Racing is a family affair for Dr. Fareed Ali and his sons, Adam and Daniel. DSC readers may know the two second-generation racers through their recent LMP3 experience in the European Le Mans Series, Asian Le Mans Series, and Michelin Le Mans Cup.
Most recently, Adam – the older brother – was confirmed in a GT World Challenge Europe seat at Barwell Motorsport, and tested a Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 for the first time at Paul Ricard – as did Daniel, just a few days removed from wrapping up an Asian Le Mans Series campaign at Inter Europol Competition.
Fareed, who’s supported his sons’ careers along the way, most recently raced in the 2023 Ligier European Series, a support series for the ELMS and Le Mans Cup.
Together they have all raced inside the FEL Motorsports umbrella: Fareed took part in the inaugural Sports Car Championship Canada season in 2021, while Daniel and Adam graduated from the national karting circuit into the Radical Cup Canada series in 2022.
During the Twelve Hours of Sebring week, DSC’s RJ O’Connell caught up with all three members of the Toronto-based racing family, to talk about how they got started racing, and how racing in the FEL Motorsports umbrella established a foundation for them to advance their racing careers.
RJO: Can I start by asking, Dr. Ali – did you get your kids into racing, or did they get you into it?
Fareed: No, it was me. I started just doing some basic track days when I got a new Porsche Panamera in 2009 and did a track day. I’d followed F1 a bit when I was growing up, but then I got completely out of racing for several decades – so I had no knowledge, no interest in it. I got the Panamera – I figured it was time to treat myself to a nice car – and a couple days before I took delivery, the local Porsche dealer called me and said, ‘Hey, you timed it perfectly – your car’s ready for delivery, and we have our first track day!’
And I said, ‘What’s a track day?’ They said, ‘Oh, we have customers take their new cars out on the racetrack,’ and I said, ‘Okay, first of all – that sounds like a horrible idea – and secondly, what race track is nearby?’ Because I had no idea that we had a track like Mosport right near us. And I did it, and like a lot of people, I just got completely hooked on it.
One thing led to another, I started doing track days, and then I started racing. I actually started through BAM Motorsports, which now manages the kids. And the principal is Dave Madgwick – he’s around everywhere – and I became good friends with him. Initially, my medical practice sponsored one of his drivers, Rob Huff. And then when I said that I wanted to try, moving on from track days to racing, he said, ‘Well, you know, Rob’s a good coach. He’ll coach you.’
I did a couple seasons of Britcar endurance racing with a Boxster, and then a Cayman. Then I did a year of Creventic. And when I started racing, I saw all these guys who were, you know, my age or a little older. And invariably, they all did karting. So I said, ‘Oh, okay, karting is kind of the way to start – let’s see if the kids get into it!’ They started at six or seven years old, and they really liked it, but they also showed an early talent with it – and then it just took off from there.
RJO: So after starting your racing career in Europe, what led you back to racing back home in Canada?
Fareed: When I was first looking at doing my racing, there weren’t any options that were really cost-effective for me. I would have to go to the US anyway. If I’m getting on a plane, if I have to go somewhere, there just looked like there were better options that fit into my schedule.
Or you can go to England, and get in lots of track time, pretty cost-effective. It sounds silly now, but at the time, it was just better for me, there were more opportunities for me if I had to get on a plane to go to England, rather than, you know, go around the US and do SCCA races or things like that.
So before FEL came around, there really wasn’t anything, whether it’s for young kids, or guys like me who want to get into gentleman racing, who are late to racing. When the Canadian Touring Car Championship, and then certainly FEL came up, then it became really simple for me.
And then when the boys were ready to transition from karting to cars, fortunately, FEL was around. Because it would have been when they were young kids, students, it would have been really hard for them to do the travelling to Europe to get into it. It was really well-timed that we had the Radical Cup Canada and the Sports Car series at the time when they were ready to step up.
RJO: What was it like from your perspective, entering FEL as a ‘late-starting professional’ in TCR touring cars?
Fareed: Yeah – definitely an emphasis on “late-starting”, less emphasis on “professional”! But, it’s kind of funny, because a lot of people with a lot of knowledge say that it’s not the best platform, because it’s so limited and it doesn’t really prepare you for anything because it’s such a different car. We were advised, especially for the kids, for them to stay away from it, because you’re just not going to learn good habits if they’re looking towards prototypes or GT3s. It’s kind of interesting because, on the other hand, you look at Tobi Lütke, that’s where he started – and look where he is now, he’s in prototypes.
I think it speaks volumes. What balances the platform is how close the racing is, and how intense the racing is in the touring cars in the FEL series. It was the same group of guys. And it’s kind of nice to see guys like LP Montour and the Tomlinsons (Ron and Megan) moving up into the IMSA races. And they all started in the touring cars, right? I think you have to not get fixated on that it’s a front-wheel-drive platform and more on the fact that it’s very close racing.
You get to know those other drivers. It’s the nice thing with our local series – it’s a good number, the grids are good but they’re not huge, and there’s not a lot of turnover. It’s the same people racing against each other. So you get to know their style of racing. There’s a lot of friendly, sometimes a little intense rivalry, but your racecraft really develops well at it.
You’ve got a really good factory support level. That’s what I think Chris was really good at in FEL. He really got the OEMs involved. They could have easily blown us off, you know, It’s just Canada, it’s small, you’re only racing at a couple of tracks, and you don’t have a lot of media. But obviously, Chris did something right to get the OEMs involved at a very early stage. And you saw that the teams learned how to work with the manufacturers, and work with the tyre manufacturers and everything.
So on that level, it was very professional. And then when we go on to race in SRO and the ACO, obviously it’s up at another level. But you’ve realized, working in a series like FEL, how important it is to have the teams, the OEMs, and the organisers all on the same page and working together. That’s what worked well early on. From what I gather, it’s still something that’s really paying dividends for Chris’ series. But that’s what I learned from the touring cars, aside from just the driving skills. You’re learning how these series operate.
RJO: For your sons, how did you benefit from racing in the FEL system?
Adam: The biggest benefit that FEL gave us was the concept of Radical having such a massive downforce coefficient compared to things that we’ve driven in the past. We basically went straight from karting into a Radical, which the amount of downforce that that has is quite foreign to someone who came from karting, where that’s not really something that’s relevant.
And it’s something that’s really important when you go into formula racing or prototypes like LMP3. Having the concept of downforce is kind of the one area of car workings that we didn’t get familiar with in karting. So the fact that FEL had a Radical Championship is actually quite valuable, because it gave us a way to jump right out of karting into something that had downforce, and learn about that before we entered something like LMP3 – where it’s an even higher level of downforce use in the cars.
If you look at who I was racing against – you had some quite big names, either coming out of karting or going into other things that they’ve already entered now. Jonathan Woolridge is obviously quite a big name that I was competing against at the time, and that’s someone who had a lot of experience in Radical. So it was really good to visualise or measure my performance, compared to his. Having someone with that experience – and also, all the other drivers in the series that had some experience, probably even more than me when I was doing it – was really quite valuable.
That’s the good thing about something like FEL, where it’s so local that you get a lot of people that are coming straight out of karting, and you have all these different experience levels – but the experience is very high as well. So it’s a good way to measure up against different drivers, some people that are stronger than you. And you can learn from them, but also still have competition that’s going to be at the level you are when you enter it.
RJO: That’s such an important component of why Chris (Bye) founded FEL Motorsports, to help give Canadian talent a chance to advance their careers – because after karting, what comes next for a lot of younger drivers like yourselves?
Adam: It’s one of the big questions you get from a lot of the drivers in karting. There’s a lot of big talent. Even when I was doing it – obviously, I’m more familiar with when I was in the karting world – but a lot of the drivers that I was competing against had the talent to get into racing. It’s just quite difficult to make the transition. But FEL certainly made it easy for us, going into something like prototypes and GT racing, with the Radical programme and things like that. So I’m quite fortunate for them to set up a programme that worked really well to transition out of karts into cars.
Daniel: To add onto that as well, when Adam and I were mainly in junior karting, the only option that we really knew about after go-karting, was you’d have to go into Formula 1600. And after that, there really isn’t much knowledge of where else you can go after. I feel like in continents like the European Union or the US, there’s a lot more opportunities. Especially in different disciplines of motorsports, like in touring cars, endurance racing, in Radicals and in formula cars.
I think that’s another really good thing that FEL provided, was so many opportunities like that, and different types of racing. Like Adam said, we got into Radicals, which is basically the entry level for prototype racing. But in FEL there’s also the option to race in touring cars and even GTs as well, which was a really big advantage. It really gave us an idea to figure out what we wanted to do.
Especially now, My brother and I just got back from Paul Ricard, where we were doing testing in the Prologue for the GT World Challenge. And if you look at the field, there’s so much skill and so much talent in the field. Like, you look at the driver entry list, and you see some of the biggest names in motorsports in the world right now. You see many factory drivers for BMW, Porsche, and Lamborghini. Even on the team we’re driving for, we have a very talented Lamborghini Squadra Corse factory driver (Sandy Mitchell). I think it provides a very good thing that we can push for, which is very unique.
And it’s also quite a cool experience to be able to drive on track in some of the championships as these drivers, a lot of drivers that I grew up watching, as well. It’s a very cool moment. It’s also a very good opportunity, that we’re learning to really take advantage of.
RJO: What are some of your favourite places in Canada to race? Any hidden gems on the calendar?
Daniel: In terms of Canada, I enjoy Calabogie (Motorsports Park) quite a lot, actually. It’s a very interesting track where there’s not much room for error, which definitely makes it a bit more challenging, and a bit more entertaining. You don’t really have many exit kerbs or runoff, you just have grass followed very quickly by the wall. Also, the track itself flows very nicely. It’s a very technical layout, it has a lot of different types of corners, which I think makes it very challenging and very fun to drive.
But that being said I would still have to say that Mosport is probably my favourite. I think that Mosport is just one of the most well-known tracks in North America, arguably in the world. There’s very few tracks that have this much elevation, and that, again, are this technical and this challenging – despite the fact that it’s only got, I think eight or nine corners. I’ve spoken to a lot of drivers who are racing in IMSA, whether it’s in a GT car or an LMP2, or even a WEC Hypercar. And they all say that the first time they go to Mosport, it’s a new favourite track for them, just because of how challenging and intimidating it is. I think we’re actually quite fortunate to have a track like that in Canada.
Fareed: I mean, Calabogie is neat. It’s a cool place, a place that’s not on everybody’s radar. So it’s very gratifying to have raced there. I’m not going to say it’s my favourite track, but the Canadian Sebring is ICAR (International Center of Advanced Racing). It’s at an old airport in Montreal, it’s basically just some lines on a huge expanse of pavement, and it’s crazy. I’ve never driven Sebring, but I know everybody says how bumpy Sebring is. And if it’s bumpier than ICAR, then those guys are really talented. It doesn’t get mentioned much, but it’s a neat place.
LMP3 race before I did ELMS. I was really looking forward to that, unfortunately, it didn’t work out. But obviously, I did a lot of preparation there. I’ve driven that track quite a bit in preparation for that event. It just fell through. So it would be really great to experience that track – I really enjoy Road Atlanta, and driving that in any car would be quite a nice achievement for me, at least.
RJO: And Fareed, as your boys make another step in their career, what goals do you want them to achieve?
Fareed: I want them to just experience it. They’re moving from ACO rules and paddock and manufacturers to the SRO. They’re very complementary, but they’re very different. In the SRO, you have a lot more of the manufacturers directly involved. There’s a manufacturer’s trophy, of course. You get to see a lot of the involvement of the manufacturers – for example, you get the factory drivers for each team. And what I found interesting is you don’t just have a designated factory team that gets all the factory drivers, and all the other teams running the same brand of car are ‘second class citizens’. It was really interesting to see.
We have Sandy Mitchell, who’s just one of the most talented Lamborghini drivers in the world – he’s factory Lamborghini, but he is with our team. It was really neat to see him there working with the rookies. Three of the four drivers had never really done any significant GT3 racing at all, and none of them had ever been in a Lamborghini. So Sandy was right in there, working with them, teaching them, and coaching them. And then also, we had Casper Stevenson, who, again, is top-level in Aston Martin. He was amazing.
I thought that was really nice to see – how the manufacturers really get in, and they allow the factory drivers to work with all of the teams. This is something I really want the boys to get working with. Racing is really about developing a toolbox, right? It’s developing a toolbox of on-track talent, but it’s also developing a toolbox of the off-track stuff. It’s working with the media, working with other drivers. It’s coaching, it’s being coached, working with the manufacturers. ACO was great, but it’s just another level, where you’re really working with the manufacturers, you’re working with factory drivers. For them, they’re going to be learning a few new tracks, but certainly learning a new platform, a new skill.
If I have to say it in one sentence: Obviously, enjoyment is number one, and progressing their skills. But for them, it’s just adding to their toolbox, building on the experience of young drivers working with the different rules and manufacturer relationships.
