AO Racing – Page 2 – Syndication Server

Rexy roars to AO Racing’s least-likely maiden win at Laguna Seca

AO Racing has been knocking on the door of victory since moving to GTD PRO with its No. 77 Porsche 911 GT3 R, and finally got it in a race where it seemed least likely. Starting fifth behind a front row of two Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Z06 GT3.Rs that seemed to have the pace to control the race, AO moved up steadily and used an early pit stop strategy to get the car to the front at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. Once there, Laurin Heinrich – in his third IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship start – and Seb Priaulx claimed victory in the Motul Course de Monterey Powered by Hyundai N and the GTD PRO points lead.

“Before the race we were talking about passing on this track, which is historically not so easy,” said Heinrich. “I was preparing quite a lot before, looking at many IMSA races from the past, looking over videos. You just have to set it up right. We had a good car, and we were purposely focusing on having a car to follow other guys, now that we knew we were starting from the third row so we had to overtake some cars. I think our engineers and the whole AO Racing crew did a great job to give us exactly the car that we needed. It was not particularly easy in clean air, but that’s not what you need. You know, as soon as you’re first at Laguna, it’s much easier to stay there than to get there.”

Nicky Catsburg put the No. 4 Corvette on the GTD pole with Antonio Garcia alongside in the No. 3 as the Corvettes looked like they might have the first victory for the Z06 GT3.R on their hands. However Pfaff Motorsports put the No. 9 McLaren 720S GT3 EVO – running a red-and-white livery in honor of Ayrton Senna – into the lead after the first round of pit stops, the first time the car has led since Pfaff switched to McLaren. The No. 3 Corvette was caught out when the only full-course caution came 50m into the race, still not having pitted.

Heinrich, having taken over from starter Priaulx, was third at the restart, and quickly took second from Tommy Milner, now in the No. 4 Corvette. He took the lead from Marvin Kirchhofer as he passed the McLaren in Turn 6 a few laps later. The AO crew then brought the Porsche in first, and they cycled back to the lead after the second round of stops — a lead they would never relinquish as Heinrich drove to a 9s margin of victory over Kirchhofer and Oliver Jarvis in the No. 9 McLaren.

“AO Racing did an absolute awesome job today – and not just today, the whole year, and they’ve been improving each time,” said Priaulx. “It’s just absolutely great to see and they’re really hard-working guys. Qualifying pace wasn’t right there yesterday, but today, Laurin did a great job and just absolutely awesome to win our first race. For the team, a massive confidence boost and great for them to feel that. They’ve worked very hard. We’ve been unlucky with some stuff, but I’m just really, really proud of them all.”

[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1406]

“I think it was clear that the Corvettes had the upper hand in qualifying; there was no way we were going to reach them even with a perfect, perfect lap,” added Heinirch. “Seb did a good job of placing us ahead of all the GTD cars which was crucial for us to stay in our GTD PRO game. He did a good start, kept the nose clean, overtook the Heart of Racing Aston Martin. Halfway into his stint, I could see that he was starting to be faster than the cars ahead of him, so I knew we had something on our hands here. The race was without many full-course yellows, so it was more about long runs. I think that was exactly our strength.”

Catsburg and Milner claimed third in the No. 4 Corvette, with Ben Barnicoat and Jack Hawksworth finishing fourth in the No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3. Garcia and Alexander Sims rounded out the top five in GTD PRO in the No. 3 Corvette.

With the victory, Heinrich and Priaulx move into the GTD PRO points lead with 981 points, 56 more than Barnicoat and Hawksworth in second. Bryan Sellers and Madison Snow are third for Paul Miller Racing at 888.

In GTD, Winward powered back into their winning ways after a critical mistake by the No. 557 Turner BMW in the closing minutes. Jake Galstad/Lumen

Winward Racing resumed its dominance in GTD that it momentarily lost at Long Beach, claiming its third win in four races this season and maintaining its spot at the top of the points with Russell Ward and Philip Ellis.

Danny Formal had scored the GTD pole in the No. 45 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2, but the car didn’t have the fight to stay up front, and after the first round of pit stops it was Robby Foley in the lead in the No. 557 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3, followed by Ellis in the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes AMG GT3 and Mikael Greinier in the No. 32 Korthoff/Preston Motorsports Mercedes AMG. For a while, Foley was able to open up a gap to Ellis, and it appeared that it might be a storybook ending for Turner Motorsport, celebrating race start no. 577 with BMW and becoming the most prolific BMW race team in the world when the green flew. But as GTP traffic came through the GT field, Ellis reeled Foley in, and it was contact with a passing GTP car, the No. 40 WTRAndretti Acura ARX-06 driven by Jordan Taylor, that ultimately made the difference. Foley turned into the Acura, had light contact and briefly went off track, and Ellis moved into the lead.

“I think we might have had a bit of a better pace when we were out in clean air, but behind them there was no chance of overtaking them,” explained Ellis. “I was actually stuck behind the Aston Martin, the PRO Aston Martin, for quite a bit. Thankfully he let me by and I finally chased down Robby. I think Robby only lost a bit of lap time with the GTPs initially. On our pace, it would have not been a chance of overtaking. It’s sad for them, of course, how it ended. I would have liked to do it on my own, but we’ll definitely take it.”

Foley and Patrick Gallagher ended up second, while a charging Elliot Skeer finished third in the No. 120 Wright Motorsports Porsche he took over from Adam Adelson. Grenier and Mike Skeen were fourth for Korthoff/Preston, and polesitter Formal and Kyle Marcelli were fifth.

Ellis and Ward have a 213-point lead over Gallagher and Foley. Adelson and Skeer are third in the points, while Parker Thompson sits fourth ahead of Grenier and Skeen.

The GTD class has a long break until the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen at the end of June, while GTD PRO is in action again in three weeks on the streets of Detroit.

RESULTS

AO Racing adds Christensen to ‘Rexy’ lineup for Rolex 24

AO Racing has confirmed the team’s 2024 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s Porsche GTD PRO entry will return as “Rexy,” the fan-favorite Porsche 911 GT3 “Rawr.” The team also announced that Porsche factory driver Michael Christensen will be …

“Rexy is ready to step up to GTD Pro,” said team principal Gunnar Jeannette. “The public welcomed our GT3 Rawr with open arms and it was a no-brainer to bring Rexy back for another season of racing. The addition of Michael to the team only strengthens our effort as we advance to the GTD PRO class.”

Danish racing driver Christensen began his Porsche career in 2012 when he joined the Porsche young driver program, the next year becoming an official Porsche factory driver. The Le Mans winner and FIA World Endurance champion will be a strong addition to the team for the Rolex.

[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1406]

“I’m very pleased to join AO Racing for the Rolex 24 at Daytona,” said Christensen. “It’s a great team, with a lot of talented people and a good driver lineup. I truly believe that we should be in a strong position to fight for a top position!”

AO Racing entered the GTD class in the IMSA WeatherTech Championship last season and continued to learn and progress in its inaugural year with team owner PJ Hyett and Priaulx at the wheel for the full season. Hyett is moving to LMP2 for 2024 as the the team from St. Charlies, Illinois expands to a two-car, two-class effort. With an all-pro lineup, the Porsche moves into GTD PRO. Hyett’s full-season partner in LMP2 will be Paul-Loup Chatin, with Matthew Brabham joining for the Michelin Endurance Cup events and Alex Quinn in the car for the Rolex.

In with a Roar: AO Racing takes stock of its first season and prepares to double down

AO Racing came into professional sports car racing with force in 2023, and quickly became a fan favorite along the way with its liveries and drive. Now the team heads into its sophomore season of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with an increased presence and preparing for a step up in competition. Like some dinosaurs evolved into birds, the team that spawned Rexy is evolving as well

Founded by PJ Hyett, a relative newcomer to this level of the sport but a passionate collector and docent of the sport’s history, and Gunnar Jeannette, whose resume in sports car racing is long and distinguished, AO Racing stepped into the fire of GTD in 2023. Hyett teamed with Sebastian Priaulx for the full season, Jeannette joining in for the endurance races. In addition, the team partnered with Project 1 for a full season of WEC GTE-Am competition.

The team held its own in the WeatherTech Championship, but it was the liveries and accoutrements that really ignited a spark among the fans. Making its debut at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the team rolled out its Porsche 911 GT3 R in a retro Swap Shop design, a tribute to the legendary 1983 Daytona-winning T-Bird Porsche 935 that Hyett now owns and for which Jeannette’s father Kevin was the crew chief. But it was the Rexy dinosaur livery, transforming the car into a GT3 “Rawr,” that the Porsche wore from Sebring through most of the season (and at certain races became the pink dinosaur, Roxy), that got a younger generation of fans excited. Combined with the team’s paddock area transforming into a scene out of Jurassic Park – with friendlier T-Rexes – the them was elevated during autograph sessions through the season.

Rexy occasionally appeared as Roxy. Motorsport Iamges

“The inspiration was my kids wanted to do something fun with the helmet,” explained Hyett of Rexy’s origins. “Gunnar’s buddy figured out how to translate that design to the car and it looks phenomenal. But Gunnar is really the mastermind behind all the marketing.

“We’re having fun with it and the fans are responding to that. So it’s just sort of this nice, self-reinforcing positivity circle where we’re having fun, the fans are having fun … so we want to have more fun and do more fun things. That’s great for us, because it gives us another reason to be excited to come come to the racetrack every weekend.”

Certainly a reason guys like Hyett spend their money in motorsport is because racing is fun. But almost every racer will tell you that racing is more fun when you’re winning. AO didn’t achieve that in 2023, but few teams do in their rookie season in a championship and class as competitive as IMSA GTD. The lack of victories, however, doesn’t quell the sense of pride over what they’ve accomplished so far.

“Lots of new things this year, the largest one for us being this entity, AO racing, right?” said Jeannette. “We really didn’t officially know that we were starting an IMSA race team until late August, early September of last year. And we were in … what Adam Wareing, our crew chief and sort of head guy that that helped us put all this together, termed as sort of miracle mode to get to Daytona.

“While the results haven’t been what we wanted for a good part of the season, the thing that I’m happiest about is the team and the organization and the people that we have here. I’ve been very fortunate to be involved in professional motorsports, in one way or another, basically all of my life. And this is one of the best programs that I’ve ever been with, and definitely some of the best people. So we’re really looking forward to building this out into a long-term, successful program.”

AO, like other teams running the car, struggled a bit with the new 992-generation 911 GT3 R. Daytona was rough for all the Porsche teams, but it got better as the season went on. During the latter part of the season, AO was usually in the top half of the field, and just missed a top-five finish at VIR.

“The brand-new 992 GT3 R has been a challenge – normal new car stuff that we’re trying to figure out. And then also a brand-new team. So we’ve got a lot of moving parts that are all brand new this year. But we hired a lot of people that knew what they were doing. So we we’ve been working hard at trying to not just make a splash, but also perform well on the track. So in some sense, it’s been a very, very long season. It’s been the longest, shortest year of my life,” declared Hyett.

Despite that, or perhaps because of it, he decided to double down for 2024. The GT3 Rawr is moving to GTD Pro with Priaulx and Laurin Heinrich at the wheel for the full season. Hyett is moving to LMP2 with Paul-Loup Chatin, the French driver who took this past season’s LMP2 title with Ben Keating.

AO Racing wasn’t the only Porsche team to contend with typical new car teething troubles. Jake Galstad/Motorsport Images

“It’s a piece of cake compared to getting ready for this year. Not worried about it,” Hyett laughs before Jeannette chimes in: “I wouldn’t say that’s my comment.”

“I like to trivialize a huge amount of work in order to run a two-car program just like I trivialized getting the car ready for Daytona last year,” Hyett continued, with a chuckle from Jeannette. “It’s a ridiculous amount of work. There was a confluence of things that happened, one being the lack of a [FIA driver rating] Bronze mandate in the GTD class. I wanted to be more competitive and P2 was the place to go do that.

“But we feel like we’ve created something extraordinary with Rexy and the fans’ response to that, and I wasn’t prepared to retire that that happy, loving dinosaur for all of the IMSA fans out there. So figuring out how to put two cars together is a massive undertaking, but I think we are capable of doing that and we can make it happen.”

Hyett’s confidence comes from the team that he and Jeannette have put together. Both say they are proud of what the team has accomplished in its first year, and that all comes down to the people.

“A race team is the sum of its parts,” stated Jeannette. “And both Adam [Wareing] and myself had sort of ‘retired’ from racing. You know, I spent a long time with WeatherTech, and David [MacNeil] offered me a position inside of the company. And I was doing that for a number of years. Adam was one of the key people in CORE Autosport, which turned into the Porsche factory program in North America. And for us to sort of want to do this on our own. you have to have the right people involved because it’s a lot of hard work.

“You’re away from your home and family a lot of the time so you better enjoy the people that you’re you’re being around and trust in them. And so that’s been a big sort of heart and ethos and philosophy of what we’re creating here.”

AO Racing’s freshman season has been full of challenges, some of them easy to overcome, others much more difficult. The definition of success for an established race team is usually victories and championships. For a new team, quantifying achievement is much more difficult. But each obstacle conquered adds another check mark to the chart, and elevates the collective knowledge of the team. That growing arsenal of information makes the team stronger, Hyett declares.

“The season itself has been such a massive undertaking for us,” he said. “We run into problems all the time, and to kind of work through them is, I think, the biggest thing we’ve been able to overcome as a new organization, just like being able to knock them down one at a time. I’ve made my own mistakes behind the wheel, we’ve made mistakes outside of the car. Just trying to figure out how to work them through, one by one, to make the team stronger and better and more efficient.

“So that hopefully gets all reflected on the track. I think that’s been the biggest challenge for a new team. Again, we have a lot of experienced people on the team. But it’s still guys who haven’t necessarily worked together before, whether it’s the drivers or the crew themselves. So trying to make it all work cohesively as a unit, it has been a challenge. But I think our success on track … the results will come for sure, based upon how well the team has started to really click towards the end of the season.”

Beginning in January, AO Racing will have twice as many chances to show that, or to learn new lessons.