Heart of Racing Planning More Races With Mercedes-AMG

The Heart of Racing plans to enter more races with Mercedes-AMG after this weekend’s Hankook 24H Dubai, in a program that will run separately from its Aston Martin GTD effort in IMSA according to team principal Ian James.

James, together with Gray Newell, Roman De Angelis and Ross Gunn will be piloting the No. 27 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo. The car will be run in a joint effort with SPS Automotive Performance.

The addition of the Mercedes is a notable new step for the squad, which has exclusively raced Aston Martin machinery since 2020.

James told Sportscar365 that the new Mercedes-AMG effort is centered around Bronze-rated driver Gray Newell.

Newell, son of team co-owner Gabe Newell, made his sports car racing debut in 2021 in Pirelli GT4 America. After two years of racing the Aston Martin Vantage GT4, he will be stepping up to GT3 competition.

“This is a new program for us with the Creventic races and some foreign races we’re going to do,” said James. “Obviously we’re still very focused on the Aston in IMSA but we just wanted to experiment with something different.

“Different tires suit different cars better and we also wanted a car with which we could collaborate with certain teams around the world. The Mercedes was a good fit for that and [SPS] have been very helpful in letting us achieve that.”

James explained that the team picked the Mercedes specifically because of its good fit for gentleman drivers, with the German-built machine regarded as one of the most suitable cars for amateur racers.

“It’s well known that it is probably one of the easier GT3 cars to drive,” James noted.

“With Gray’s progression, we wanted to start doing some GT3 races. Creventic was a good home for that. Car, Creventic: it all pointed in the direction of Mercedes.”

While the entry in Dubai is run under the ‘Heart of Racing by SPS’ banner, the car is owned by the The Heart of Racing.

“We shook the car down in Phoenix and put about a thousand kilometers on it before we flew it out here,” James said. “But yes, it is a Heart of Racing car.”

Unlike last year, the Dubai entry is not set to be a one-off, with plans to contest further Hankook 24H Series races later in the year in addition to other, yet-to-be-named events.

“We’ll do three or four Creventic races this year with it and maybe a couple of other races in different parts of the world,” said James.

“For sure we’ll do Mugello and Spa in Creventic and then the others are still to be decided.”

James stressed that the Creventic effort will not interfere with the team’s ongoing two-car Aston Martin effort in the WeatherTech Championship, as the two programs are operated by separate crews.

The partnership with SPS is also set to continue for the remaining 24H Series events.

“Predominantly I’ve got most of my GT4 crew here, in conjunction with SPS,” James explained. “So we’re doing a joint effort on that and the IMSA GT3 program is standalone. There is no conflict.

“In today’s world of tough logistics it is hard to be doing too much with the same kit and cars.”