform for the other person. So when I get in the car, I want to not make any mistakes and hand the car to Marco or him hand the car to me, I’m in a position that’s viable for both of us to race forward and to be competitive. So I think the greater your bond is with your teammate, the better you want to do.”
Only 22, De Angelis has a lot of his racing career ahead of him, but he’s off to a pretty good start so far. “Roman’s evolved a lot since he joined the team,” notes James. “He’s still a full-time student, so he has a lot on his plate. He’s done exceptionally well for us, and we’re very proud of it. He’s still got a little distance to go to be leading the car, but we’re very fortunate to have him on on our roster.”
James is enthusiastic about Sorensen as well, whom he credits with bringing a lot of energy to the team, but is also a calming influence, all of which has helped De Angelis excel. Adding a second full-season car with the advent of GTD PRO in 2022 has also been a boon, and while the No. 23 team has had a bit of a rough start to the season — including missing out on a good chance of victory at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca due to a pass-around infraction — the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen this weekend presents a chance to turn the season around, especially if The Heart of Racing can capture double victory again.
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For what in many respects is a pretty young team, the Heart of Racing has evolved into a regular contender in two classes in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. The team has tasted success in the 24 Hour Series and is looking to repeat that in WEC as well. It’s not quite a Cinderella story, but it’s a lot of boxes ticked in a short span of time.
“I honestly put it down to the personnel and also the attitude of the team,” says De Angelis, who came on board at the team’s inception. “I mean, we’re very, very fortunate, everybody involved in the team — from the the mechanics, to the drivers, to the management — to be working with great people. The other thing too, is that if somebody doesn’t fit in well in our group, which tends to be like a very family-oriented, happy sort of vibe, it just doesn’t seem viable. The big thing we talk about before every race is let’s just go out and have fun.
“We do our meetings and you’re talking about all the serious stuff but at the end of the day, we’re working in an industry where you get to race cars, which is definitely a lot better than some other jobs I could think of. So everybody feels very fortunate to be there — we’re all treated very well. It’s just a very, very good organization to work for. I’m definitely very fortunate to be part of the team; the atmosphere is just a very positive one.”