Bridger Motorsport has set sensible expectations for its maiden British GT Championship campaign with the Honda NSX GT3 Evo 22 platform in 2025.
The team’s surprise programme for this year adds a ninth manufacturer to the grid and a new driver line-up of Johnny Ip and Ginetta GT graduate Luke Garlick.
“It’s going very well,” team principal Jay Bridger told DSC on the media day at the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit, a track the championship will visit again in April.
“Our drivers are quite inexperienced, so we’re just trying to get as many laps on this track as possible, especially around here.
“It’s quite a big circuit, it’s quite technical with a lot of high-speed corners. They’re not used to the aero on the car, so we’re just trying to give them as much time as possible.”
Garlick stepped up from karting into car racing in 2022 before winning the Ginetta Junior championship in 2023 and finishing third place in the 2024 Ginetta GT championship standings.
After earning 15 podium finishes during a fruitful campaign last year, this will be his first step into GT3 racing behind the wheel of a Honda NSX GT3.
Bridger Motorsport, one of two new British GT3 teams this year, is equally new to GT machinery, having primarily run efforts in national single-seater racing to this point.
“We’re quite realistic in our expectations. We’re a new team, it’s a new car to the championship, new drivers,” Bridger added.
“The main thing for us is reliability, drivers getting laps in so they can improve, and us getting. We need as much time on track as possible so we can improve the car.
“Today, in particular, we learned a lot about our strengths and weaknesses with the car. I’m pretty happy with it.
“I think we’ll be looking just to finish in the top-10. I’d be delighted with that as a starting point. If you’re too optimistic, you’re just going to be disappointed.”
The team has a long-term outlook for this programme with Honda and JAS, as it revealed to DSC that it has acquired a second chassis that it hopes to eventually race alongside the #86.
“Our plan is to run one car to start off with and get that correct,” Bridger clarified. “We’re learning a lot, learning how the race weekend’s work, making sure we’re doing everything correctly before we start running the second car.
“We’ve got the second car, and we’re going to do more testing with that potentially. The plan is to maybe look to run two of them the following year.
“If we’re doing well [this year and] it’s going better than we expect, we may look at running it a little bit earlier.”
The second Honda was previously campaigned by Nova Race in the 2024 Italian GT Championship, one of three representing the Honda manufacturer. According to Bridger, after evaluating multiple GT3 models, he was left impressed by what the NSX – a car seldom campaigned in Europe – has to offer.
“They’re good cars,” he said. “We’ve looked at other cars and worked with other cars, and we’re really impressed with the build quality.
“It’s run perfectly. We’ve done a lot of testing and a lot of mileage on it now. When you’re going out and you’ve got problems, mechanical problems, you know what that’s like. It doesn’t help at all.
“There’s a lot of positives. We’ve just got a lot of catching up to do, but we’re getting there.”
The opening round at Donington Park on 5-6 April will host a two-hour race for the 27-car multi-class British GT grid of GT3 and GT4 cars.
