There should be some good news coming in the next few days for Australian motorsports fans who enjoy tracking the exploits of Australians on the world stage.
If the rumours are true – and they usually are – the news will come from America and it will involve Sydneysider Ryan Briscoe, a very talented driver who has had huge success in North America, both in sports car racing and IndyCar Series competition.
Most recently, Briscoe has been a co-driver for Corvette Motorsport for the long-distance events at Daytona, Sebring, Le Mans and Road Atlanta. A few days back, Corvette announced that the factory General Motors squad had resigned all it’s four full-time drivers, but there was little said about the co-drivers.
That carefully-worded release only added more fuel to the fire that is Briscoe’s apparent connection to the Ford GT program being spearheaded by Chip Ganassi Racing in America, and which will field entries in both the United Sports Car Series in America and the FIA World Endurance Championship, which, of course, counts the 24 Hours of Le Mans as the jewel in it’s crown.
Whilst there has been no official announcement – and Briscoe wasn’t part of the group from Ganassi who shook down the awesome-looking new Ford GT machine at Daytona International Speedway recently – there is certainly plenty of speculation linking Briscoe to the job.
As the old saying goes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and there’s certainly been plenty of smoke recently. Briscoe ticks all the boxes. He’s previously driven for Ganassi in the IndyCar Series (as recently as 2014) and has a number of sports car wins, both overall in the days of the Penske Porsche Spyder LMP2 program in the now-defunct American Le Mans Series, and more recently with Corvette in the GT ranks.
Importantly, Briscoe is also a smart, level-headed driver, who can look after a car, and is expert at coaxing every ounce of speed out of it. It’s well known that Ganassi hates drivers who wreck cars, and Briscoe rarely does that.
Given Briscoe’s noted pedigree – he won the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring with the Corvette squad this year, and might have added a 24 Hours of Le Mans victory to that list had it not been for a vicious practice crash resulting in a destroyed car – it stands to reason that Corvette wouldn’t hesitate to sign him if they could.
Why on earth would you wait? The guy has done nothing but go fast and win in your cars. You’d get in early and put pen to paper on a deal as soon as possible before someone else snapped him up.
If Corvette haven’t announced Briscoe, there’s likely a good reason: he’s off the table, likely headed to another program on a full-time deal .Sooner rather than later, we’ll hear the news officially, but if you believe the rumours, it’s already a done deal, signed, sealed and delivered. Given his ability behind the wheel of the similar Corvette machine and his previous association with Ganassi, all signs point to Briscoe being one of the drivers wheeling the new factory Ford program through it’s first season.
Who else is in the frame at Ganassi? Well, who isn’t? Every driver and his dog seems to be being bandied about recently, but you can almost guarantee that Ganassi driver Joey Hand, as good a GT driver as there is on planet earth at the moment, will be a part of the new assault. Briscoe and Hand would be an awesome combination.
Legendary American road racer Scott Pruett has long been a part of the Ganassi organisation, winning multiple races – including Daytona and Sebring – but the Californian is surely nearing the end of his career, and has spoken of winning again outright at Daytona to become the winningest driver in 24 Hours of Daytona history, and therefore would need to run that race, at minimum, with a Daytona Prototype team, which Ganassi was before launching the Ford GT program. It will be strange to not see Pruett in a Ganassi car, but something we might have to get used to.
The best news here for Briscoe is another assault on the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans, where Australian drivers have had mixed success in recent years. The fact that Ford are pouring factory dollars into this GT program means they’re desperate to win, and, with that in mind, it’s hard to imagine Briscoe joining a better program. He’s going to benefit from top equipment, great co-drivers and a top-notch crew.
Maybe they won’t see success straight out of the box, but it won’t take the Ford and Ganassi combination long to get up to speed. Chip Ganassi hasn’t won some of the biggest races in America – the Daytona 500, 24 Hours of Daytona and Indianapolis 500, let alone multiple IndyCar and sports car championships – by accident.
The notoriously prickly Ganassi is a hard task master, but his results are the pay off, and Briscoe stands a good chance at being at or near the pointy end of GT sports car racing, battling with Ferrari, Porsche, Corvette and Aston Martin, sooner rather than later. It will be a great challenge for the Sydneysider, getting in at the ground floor of the Ford program, and – hopefully! – journeying to the top.
Ford’s arrival signals the golden era of GT sports car racing, if we haven’t already gotten to that stage, with so many of the world’s best manufacturers jumping into the pool, and looking to win. I can’t wait to see another Australian fighting for wins in the FIA’s World Endurance Championship.
Hopefully the Ford drive will raise Briscoe’s profile in his homeland, too.
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