NEWS

A three-time Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America champion and IMSA GTD race winner with renowned outfit Wayne Taylor Racing, Danny Formal is one of the leading lights for the Sant’Agata Bolognese firm in the region.

The Florida-based Costa Rican has bathed in racing since his early years and, to this day, still remains true to his roots by taking on the world’s best in go-karting championships around the globe.

Part of the Lamborghini Young Professional Driver roster since 2023, Formal has seen and done it all at the wheel of a Huracán, and he’s not keen to stop any time soon. Formal lives and breathes racing, he’s as dedicated off the track as he is on the track.

Which begs the question: what makes Danny Formal tick?

What are your motorsport origins?
I started quite young in karting, at the age of six, as my dad used to participate in racing in Costa Rica where I lived for the first seven years of my life. And my birthday is December 24th, so I remember one time in early December, someone let me borrow their go-kart and right away I fell in love with it. And the pace was there right away too! My dad kind of saw that and, for my birthday, he bought me my very first go-kart. It was very small, and I was a very tall kid, so I out-grew it in three months, so I had to move up to the next category which was for the older kids. I couldn’t race because they were for 10-year-olds and I was still seven-and-a-half, but I practiced a lot and that’s where it started.

What were the next steps once you moved to the USA?
In 2003, the family moved to Florida, my dad is American, so it made perfect sense and I did the rest of my racing in America. And I’ve never really stopped since then, I still race karts today when I can. In 2020, I was still in karting, and the team I was with at the time decided to get a couple of Lamborghini Super Trofeos and they asked if I wanted to race one. It was a no-brainer really. I was like: ‘what?’ and they said: ‘do you want to do a Super Trofeo race?’, so I called my parents, fast-tracked my IMSA licence, had my first race and that was that! I did two races, won both times in Pro-Am at Sebring and then, at the end of the year, I got another phone call, this time from Travis at Wayne Taylor Racing and started my career with them soon after.

How was the transition from go-karting to Lamborghini Super Trofeo?
Power to weight ratio makes a huge difference to any car, and it’s the same thing with go-karting. Almost every F1 driver has driven a KZ kart and it’s unbelievable what those karts can do, like 0 to 100 kph in three seconds, they are extremely quick. At the time that I moved into Super Trofeo, I was racing karts professionally, and the Super Trofeo driving style is very similar to a KZ, it’s very point and squirt, stop-start. Obviously the Super Trofeo has a lot more horsepower, you can’t really roll the car into the corner, you just have to go in deep, rotate the car and get on the power because the rear tyre is quite narrow, and you can’t carry as much speed into the corner as you can with a GT3 car. The jump was hard, obviously, but it wasn’t as massive as you might think.

What makes a Lamborghini Super Trofeo champion?
To be honest, understanding that we have all this horsepower and limited tyres, is the key part. Keeping the car alive and the degradation to a minimum for your co-driver is the most important part of being successful in Super Trofeo. When I first started, I wanted to prove myself, prove to everyone watching and in the team that I was the fastest; that doesn’t matter if you don’t win. Kyle [Marcelli] and I were kind of like that at the beginning; we wanted to be faster than the other, but by the end of 2021 we decided that we didn’t care who the fastest driver was, as long as we were collectively the fastest by the end of the race. This is a team sport, not an individual sport. You can focus on yourself if you are a solo driver obviously, but most of the time, the Pro title is won by two-driver line-ups and working together to make the car better as well as each other is what wins you championships.

Does that teamwork translate into IMSA GTD as well?
100%, it’s a little bit easier with the Huracán GT3 EVO2, because when we pit, we are almost always changing onto new tyres so you don’t have to save them in the same way as you would in the Super Trofeo. You are in charge of your own tyres, so if you push too hard and use them up, it’s up to you to have to deal with them. In Endurance Cup races, it’s about managing everything else; you need to be entering the last two hours with the car in a good condition. That means, no missing wings, no damage. It’s quite a simple plan for us normally: Trent [Hindman] starts, I finish and Graham [Doyle] drives in the middle. Trent and I have really similar styles, and he likes what I like on the car, so setting the car up is pretty straightforward. Graham doesn’t have the same level of experience so it’s down to us to work with him to get him up to speed.

What’s it been like being part of the Young Professional Driver programme?
I’ve been part of the young drivers’ programme for a number of years now, since 2021 and I won the shootout in Portimão in 2022. It’s a huge honour for me, it’s helped me out a lot in my career with things like travel, expenses and everything that you don’t think of really. It’s fundamental for a young driver to be able to get help, especially from a brand such as Lamborghini, I love being part of it and everyone from Lamborghini has been fantastic to me over the years. Even something like the language barrier, I don’t speak Italian, but they have been so accommodating to me and I feel super proud of what we have accomplished together.