2022 has seen Optimum Motorsport and their inception Racing customer effort for Brendan Iribe contest a spectacular range of races and Championships including FIA WEC GTE Am with Team Project 1, Championship winning success in the Asian Le Mans Series, a Championship leading effort in the International GT Open and a potential double title-winning weekend with IMSA and GT World Challenge efforts down to the wire.
The DSC Editor sat down with Optimum Motorsport Team Principal Shaun Goff at Spa last weekend, where the team were involved in yet another of their programmes, the Michelin Le Mans Cup LMP3 effort for Mark Crader and Alex Mortimer – and there was plenty of ground to cover:
“We come into the weekend leading both in IMSA’s GTD class and also leading the GT World Challenge Europe Gold Cup class standings and, remarkably, Brendan can somehow participate in both,” said Shaun.
“He’ll do the first part of Petit Le Mans and clear his mandatory drive time, getting on a private jet at 3pm in the afternoon, obviously, some eight hours before the race finishes! From there he’ll fly to Barcelona, where he lamds at 6am Spanish time to be on-track at 9am for qualifying on the Sunday morning, which gives him the laps he needs to qualify for the race!”
But Shaun won’t for this weekend, be at either Road Atlanta or Barcelona:
“My son Lewis is also competing in his final karting event of the year at Ellough Park (Suffolk, UK) on the Sunday. We’re second in the championship three points off the lead. So I really want to be there for him. So where I take, obviously, some disappointment not attending Petit Le Mans or Barcelona I take huge comfort that we have some amazing people that can deal with our programmes in parallel on two different continents on the same weekend.”
How many of the guys are your guys?
“They’re all our guys.
“This weekend, we’re at the GT Open Championship in Monza with Joe Osborne and Nick Moss currently, currently, at the top end of the championship with Monza and Barcelona to go (the pair would win one of the two races and now lead the Championship standings).
“As a team, we are set up for three separate destinations on the same weekend. We have 30+ operational staff.
“For Barcelona, some of the guys who are on the Nick Moss car, including Robert Courtneidge, our race engineer on that car, would take the helm at GT World Challenge.
So how do you determine where the cars are at any given time?
“We currently have five (McLaren 720S GT3) cars for our programmes – three cars at our disposal in America which facilitate the IMSA programme.
Then the car which won recently (in GT World Challenge) at Hockenheim is departing today, if not tomorrow, from the workshop to go to Barcelona for the GT World Challenge finale.
“Logistically we don’t we don’t do simple! And we’re working out things for next year where it’s a logistical nightmare!”
What about the races in the Gulf this winter?
“I’ve secured my entry (with one McLaren 720S GT3) at the Gulf 12 hours and I’m just talking to a few people on facilitating that programme, nothing’s set in stone as well.
“It’s a popular round this year with the Intercontinental GT Championship joining. It’s at maximum capacity and if my car was sitting in the workshop in December and someone asked me to do that race, it’s a difficult problem.
“So with the nice winter calendar of the Gulf 12 hours, Dubai 24 and the Asian Le Mans series. If it doesn’t go out and race at the Gulf 12 hours then we try to do Dubai and if it doesn’t race at Dubai then we try and do Asian Le Man Series. And for me, there’s time to box off the Asian Le Mans series for sure. But there isn’t much time left to commit to the Gulf 12 Hours.
“We have every intention of returning to the Asian Le Mans Series, I’m hoping with two cars, but it just made logistical and business sense to commit to the Gulf 12 early because it was filling up.”
What would be the ideal winter programme for the team?
“One at Dubai. It’s a big ask for any team to field a strong, competitive, reliable effort in a 24 hour race.
“The main effort is to defend our Asian Le Mans Series title with the great opportunity that goes with it to compete at Le Mans again.
“Le Mans was a dream for me but honestly it wasn’t really on our radar when we went to the Asian Le Mans Series in our first year, really just as a winter programme for Brendan only to realise, midway through the event that we were doing pretty well. That ended up with our first race at Le Mans before winning in Asia last year and going again!
“After finishing fourth in the standings the first year we were suddenly in a position where we neded to make Le Mans happen, just at the point where we were also in the process of putting an IMSA programme together for the first time too!”
And where are you basing your US programme?
“So we literally had to find a base, a truck, a plan to facilitate the IMSA programme.
“We found a shop very close to CoTA with Esses Racing, co-owned by Dave O’Neill who is ex-Manor and Haas F1, we found him via our Technical Director Ian Smith, they are very good friends and we put it all together, it’s been great.
“I’ve invested heavily now out there with trucks and equipment and we’d like to stay out there – it’s such a buzz out in America.
“We had to reign back the IMSA Sprint campaign this year by 4 races with a pile-up of fixtures, and we may well not see Brendan at Bahrain (for FIA WEC) this year either.
“It’s been a real experience, (in the #56 Team Project 1 Porsche GTE Am entry) it was great to get the podium at Sebring off the back of an incident in the Prologue the week before.
“And at Le Mans, for us it was going so well, Brendan had one hour left of his entire stint, and there was eight hours of the race to go, we were in very good shape.
“We were counting down every second of his time, having done what he was supposed to do to perfection until just that one lapse of concentration just ended up resulting in an accident.”
So no GTE programme for its final year?
“It would be fair to say that Brendan’s happy place is the GT3 car, the McLaren in particular. He loves it.
“The team are doing a great job, McLaren do a great job, reliability is a massive improvement over previous years, we’re honed in really well to fuel saving and all the things many people don’t think about that make the difference in races at this level.
“It’s very hard to try and get the guys to drive a little more slowly, but then it will come good at the end. And now the guys have got so much confidence in what they do and what we do, everything has got easier and better.
So what else in 2023?
“Going into next year, we look set to be back in IMSA GTD. What wasn’t appealing was when they announced the reduction of the (Bronze) driver time from 45 to 35 minutes, which we’re hoping they make some adjustment to, because it’s not that appealing to Brendan for the amount of money that is being spent to do that.
“We’re also looking to confirm the full Intercontinental GT Challenge with Brendan next year: Bathurst, Kyalami, Spa, Indianapolis and the Gulf 12 Hours – A return to the WEC though looks unlikely.
“We’ll be back with Mark Crader in the LMP3 car, it that is in Michelin Le Mans Cup I’d like to add a second car. We are looking at ELMS as an alternative.”
“We have also ordered two of the new McLaren GT4 Arturas with a commitment to their Trophy championship, their new Gentleman’s series. And obviously, an old stomping ground of ours, which is close to my heart. British GT is somewhere where we’ve been missing since 2012 and those two cars could fulfil both.
“We need to reconnect ourselves back at a lower level entry for motorsport for Gentlemen drivers. We need to try and find the next Brendan.
“My car, which is going off for its winter holiday around the Middle East, we’re looking to field that car in GT World Challenge, because that’s where we’ve been present for the last three years.
“That’s not a programme for Brendan, we want to sell the car as a Pro-Am or Gold Cup car. It would be nice to be able to undergo that commercial process as reigning Gold Cup Champions so the weekend to come is important on that front too.”
So that’s confirmed or actively planned programmes in 2023 in IMSA, IGTC, Asian LMS, Michelin Le Mans Cup (and/ or ELMS), GT World Challenge, International GT Open, 24H Dubai British GT and McLaren Trophy Europe not a lot of let up for Shaun, Bas Leinders, Ian Smith and the 30 or so staff at Optimum Motorsport for another year!
