One of the bright young faces in the European Le Mans Series paddock at Paul Ricard last weekend was 19-year-old Dutchman Job van Uitert, who made a successful sportscar debut with the RLR Msport team.
He teamed up with John Farano and Rob Garofall to win the LMP3 class in the opening round of the season and will feature on DSC as a regular columnist in 2018 in a series we call “The Rookie”.
In this first edition Job explains how he ended up in a Ligier LMP3.
“It is a wrap, my first weekend in the ELMS and the Michelin Le Mans Cup is officially done and dusted and it was quite something. I never expected to win our first race, let alone make such a splash in my opening, two-hour stint. To bring the car back to the pits with almost a minute advantage gave me a lot of satisfaction, to say the least!
The week at Paul Ricard is the start of my sportscar career but it also ends a long road leading up to my first (very long) stint. I started my racing career 4 years ago as a considerable shorter kid in the Dutch Mazda MX5 cup before moving into single-seaters in the German and Italian Formula 4 series. I grew up on circuits, my father twice took the Dutch Formula Ford championship and it was natural for me to step into a Formula 4 myself. In 2017, I took second in the Italian F4 series so, again, we started to look at the next step.
Originally we gravitated to stepping up to the GP3 championship and I tested with my F4 team, Jenzer Motorsport a few times but gradually, and at the insistence of a few people around me, including my driver coach, I started to look at this other racing world.
Now I’ve known about Le Mans and I have driven a GT3 car before but to let go of the idea that you are the next F1 star and set your sights on the 24 hours of Le Mans is something that cannot be forced upon you. It wasn’t until I had my first taste of the RLR Msport Ligier at a cold and windy Donington Park a few days after the 2017 ELMS finale that it first hit me: this is a cool car to drive! But still I had some thinking and testing to do.
When we made the decision to move into sportscars it was very rational. Do I have the means to give myself the opportunity to make it to Formula 1? If I want to end up in a top notch LMP1/DPi team, should I develop myself further in GP3 and F2 or do I prove myself in the actual arena that I want to compete in?
The answers to these questions brought me to where I am now, with RLR Msport, holding a winner’s trophy after our first race weekend. And the job I was asked to do looks relatively straightforward: qualify well, start even better and put the team in a great position after my stint. But what I’ve learned already is the amount of work, the amount of detail and the mental capacity the team and the driver have to put in to even be within shouting distance of where you need to be, let alone be successful.
It has been a true eye opener and a huge learning curve. Something I will tell you guys about in the next edition of the rookie on Dailysportscar.com. See you soon!”
