ONWARDS AND UPWARDS FOR ORANGE
For the third successive season, Simon Orange has been crowned a GT Cup champion, taking this year’s overall title with Michael O’brien in the Orange Racing with JMH Mclaren 720S GT3.
After a few years of racing Mazda
MX-5S, Orange decided to make the move into GT competition. “I made my debut in the championship with Team Hard in a Ginetta in 2020, sharing with Josh Jackson – I enjoyed the Mazdas but couldn’t keep up with the changes to stay competitive,” he explained.
Success followed immediately. As well as winning the GTA class in 2020, Orange and Jackson were overall GT Cup champions, as well as helping Team
Hard to win the teams’ championship.
Orange continued with the Ginetta G55 in 2021 and also raced a GT4 Mclaren 570S for the first time, which was where Orange Racing’s connection with JMH started. He shared both cars with Jackson again. “We won the teams’ title and both the
GTA and GTH classes,” he added of a season in which they were third overall with the Ginetta.
“I had started racing for fun and I still do it for the same reason but, when we started in GTA, we didn’t do any testing and we would be competitive,” he said.
After getting used to the GT4 car and being competitive, another step up was decided upon for this season, and the Mclaren GT3 arrived at the team.
“We decided we had to test this time as I needed to get used to driving the car before the season got under way,” he said. “We soon found I was a better qualifier than racer.”
Orange describes himself as one of the older senior drivers, and decided to accept the suggestion of sharing the car with a Pro racer. “I had only raced with
Josh really, never with a Pro, but that’s how Michael [O’brien] arrived with his Mclaren connections,” he said.
Although Orange was surprised to be vying for podiums from the start, his aim was firstly to learn from O’brien. They had their first win at Donington Park’s opening meeting and topped the podium at Brands Hatch and Snetterton, before taking two wins at Silverstone’s end-of-july event.
They were only off the podium five times all year and, after taking a win at Donington in September, they arrived at the Snetterton finale as championship leaders. With another win to add to their tally in the opening race of the weekend, they were crowned 2022 champions.
The GT Cup may have finished, but Orange won’t be waiting long before his next race. “It was important to us to win this year to help us decide the future,” he said. “So this weekend we will be guesting at Donington Park in the final round of the British GT Championship, before entering the championship next season.
“To prepare early into 2023 we are going to do the Asian Le Mans Series too, and will probably do most of the GT Cup again, with Michael sharing the car with me again.”