Veteran IndyCar and American Le Mans Series driver Gil de Ferran announced that he would be retiring as a driver at the end of the 2009 season, after qualifying on the pole of the Acura Sports car Challenge at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.
De Ferran said his racing team, de Ferran Motorsports, will be starting an IRL IndyCar team in 2010.
“I am stepping out of the cockpit so that we can focus on making the dream a reality: running a two-car IndyCar Operation. All our energy and effort is going towards that,” de Ferran said, “as well as expanding our team in the American Le Mans Series.
“It’s a lot to do and it’s going to take a lot of work to get it done.”
De Ferran and co-driver Simon Pagenaud are currently leading the American Le Mans Series LMP1 division.
No Stranger to IndyCars
De Ferran had a long and successful career as an IndyCar driver, winning Rookie of the Year in 1995, and ending up driving for the prestigious Team Penske in 2000. De Ferran won the drivers’ championship in 2000 and 2001, and won the Indianapolis 500 in 2003, for Penske Racing.
De Ferran retired at the end of 2003. After a stint as race director for a Formula One team, de Ferran returned to the driver’s seat in 2008, fielding an Acura ARX 01b in the American Le Mans Series with co-driver Simon Pagenaud.
De Ferran said he learned a lot about running a racing team while driving for the legendary Roger Penske.
“It was impossible not to learn. Roger runs what I believe to be one of the best teams in motorsports worldwide—full stop. And he has been doing so for several years.”
I only wish we can have an operation as successful as Penske Racing.
Roger Penske is famous for racing as a businessman as well as a racer. He makes shrewd business moves in order to fund the best teams.
“Making the numbers work is a key part of success,’ de Ferran said. “You need all the right people in the right places doing the right thing, but if these people are doing the right things they are going to be consuming some money. For a team to be successful it needs to be well funded.
“Is it the only ingredient to success? Absolutely not. But it is a very necessary ingredient.
“We are confident that we can expand our operation and get the right people even though we are only a single-car operation in sports cars, we have a large engineering department, and a very well-structured department running the car.
“We drew up some plans for our expansion that are relatively straightforward. What we are focusing on now is the commercial aspect of trying to make that dream a reality.
We are focusing on how to make it competitive that’s our main focus and whatever money that takes, that’s what we need to look for.”
De Ferran is one of the best-known Brazilian race car drivers in the world, and IndyCar just sighed a large, long-term business deal with Apex-Brazil, which includes the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association—a huge commercial concern in Brazil. Further, IndyCar announced last week that it will run its first race of the season in Brazil. The time is certainly ripe for de Ferran to seek sponsorship for his IndyCar team.
Acquiring cars and motors, spare parts, transporters and the like, will be the easiest part of the operation in de Ferran’s view.
“The way IndyCar racing is structured it’s actually quite easy to get equipment. We aren’t concerned about equipment. We are concerned about putting the commercial aspects of the operation together as early as possible so we can get to work as early as possible, and hopefully be competitive in our first season.”
