Resurgent de Ferran fighting back to the top

Brazilian wants to take win that just eluded him in 2008 Le Mans weekend at Mosport

Aug 29, 2009

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Motorsport Writer

When last we visited with racing legend Gil de Ferran, he was testing at Mosport in preparation for the 2008 Mobil 1 Presents the Grand Prix of Mosport – his fifth race back as a driver following a five-year retirement.

What a difference a year makes. Now he's planning to retire from his driving career again because he wants to concentrate more on his business of preparing and entering racing cars in not just one series but two. More about that in a moment.

In the meantime, however, he has unfinished business. He wants to win that Mosport Grand Prix, part of the American Le Mans Series championship, which goes to the post tomorrow at 3:05 p.m. (It's live on Speed TV if you can't get out there in person.)

He has a pretty good chance: so far this ALMS season, he and his de Ferran Motorsports Acura co-driver Simon Pagenaud have won four of the seven races.

Last year, he was winning the Mosport round until he ran out of fuel on the last lap of the 2 hour, 45-minute timed race. He called the loss "heartbreaking."

But that was then and this is now and the 2003 Indy 500 winner, who retired as a driver that year to go off to Europe to run the Honda Formula One racing team, is bullish on his chances tomorrow.

"Every time I get into a car, my goal is to win the race," de Ferran said in a phone interview earlier this week. "Having said that, the biggest issue facing me this year is trying to forget what happened last year.

"I'm a true believer in living in the present and I don't like to cloud my emotions by living in the past. Having said that, it's hard not to feel something when thinking back to last year."

It wasn't just that he lost the overall race win last August. It was that he wound up seventh in the P2 class after his car sputtered and died. It was a pretty bitter pill to swallow.

But de Ferran has always been a fighter. He pulled up his socks, moved his team from the P2 class into P1 for 2009 and recently announced plans to expand de Ferran Motorsports operation from two ALMS sports cars to four — the other two being a two-car entry in the 2010 Indy Racing League series.

Which explains his decision to step out of the cockpit again.

"It's time for me to focus more on the business," he said. "It's tough to do both — run the business and drive a racing car. My standards are such that a division of focus is not a good thing.

"I'm my own worst critic. Achieving a standard behind the wheel that I'm satisfied with is a tall order at the best of times but not really possible when my mind is on other things like expanding the business."

So could Toronto-area motorsport fans look forward to seeing Gil de Ferran twice next year? Once guiding his team at the Honda Indy Toronto in July and then again at Mosport later in the summer?

"It's possible," de Ferran said. "I admit I've set the bar pretty high. Things are in flux with the economy right now but I'm a believer in aiming high. It's all or nothing, for me. Expanding to IndyCars is natural, for me. It is a sport I understand well. I have an emotional attachment to it."

But de Ferran said that for his new team to be successful, for it to evolve professionally, it has to get bigger. It has to have skilled personnel and a matching budget to operate successfully.

"That is the dream and that is the goal," he said. "Admittedly, the economic situation is the hardest I've ever seen. It is not an easy environment to operate in, considering that motorsport is a discretionary industry. Corporations don't have to spend the money to be in it."

But this does not mean de Ferran is turning his back on sports car racing or the American Le Mans Series.

"I believe that sports car racing, and the American Le Mans Series in particular, has a good future," he said. "There is a demand for it and it has a real connection with the fans.

"The cars are relevant to the general public. There is nothing more exciting or spectacular than long-distance endurance racing in which the car manufacturers are put to the test – and this explains why the manufacturers will always want to be there too."

In addition to de Ferran and Pagenaud, plus world-class drivers such as David Brabham, Scott Sharp, Adrian Fernandez and Johnny O'Connell (this will mark Johnny O's 100th race start for Corvette), the ALMS program this weekend includes races in six other North American championships: the Formula Atlantics, Star Mazda, the final races in the Formula BMW series, IMSA Lites, the Patron GT3 Challenge and VW Jetta TDI Cup featuring Wheels columnist Jim Kenzie making a special guest driver appearance. For info: www.mosport.com.

Toronto Star