This year’s Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona will be the start of a new full-time IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship programme from California-based organisation US RaceTronics (USRT).
As USRT founder and Team Director Shane Seneviratne explains, the launch of this brand new programme with the newest Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 will also coincide with the launch of a new identity for the team’s future: Forte Racing.
“I’m trying to create a uniform brand,” said Seneviratne, whose team recently took on multiple names – USRT, O’Gara Motorsports, and Change Racing among others. “US Racetronics started off as a company that was going to do electronics in racing. But now with a couple more business partners coming in, we are definitely looking at creating a name that is very simple.”
“It’s going to take a couple more races to get everything into place, because this just took place recently. But moving forward, it’ll be just Forte Racing.”
With Arrow Electronics – a major backer of McLaren’s efforts in Formula One and the IndyCar Series – on board as their primary sponsor, Forte Racing will run the full season with drivers Misha Goikhberg and Loris Spinelli.
It’ll be Goikhberg’s first full season effort in the WeatherTech Sportscar Championship since 2020. The Russian-born Canadian national previously enjoyed success as a member of JDC-Miller Motorsports, including an overall victory in the 2018 Six Hours of Watkins Glen. He drove the previous season for K-PAX Racing in GT World Challenge America, driving the previous evolution of the Lamborghini GT3.
“I met Misha and had the opportunity to try and run a car for him in GTD,” Seneviratne explains. And a lot of that relationship goes back to Misha’s driver coach, Bob Perona.”
Perona was part of USRT’s successful endeavours in the Formula Atlantic Championship during the late 2000s – perhaps their most successful export of that period was IndyCar Series veteran, Simona de Silvestro, who finished third in the championship in 2009 after signing with the team.
“Based on that relationship, they felt like what Misha needs is that same kind of environment that we provided to Simona – so that’s how the programme was initiated.”
Spinelli returns to the same team he raced full-time for last year in GT World Challenge America, when he shared a Mercedes-AMG GT3 with longtime US Racetronics client Steven Aghahkhani. The Italian driver earned high marks from within USRT for his pace and off-track demeanour.
“Not only is he quick, he’s a super nice guy to work with. And it’s very rare that you find both combinations together. He’s a team player, that gets the job done for whatever we want,” Seneviratne says of Spinelli.
“The main goal is to just try and get ourselves established as a team,” he says of their plans for the short term in their new IMSA project. “One of the big, big things for us is also bringing Arrow as a sponsor to the sports car platform. We want to make sure we provide them with a good entry into the series. And then we try to get some results.”
Seneviratne also confirmed to DSC that the team has no plans to continue in SRO America for 2023, but the team and Aghakhani will continue a working relationship in other series.
