The bulk of Gustavo Yacaman’s career has been spent racing in the U.S., but a change in plans with his team will likely result in the 23-year-old moving to the FIA WEC in the 2015 season.
Yacaman worked his way up the European open-wheel ladder before continuing the process in America where he went on to win races in the Firestone Indy Lights series. Later, after his chances of moving up to the Verizon IndyCar Series began to dwindle, he turned his attention to sports car racing, signing with Michael Shank Racing’s Daytona Prototype operation in 2013.
Thanks to his deeply ingrained open-wheel mindset, the rapid Colombian’s adaptation to endurance racing was painful to watch at times, earning more notoriety for the cars he hit than his ability to pilot a prototype.
Driving for Oak Racing in 2014, and barring a few small skirmishes, Yacaman displayed the type of maturity that had been missing with MSR, and went on to take the overall win at the Tudor United SportsCar Championship’s Canadian Tire Motorsports Park round with co-driver Olivier Pla.
With the French team set to drop its American programme in favour of World Endurance Championship P2 entries in 2015, Yacaman has told Marshall Pruett he expects to follow Oak’s lead across the pond.
“Oak Racing has nothing going on in the U.S., so we’re working with them to run a full season in the WEC next season,” he said. “We still have to finalize some details on drivers, who’s the Silver, who’s the Gold, and all of that, but it’s slowly coming together.”
That suggests that Yacaman is in the mix or one of the planned pair of LMP2 G-Drive Ligers for the season’s World Championship
Yacaman’s ties with Oak would not prevent him from competing in various Tudor Championship rounds, but he isn’t planning on dropping in for any one-offs at the moment.
“I don’t think I’ll be racing in America; I’ve spoken with some DP teams, some PC teams, and they all want money,” he explained. “I’m not in a position to have my sponsors put money towards one of those programmes.
It’s a shame to not race in America, and it’s disappointing, but thank God for the option to go to Europe with Oak to race in the WEC. If it wasn’t for that opportunity, I’d probably be applying to go to college right now…”
