The soon-to-be-renamed Hertz Team Jota are set to campaign a single Porsche 963 in the full 2023 FIA World Endurance Championship in 2023 with a team of “the very best drivers available”.
Jota co-owner David Clark is credited by his partner Sam Hignett with developing the deal that brings the first ever customer hybrid race car to the FIA WEC, but Clark himself is unwilling to take that much credit.
“It’s been a deal that has been six months in the making but the credit, all of it, goes to Tom Wagner and Greg O’Hara, both senior board members of Hertz with a background in financial investment.
“It’s their vision that has made this happen and it’s their vision that you’ll see next year making a fundamental change to the way you see the team present ourselves in the paddock, and to the activation that their investment will bring to the programme – It’s going to be really quite big, Hertz intend to be noticed.”
And that programme is already a multi-year commitment.
“The initial deal is a three year contract for Hertz Team Jota with a 2 year option (to follow). That gives everyone involved both the room, and the encouragement to keep pushing very hard for the sporting and commercial objectives that are clearly a part of the reckoning here.
“Hertz wanted a relationship with a team that they could work with at every level and, in that regard, we have a major advantage over a factory outfit.
“You could say that we are a speedboat and not an oil tanker, able to be responsive to an immediate idea or demand in a way that an organisation with many more layers simply can’t.
“It takes a conversation or a phone call to make change if it’s warranted, sensible and productive, whether that’s a team matter, commercial, PR and social media and that has paid off already in a number of ways – Everything we have discussed and agreed has happened!”
And whilst Jota, in common with just about every other major existing WEC team, have been working on a number of options to step up to the new Hypercar class, David was gushing in his praise for the approach that Porsche had taken to a prospective deal:
“They have been amazing, they believed in us and we were welcomed with open arms. I have to say that dealing with Porsche Motorsport was a revelation, not in any way the big unfriendly corporate that you might imagine. They have great people who are clearly empowered to discuss and agree some pretty significant matters.”
A top class effort, with the budgets that entails, has a significant impact on any organisation so will there be changes at Jota?
“Very likely – a substantial corporate deal, and in particular one that involves the team running with three absolutely top drivers, changes things hugely.
“We are thinking about restructuring around a new Team Principal, there may well be a new and very significant role for Sam (Hignett), we made some moves in that direction at Le Mans, it was his first without a radio!”
The step up to Hypercar also seems likely to mark the end of Jota’s involvement in LMP2 – “Not confirmed but yes that looks likely. There are no plans at present for a parallel LMP2 programme in 2023.”
The team’s GT3 programme awaits a decision with Jota wishing to continue into an era that offers significant new opportunities.
For now though, the focus is on the new programme with the Porsche 963, which begs the question, just how tough was it to get the deals together to do this?
“It’s tough, but it’s a matter of finding the right people with the right vision and I think we learned early on that you have to be adventurous and innovative.
“There are opportunities out there, we have found them and others can too.
“Tom and Greg are the first US investors that I am aware of that have taken a look at global motorsport in this way – we’ve seen it happen with many other sports, attracting funding and investment from the USA, and I think with the right approach, the right programme and the right team, there are others that might join them on the journey.
For Jota, the deal is done, and for David Clark, even before the WEC’s next outing at Monza, there’s another race to be involved in – Le Mans Classic, with the super-keen historic racer fielding a pair of cars at the event, his Porsche 904 and Lotus Elite. Even there though there are still deals being done.
“I’m running on Aramco synthetic fuel, a one-off for the moment but a bit of an opportunity to show what it can do in a very different marketplace.”
His co-driver for the event? ACO President Pierre Fillon!
