The GT team facing a busy 2020
Having two vital races on the same date in different countries may seem insurmountable, but Tom Ferrier tells Graham Keilloh how his title-winning outfit TF Sport plans to take this in its stride
Getting calendar slots is a competitive enough business in usual times. This year, for coronavirus-related reasons that everyone is familiar with, it has become about twice as frenetic. Categories are seeking to offer as much as possible of what was originally planned for the 2020 season, but squeeze it into a condensed period about half the size, from July or even later, following motorsport’s suspension and clashes are inevitable.
The Le Mans 24-Hour race was initially due to have taken place earlier this month, but has been pushed to mid-september. And British GT’S revised 2020 calendar includes a Donington Park meeting that the championship said “regrettably” takes place on the same weekend as the French endurance showpiece, in an “unavoidable clash”.
TF Sport is a good team to ask about the implications of this. It is reigning British GT champion for the GT3 and GT4 drivers’titles, has won a teams’ crown in three of the last four seasons and this year again enters four Aston Martin Vantages in the British category across GT3 and GT4.
And the team additionally is at the centre of the current World Endurance Championship’s GTE Am title battle.
Its drivers Jonny Adam, Charlie
Eastwood and Salih Yoluc in their TF Sport Vantage have won three of the five 2019-20 season’s races so far and are two points off the table-topping AF Corse Ferrari trio in the overall classification. Le Mans sits in wait as the WEC’S penultimate round of the campaign.
It might seem, on the face of it, nightmarish for a single team to handle both contests, both important and hardly next door to one and other, on the same weekend. TF’S team owner and manager Tom Ferrier insists though it is not a new problem for the outfit.
“Well we will do both as originally planned,” he tells Motorsport News.
“It’s just one of those things that’s sent to try us, shall we say.
“[It’s] just going to be sorting out splitting the crew up to be in two places at once. It happens quite often in racing programmes with us, we do a fair few championships so we’re used to changing crew around and moving people around different places. So it’s not the end of the world, it’s a problem we have come across before.”
Indeed, as well as WEC and British
GT, TF has in recent years raced in Blancpain, the European Le Mans Series and GT Open among other things.
“I don’t think we’ve had a year we’ve not had a clashing race yet,”
Ferrier continues. “If you start [to] run in championships with [Le Mans organiser] ACO, [British GT organiser] SRO and GT Open they don’t do their dates to fit in with one another, so it’s always happened.
“We run different crews anyway for the WEC programme and the British GT programme so it’s not terrible. Like I say, we’re used to having these kind of clashes so not everyone does everything as it were.”
Ferrier also appreciates the wider context that has created the calendar clash.
“Listen, this whole thing has been a problem for everybody hasn’t it?,” he says. “It’s unseen times, everyone’s doing their best to make sure their championships happen so you can’t be angry at anybody.
“It is just a circumstance that’s arisen, everyone’s got their own priorities to make sure they deliver what people are paying their entry fees for. So, yes it’s not ideal, [but] it’s understandable given the situation we’re in now.”
Ferrier does note however that there is some staff overlap between TF’S Le Mans and British GT efforts, and who goes where has to be resolved by September.
“There’s a few people [who overlap] but it’s nothing we can’t get round, there are some members that do everything,” Ferrier explains. “But it’s just introducing a few extra people that we use on other programmes into the fold.
Everyone’s worked with us before and it’s just creating slightly different crews. There is some overlap but it’s not the end of the world.”
So where among the personnel do the overlaps exist? “Top to bottom really,” Ferrier confirms. “Everything from tyre men, truckies to engineers, there’s bits and bobs, people that were going to do different roles. But as I say they will have done those roles before for us in different programmes, so it’s a bit of an increased level of people for one weekend. But as I say it’s workable, we’re used to it.”
The TF boss adds that much of the detail planning is to come for how the team will participate in Le Mans and British GT on the same weekend. “It’s almost a bit early for this because we’ve not planned that much yet to be honest, it’s still a fair way away,” Ferrier says. “Things are constantly changing with everyone’s programmes and bits and bobs. All we know at the moment is they are on the same weekend. What we do and how we do it is still under review, shall we say.”
Ferrier accepts also that with the clash inevitably some of his staff will end up disappointed with where they are allocated. “Everyone would love to do Le Mans always, that’s a priority, it’s a big race, isn’t it?,” he observes.
“But [in the team] they’re all very loyal and good guys and obviously once they’re assigned to a programme they know what they’re doing and stick to it. So everyone’s respectful in what they’re asked to do and fingers crossed there will be another Le Mans that they can do in the following years.”
A condensed calendar is not, it seems, the only knock-on impact of the coronavirus pandemic that TF Sport is facing without melodrama.
Now teams operating at a race circuit have new safety measures to think about, such as wearing personal protective equipment and practicing social distancing, as framed in recently-unveiled guidelines.
“It’s not terribly different,” Ferrier says while testing with his GT4 drivers at Snetterton. “It’s just being sensible with everything. We’re trying to keep our two-metre distance, we all have face masks, lots of hand sanitiser around and it’s just generally trying keep on top of it.
“Everyone is very respectful of what the government’s advice is so we’re doing alright in that sense.” So it’s not impacting the running of the car or anything else? “No, not at all,” Ferrier confirms. “We can carry on doing our job as normal.”
Another matter not concerning Ferrier is the impact on TF of the extended racing suspension that we are now emerging from.
“I don’t think it’s any different to anybody else to be honest,” he adds. “Everyone’s itching to get going again, everyone’s in the same boat, so I don’t think it changes anything in terms of that other than having to wait and get on and do it.”
And the Snetterton test was a fitting return. “[It’s] lovely, sun was out, it’s a nice kind of wake-up day for the drivers really, trying to get them back into the mode of it; off their simulators and back into a real race car.”