LIZARD’S LAW: Leaping into a New Year With New Programs

Having spent most of my career as a driver, it had its challenges, but when I hung up my helmet full time and became a co-owner of Flying Lizard Motorsports, I had no idea how good I had it.

There are many challenges as a driver and I always felt I had a general understanding of what goes on behind the scenes. Being on the ownership side for the past seven years has opened my eyes to how much work goes into running a racing organization.

It is a seven-day-a-week job that involves every single member on the team. The amount of effort and people it takes to run a successful and profitable customer racing team that is a multi-car, multi-series program has a massive amount of logistical challenges.

Seth Neiman, the original owner and founder of Flying Lizard Motorsports, laid such a strong foundation and many of the values he instilled in the company are still present in making us so successful today.

Myself and my two partners, Thomas Blam and Tommy Sadler, work well together and each bring an expertise to specific areas of the business which helps make this possible.

Over the last seven years, we’ve been able to put together some incredible programs for Flying Lizard.

We went from a factory-supported team that only worked with one manufacturer in one series to working with many of the world’s biggest and best automotive brands, expanding to compete in new series and at new tracks around the world.

Today, Flying Lizard and Flying Lizard-managed programs hold 16 championship titles as we sit one year away from our 20-year anniversary.

Next month, our 2022 race season begins, and after months of planning, all our pre-season announcements have finally been made. We have been racing in multiple programs for several years now but never to this level.

This year we will start our season at Sebring International Raceway in March with the USAC Porsche Sprint Challenge North America by Yokohama.

We will run four to five cars all year in this one-make championship made up of 11 double-header race weekends with drivers Chris Bellomo, Mike Gaulke, Paul Bonderson, Paul Nemschoff and Paul Camusi.

Flying Lizard will also return to SRO America in the GT America and Pirelli GT4 America series, starting April 15-17 at Sonoma Raceway, our home track, racing a pair of Aston Martins with Elias Sabo and Andy Lee.

We won the 2020 Pirelli GT4 America Sprint and SprintX team and driver titles with Aston Martin, so we’re excited to again race those cars and welcome new clients to race them.

And finally, I’m very excited for our Lamborghini Super Trofeo effort. We’ll be running at least three cars in the championship and are working hard to lock in a fourth.

We’re excited to welcome drivers Brett Jacobson, Joel Miller, Slade Stewart, and Tom Tait to the program, kicking the season off April 28-May 1 at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca alongside the IMSA WeatherTech Series.

In all we will have over ten race cars in three different race series racing in multiple classes. Our team has four semi-truck transporters, a dually/gooseneck trailer and all are in use this season.

We will have over 40 people working for us and sharing work between multiple series.

Luckily there aren’t too many conflicts with different series on the same weekend. But running all of these series will provide many back-to-back weekends, including our testing programs.

It is going to be a little busy to say the least, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. We love the challenge and love the reward that hopefully comes with it.

It will be fun to update and report the challenges we face each month and hopefully at the end of the season we will see successful results from each of our programs.