ORECA Experience Good “Selling Point” for Blomqvist, Yelloly

Photo: Mike Levitt/IMSA

Tom Blomqvist believes his and Nick Yelloly’s experience with an ORECA-chassised LMDh prototype was a “selling point” to Ford to land FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar seats and play a crucial role in the car’s development.

The two current Meyer Shank Racing Acura GTP drivers were confirmed alongside reigning IMSA GTP champion Matt Campbell, of Porsche, earlier this month as the final three drivers in the Blue Oval’s lineup for its debut season in the WEC’s top class.

While Campbell enters the program with experience developing the Multimatic-chassied Porsche 963, Blomqvist has been with Acura at the start of its ARX-06 program, while Yelloly, who started his top-class career with the Dallara-based BMW M Hybrid V8, joined Blomqvist at Acura Meyer Shank Racing last year.

Speaking with Sportscar365, Blomqvist believes Ford will be able to hit the ground running with some of their previous knowledge.

“We’ve tried a lot of things over the years,” he said. “Fundamentally, the spine and the suspension is all basically the same.

“I’m hoping a lot of things translate. I know a lot of things that we don’t have to bother wasting our time with because I already know they may not work or to really focus on or maybe some weak areas whilst the car is still fresh we could potentially improve.

“I think that’s a big selling point for them and I think that’s also an area where I was really passionate about this project is coming in as a new manufacturer into the Hypercar class, coming with ORECA, I felt like I could bring more to the table here than potentially other opportunities.

“I’m very grateful they saw that too. With Nick too and Matt obviously coming with a ton of experience with Porsche; we know how successful they’ve been over in WEC and also in IMSA.

“With us with the ORECA, they’ve done a great job taking us guys and using it to their advantage.”

Yelloly added: “Of course the last two years we’ve been developing the new aero package that came for Acura and driving that car, so we know what we’ve requested already in our current program and what we may want to start from for this program.”

“I think that’s the stuff that speeds up the early development, especially early setup dev work that you end up doing,” added Blomqvist.

“You won’t be able to do it early on because you’re focused on reliability of certain areas. I think the foundations in that area should be pretty decent from the start.

“There’s obviously a ton of work ahead of us. The software side of things, we’ve got to do from scratch.

“Where we started with Acura, it was the first [LMDh] car with ORECA and they’ve obviously had years with us. All the small bits that maybe were not working correctly or maybe small reliability issues have been ironed out over the years.

“With Alpine, Genesis, and look how they’ve rolled off. From my understanding, their only concerns are stuff from their side, not an ORECA thing.

“We’re hoping that it’s only going to be better another development cycle on.”

Yelloly believes the Oreca base will be well-suited for the WEC, given the characteristics of the circuits.

“I think braking and entry phase, particularly with the Oreca, it’s very good,” he said. “The window seems to be very good with smooth circuits that are fast and flowing, which you tend to have more of in WEC compared to IMSA.

“There’s a lot of adjustability. Aerodynamically it’s very, very good as well. You’re able to follow cars close and really get in the mix without losing too much downforce.

“From a driveability and a raceability factor, I think it should be quite good. Obviously they already have Alpine that have run the car for a few years.

“You now see what Genesis have been able to do early on in their program gives me good hope to be able to come in and show a few people that we mean business.”

Yelloly, who grew up in the junior levels of UK motorsport with Blomqvist, believes their friendship will also pay dividends.

“We’ve known each other since we were kids, basically, when he was 16 and he came over to the UK and we started racing against each other in Two-Liter Renault,” he said.

“We have a similar driving style, a similar preference in terms of car setup and dynamics, software and how we fundamentally want it.”

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