Tandy Praises AO’s ‘Phenomenal Contribution’ to Motorsport

Photo: Porsche

Nick Tandy has praised AO Racing for its “absolutely phenomenal” contribution to growing sports car racing, while also being a serious contender that’s a regular contender for wins and championships.

The Porsche factory driver, who joined the Gunnar Jeannette-led operation this year as part of an all-new lineup in the team’s GTD Pro class Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo, said he’s been impressed with nearly all aspects of the operation.

“For a start, what Gunnar and PJ [Hyett] have put together is exactly from the infrastructure and the resource and the materials, everything like that,” he said. “They know what’s needed to go racing at the top level.

“What they’ve done very smartly, and what makes a team is the people behind it.

“Any team that operates well in any sport… is a team, people that work together well.

“AO, obviously, what they’ve done from a marketing point, a standpoint, with Rexy, Roxy, Spike… It’s absolutely phenomenal.

“I think it should be lauded what, what they’ve done for the whole sport, for the whole of sports car racing, and especially what they do to draw people to come and watch our sport and let us all go drive the car, let us all talk about the race.

“It’s just phenomenal what they’ve done and there’s many people that have contributed to that.”

Tandy added: “But that’s just one side of AO. You’ve got that fun part, we all have the great autograph sessions when it’s all fun and everything’s going on.

“But at the same time, when you go back in the office and you get in the truck and we sit down and we start talking about what’s going on to try and win a race, it is absolutely single-mindedly focused about delivering the results.

“Gunnar does an extremely good job at focusing people into what they’re doing.

“He sits there on the pit stand and he’s fully involved with [the] strategy of what’s going on. What Gunnar and PJ have done and the rest of the people that evolved from the start is just phenomenal.”

Tandy said he saw some of the inner-workings of the team a while back through some of the ex-CORE autosport staff that the Englishman worked alongside back in the factory Porsche GTLM days, namely team manager Adam Wareing.

“I was always kind of keeping an eye on them,” he said. “We were normally quite near them in the pit lane because Porsche Penske and AO were typically kind of further up front in the championship, so share the area of pit lane.

“They struck me as a team to look after their employees that keeps them happy, so everybody wants to go and work to their full ability and enjoy themselves, and work as a team together.

“But also they know when stuff has to get serious, when decisions have to be made, and there is instances where decisions have to be made for the good of the result.

“That’s exactly what happens. It shows they compete with anyone out there.”

Tandy Appreciates AO’s “Streamlined” Process as Single-Car GTD Pro Team

In terms of race execution, Tandy said it’s been nice to be back with a single-car privateer team following his most recent three-year stint with Porsche Penske Motorsport in GTP.

“I’ve seen it recently when there’s decisions made on one side that differ from the opinions made on another side,” he said.

“Porsche, obviously, supports us a lot. I’m a Porsche employee. I get sent to AO. The cars and the technical support is provided by Porsche.

“But at the end of the day, when we arrive at the track, it’s down to the small group of people that are in charge of making those decisions of how the actual car is operated, and then what needs to be fed back to the factory to make the car better in the future.

“And it is a much, very streamlined process. The other thing is, it’s a single car entry. Of course, we’ve got a two-car team, but we’re in different classes.

“So you’ve got a single car entry, there’s no BS that goes on around cars pitting in front of others, and then getting swapped back, and then somebody else makes a decision not to do that, and then none of this crap, then the whole team becomes pissed off at what’s going on, and everyone stopped working together.

“Everyone at AO Racing, and Rexy, and our 77 little green dino, we go racing together as a group. We win as a group, we sometimes lose as a group, but by God, we’ll have fun and we’ll do the best we can to win as a group.”

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