Just a few years ago, Random Vandals Racing was an upstart team new to the world of professional motorsport, just removed from the club scene and into the SRO America paddock with a GT4 BMW M4 and – arguably their most famous car – the delightful green Mitsubishi Minicab kei truck that accompanies the team at every race.
But success came quickly in the GT4 category, and sparked an expansion into GT3 racing. These days, the Random Vandals garage is sprawling with two of the latest BMW M4 GT3 EVOs, three of the latest GT4 EVOs – and of course, the Minicab – the vehicles of a fun-loving team that is serious about contending for titles in GT World Challenge America and Pirelli GT4 America.
Presiding over it all is Team Principal and GT4 America driver Paul Sparta, who’s making a comeback to racing this year after what could have been a career-ending crash in August.
Just one corner into the first GT4 America race at Road America, Sparta was involved in a multi-car pileup and t-boned another car. The collision broke a vertebra in Sparta’s back and put him out of action for the rest of the year. That injury also cost him a shot at the GT4 America Am class title, which has eluded him and his team the last four years he’s raced in the series.
Last month at Sonoma Raceway, in his first race back after injury, Sparta caused a collision that took him and two other Am class BMWs out of contention – certainly not the return that he’d hoped for. But the next day, he and co-driver Michael Kanisczak (Sparta’s replacement for the final rounds of last season) returned to the podium, finishing third in the Am class to jump-start their push for the 2025 title.
After the race, Sparta talked to DSC about his first weekend back behind the wheel. “I mean, it was just great. You know, when you do this and then you’re prevented from doing it, it really sucks. And you Jones about it the whole time you’re not racing.
“So to get back here – we had a tough (race) yesterday, my teammate had to start in the pit lane. We just had good circumstances, and in the wet, we were both able to make positions and do just enough to get up there. But it certainly felt very good to get up there!”
And it wasn’t just Sparta’s return to racing that had everyone at Random Vandals feeling fantastic as they left Sonoma. With entries in all three GT4 America categories, Random Vandals Racing cars won two of them – in the Silver class, Kevin Boehm and Kenton Koch captured their first Silver class win of the year, and likewise, Sam Craven and Josh Green won the Pro-Am class.
Then came the Sunday main event, Race 2 of GT World Challenge America powered by AWS – where Koch and Connor De Phillippi took the win after Koch caught and passed talented rookie Alex Sedgwick’s Porsche with just two laps to go to take the overall and Pro class win.
That win, plus a second-place finish in Race 1, have put Koch and De Phillippi on top of the quartet of strong Pro class cars in the 2025 standings.
“It’s just awesome to get the first win, and it’s great that we had all three cars on the podium in GT4. Saturday was a tough day, and today was massive redemption – a big first, and more to come,” Sparta said hours after seeing his cars take the chequered flag.
Koch also had to come from behind to win GT4 America, overcoming the challenge of Toyota prodigy Gresham Wagner to take the lead with five minutes left. While he may ‘only’ be the designated Silver driver of the GT World America #99 BMW on paper, Koch showed the poise and cunning demonstrated by any of the best factory GT3 drivers that he regularly competes against.
“I mean, he’s an absolute stud,” Sparta says of Koch. “He is a star – and he’s cerebral. He gets things done intelligently. He knew that he needed a mistake from Alex – Alex made a tiny mistake, and he pounced. He knew that was his one opportunity. He took it and made a beautiful move.”
What was easily lost in the moment of Koch’s pass for the win in the closing laps was two herculean performances from Random Vandals’ new #51 BMW, a brand-new M4 GT3 EVO chassis for ex-Samantha Tan Racing drivers Bill Auberlen and Varun Choksey. In both races, the BMW legend and his second-year co-driver had to come from the very back of the grid to finish third and fourth overall out of 19 starters.
“I mean, what can you say about those guys!? You know, Bill – he’s the legend, he just keeps going. I mean, he still has the pace and he drove two incredibly smart and great races,” Sparta said of Auberlen’s first race with the team.
Auberlen’s drive from 19th to sixth in just ten minutes in Race 1, is something that every sports car fan expects of him even in the sunset years of his career.
But Sparta believes that Atlanta-born Choksey – who’s climbed the ladder from Canada’s F1600 Series, to Formula Regional Americas, Porsche Carrera Cup North America, and now GT World Challenge America – has a star quality of his own.
“I think they’re going to know who he is. He’s just putting in lap times right there with the #99 car. And he made great moves, I think Varun got six or seven folks on the track – people should watch Varun, he’s going somewhere!” he says of the Atlanta-born youngster.
That brings us to COTA, where three of Random Vandals’ five cars are leading the standings in either GT4 America or GT World America. Koch and Boehm lead the GT4 America Silver standings, while Craven and Green are on top in Pro-Am, holding a tiebreaker advantage over reigning Pro-Am title winners ACI Motorsports.
And they’re going back to the inaugural GT4 America ‘Lone Star Enduro,’ the double-points, three-hour endurance race at COTA – which Koch and Boehm won overall last year, in a race where BMW customers won all three classes.
For a team whose GT3 programme has been on track for less than a year, such a weekend like the one at Sonoma could be overwhelming. But Random Vandals asserted itself on the scene quickly in GT3 last summer, and has come close to GT4 success in recent years – Sparta expects his team to compete at the front every weekend.
“We came in this to win as many championships as we can, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do!” Sparta exclaimed. “So we’re ready to go at COTA, do a little endurance round, and hopefully win some more!”
All that’s missing is an American equivalent of Japan’s K4GP series to make the Minicab a potential winner too – but for now, it’s doing an honest job hauling tyres and tools around the paddock, for a team that has caught everyone’s attention in the SRO America paddock…
Images © SRO Motorsports America
