NEWS

Whether a big or small operation, team spirit is a critical factor in success. American outfit Forte Racing is no different as they fly the flag for Lamborghini Squadra Corse across the Pond.

The team previously known as O’Gara Motorsport and US RaceTronics, which also has collaborated with Change Racing, takes great pride in its working environment.

Following a rebrand in 2023, Forte Racing powered by US RaceTronics is fighting on two fronts with Lamborghini, fielding three cars in Super Trofeo North America while simultaneously taking on America’s finest GTD competition in the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship.

The two efforts are split between multiple teams of engineers, mechanics and support staff, but the end goal remains the same. Therefore, getting along with the common target of success on-track, is crucial.

“It’s a very big component of the team, combining the personalities of myself and the people within the team which is feeding a positive atmosphere,” explains Forte Racing team owner Shane Seneviratne. “It’s the reason why we get so many Super Trofeo customers coming back to us year after year, in various different programmes.”
“I have had customers who have raced with us for a long time, because otherwise racing isn’t worth it if the atmosphere isn’t fun. You need to have a very good team chemistry for everything to work well together.
“We all get along well; we have a lot of fun together but at the same time we also take things very seriously from a racing element. All of our drivers are members of the Thermal Club [a private motorsports facility based in California] too.  So, we’re continuing to grow that and the GTD side of the team also interacts with the Super Trofeo team, so we’re all like one little family.”

Formed of primarily US-based personnel, Forte Racing also benefits from a number of Italian engineers who travel to events to provide support from within Squadra Corse itself. It’s all part of a special relationship with Lamborghini that stretches back to 2015, when the US RaceTronics division first entered the one-make Super Trofeo North America championship.

“We were initially racing in open wheel in the United States, in Indy Lights and the Atlantic Championship,” says Seneviratne. “Drivers for us in those championships included [actor] Frankie Muniz [most famous for his role in Malcolm in the Middle] and Simona de Silvestro. We partnered with O’Gara Motorsports in 2014 and then took over the running of the team to enter Super Trofeo North America the following year.
“Richard Antinucci drove for us in that first season, and we finished the year off really strongly, and from then on, we won the dealers’ title, the Pro and the Am titles as well, but O’Gara decided not to continue racing for 2016.
“We did a one-off race in 2016 at Daytona, so I kind of restarted US RaceTronics, initially running a two-car programme and it just continued growing from there.”

US RaceTronics remained an omnipresent team in Super Trofeo over the following years and eventually merged with the returning O’Gara Motorsports and Change Racing in 2022, before rebranding to Forte Racing this year.

The naming of the team aside, there is much work to be done on the ground for Forte Racing when they arrive at a circuit, particularly when delegating the workload between the IMSA GTD car and the Super Trofeo vehicles.

There’s very little cross-over between the roughly 32 staff members on-site, with separate ‘sub-teams’ created to ease the work hours and to get the most out of each car competing.

To say it’s a busy weekend is definitely an understatement. Therefore, team management takes on an even greater importance.

“Currently we are running three programmes in IMSA [two with Lamborghini],” says Seneviratne. “So, the way I have structured the team is that we have a general manager and administrator and a few core people, but I have programme managers for each race and separate mechanics. There are a few mechanics that we cross-utilise, but we don’t do that often at all because it’s very demanding on the mechanics if you try to do that.
“In terms of our Super Trofeo set-up, we have one race engineer and two data engineers on the team. The way we run it in the US, is that we have a race truck with two awnings, and we run two cars on each side, so it’s taking the four-car team and divide it into a team of two, to make it more manageable. 
“We are equipped to be able to run six cars, we ran five cars at Indy, so we are set up to run six cars, and what we have done is have one race engineer to create a baseline setup and then the data engineers distribute that information to each sub-team. And then there is a lead mechanic who is in charge for each car and another system mechanic. We have two individuals doing tyres and fuel and then we have a programme manager on top of it.”

Having moved up to a full campaign in the GTD class of the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship this season, Forte Racing regularly mixed it with the established teams at some of the best tracks in the United States.

There were ups and downs, promise and disappointment early on in the year, but a stunning overall pole position at Watkins Glen and a breakthrough maiden podium at Indianapolis was proof enough of the team’s progress.

“I think a lot of it comes to a bit of inexperience because this is the first full season in GTD with the Lamborghini. I could clearly attribute VIR and Mosport as missed opportunities because we had mechanical issues there but really good pace. It was the same thing also with Watkins Glen; there, we got a drivethrough and two forced pit-stops because of a tyre pressure regulation that IMSA implemented, which put us off sequence. We should have been on top of that as a lot of other, more experienced teams were, so that was on us.
“With a year of experience, I am sure that sort of thing will not happen again. At VIR it was a very simple wire issue on the battery, which is mechanics 101, a very basic mistake. It was a brand-new part but regardless, we should have been on top of that before it wore out.”

Perhaps it was that experience of falling just short that provided the basis for the team’s biggest victory to date. In the final round of the IMSA Endurance Cup campaign, Spinelli and Goikhberg – joined once more by former Super Trofeo driver Patrick Liddy – claimed a sensational win in the Petit Le Mans, the 10-hour marathon at Road Atlanta in Georgia, finishing an incredible third overall.

The #78 had overcome a difficult qualifying session and no fewer than three drivethrough penalties during the race. But the never-say-die attitude of the crew kept them firmly in the hunt heading into the final hours, with the car coming into its own as night fell. As a result, Forte Racing joined an illustrious list of Lamborghini supported teams to have won a major endurance race in the US, following the feats of Paul Miller Racing (Daytona 24 Hours) and Grasser Racing Team (Daytona 24 Hours and Sebring 12 Hours).