PR1/Mathiasen, BHA Aiming for “Long Term” Cooperation

Photo: PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports

PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports team principal Bobby Oergel envisions a “long term” collaboration with Bryan Herta Autosport in LMP2, which kicks off with the season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona.

The two championship-winning sports car racing operations have joined forces, which sees Oergel’s prototype squad continue to largely operate the car but with the addition of key BHA staff, which have come from its Michelin Pilot Challenge TCR effort.

Oergel said the Daytona event will see a senior BHA mechanic embedded within the team, along with several ‘tech guys’ working in the background to enhance the team’s IT infrastructure.

The effort it similar to PR1’s previous partnership with Inter Europol Competition in 2024 that helped propel Tom Dillmann and Nick Boulle to the LMP2 championship.

“It’s a really nice collaboration,” Oergel told Sportscar365. “It’s neat to sit down with an open book and talk about it.

“The function of people on the ground, we’ve got a couple with us that are basically full-time with BHA as well.

“Vice-versa, whatever we can add or help with on anything that they’re doing is obviously an open book.

“To me, it’s a neat thing to have different views from outside looking in. After so many years doing the same thing with all of our same crew…

“To be fair, we’re an old crew! It’s all the same crew [over the years] but it’s now down to see what’s out there.”

One of the key elements of the joint effort, now known as Bryan Herta Autosport with PR1/Mathiasen, has been the usage of BHA’s state-of-the-art facility in Brownsburg, Ind., which opened last year.

While PR1/Mathiasen still has its headquarters in Fresno, Calif., Oergel said they will utilize the BHA’s shop “while it’s convenient.”

“The big picture is that we don’t have any west coast [LMP2] events anymore,” he said. “For us, that’s a big detriment.

“There’s no [races] east of the Mississippi River. For us it’s been a blessing, after Petit [Le Mans] to say, ‘OK, we know where this is going and we’re not having to do three trips to the west coast just to do the first two events.

“That’s been really nice. The shop is beautiful. It has everything we can imagine needing and more. It’s a very nice copy-paste of a lot of the machinery we have at home as well.

“The [BHA] people have just been fantastic. It’s ‘treat it as your own’ kind of thing, and that’s pretty awesome.”

Oergel said the new blood that have come into the effort has also helped bring new ideas his own team, which was founded in 1990 around the junior open-wheel ranks before making its pro-level sports car racing debut with co-owner Ray Mathiasen in the ALMS LMPC ranks in 2010.

“It’s really neat because we’ve been a really old-school, tight-knit team,” said Oergel. “It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s something where you have to move some old dogs to new tricks and new tricks to old dogs.

“From that end, I’m a paper trail guy. I’m still probably one of the few carrying a notebook around.

“I love that fact, but also looking at the realities of how good the electronic packages are. It’s that kind of thing.”

When asked if the two teams plan to continue a working partnership for the long term in LMP2, Oergel said it’s “absolutely” the goal.

“We didn’t agree to do this based it on it being a one or two year thing,” he said. “It’s a plan for hopefully a very long time and it’s really down to as long as it’s good for both of us.”

While BHA has its sights set on an eventual GTP program, having been heavily linked with Genesis, Sportscar365 understands that PR1/Mathiasen is not likely to be part of that element.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John