“Massive Undertaking” for Wright in First Overseas Race

Photo: Wright Motorsports

Racing overseas for the first time as a team has come as a “massive undertaking” for Wright Motorsports according to the team’s chief operating officer Bobby Viglione.

The Ohio-based squad, now under the ownership of Adam Adelson, is branching outside of North America for the first time, fielding a Porsche 911 GT3 R for Adelson, Elliott Skeer and Tom Sargent in this weekend’s CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa.

While regular competitors in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, Adelson and Skeer also won last year’s GT World Challenge America powered by AWS Pro class title.

“For us, it’s about competing against the best in the world and proving that Wright Motorsports as a racing team has what it takes to do that,” Adelson told Sportscar365.

“Naturally, you’re not going to get all of the best racing in the world on one continent. Not to say that IMSA isn’t, but just to say that there are many races around the world, all with incredible importance and provenance.

“It would be a shame if we just limited ourselves to what we have in [America].”

While some American teams often partner with established European outfits for overseas events, Viglione said 95 percent of the staff are Wright crew, although with some logistical support from fellow Porsche squad Herberth Motorsport.

“It’s definitely a little different than what we’re used to,” he explained. “Obviously with U.S. racing, we’re very set on our structures and all of our equipment and how we run.

“Luckily we’re doing a bit of a partnership with Herberth to use their shop facility for car prep and one of their transporters to haul our gear.

“But we’ve shipped over our car and all of our equipment to their facility. We did the Prologue test as a warm-up and the guys spent a week over there.

“They were all over there last week. We had split crews; half the crew was prepping for [Watkins Glen]; half the crew was prepping for Spa.

“I think we’re in a good place. You don’t know what you don’t know, obviously.

“It’s a massive undertaking for sure. I don’t want to say we underestimated, but I would have probably done things slightly differently for the next go-around.

“A little bit of the back-and-forth. We’re using 95 percent Wright Motorsports crew on everything.

“That presents a few challenges just travel-wise, especially coming off the back of Watkins Glen.

“We’re ready. We’re looking forward to it and we’re all quite excited.”

With the busy schedule in June that included last weekend’s Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen, Viglione said they’ve had to lean on some of its other crew from programs in Porsche Sprint Challenge and previous SRO America competition.

“Obviously our focus is [IMSA] GTD and the GTD championship so the core of the GTD crew made sure all of the GTD stuff was ready,” he said.

“There were a few people taken away from GTD but it didn’t affect anything from that side. There were a few other of our personnel brought in.

“We’re also trying some new personnel for the future as well, so it should work out.

“We obviously wanted to bring in some [crew] with Spa experience. Our guys have experience on the team from being in other places in the past and a few of them have done Spa before.

“We’re not all Spa rookies so to speak.

“We’ve garage-raced before and we know how SRO Europe operates, so it’s not like leaps and bounds different than what we do.”

Adelson Excited for Wright vs. Winward Fight in Gold Class

While Adelson and Skeer’s only previous international racing experience came in the 24H Dubai, both drivers are looking forward to the challenge of Spa, and to also be able to benchmark themselves up against another American team, also competing in the Gold class.

“I think what’s also really cool is that we have a direct benchmark to go up against in the Winward guys, who are running with Indy [Dontje], Russell [Ward] and Phil [Ellis] which is the exact endurance lineup that we race against here.

“It’s really cool for us to [come here] with other really great American teams who are great competitors and sportsmen and see how we match up against them, and as two teams coming from IMSA, how we match up to the most competitive GT3 racing in the world.”

When asked about their goals for the race, Adelson was quick to point out: “First things first, no track limits! Our race engineer has been ruthless in driving that into our brains.”

He added: “It’s approaching it with the same attitude that we approach racing anywhere, which is just keeping the car clean, hitting the marks, be as precise and consistent as possible, race hard.

“But ultimately we’re not racing out there for points. We’re out there to learn and to gain experience. Whatever we need to do to maximize that is what we will do.”

As for future overseas ventures, Viglione said a number of options are on the table.

“We’re looking into some European stuff,” he said. “I wouldn’t say any hard decisions have been made yet.

“But there’s a potential of more to happen overseas, whether that be SRO Europe, ELMS, WEC and IGTC potentially. We’re exploring all options at the moment.”

Jonathan Grace contributed to this report

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