MOTORSPORT MANAGER UNDERDOG CHALLENGE DRIVER
Across four days of running, Enerson has completed just 83 laps the closest driver on the list is Santino Ferrucci at 144 laps, who crashed on Thursday and lost time. 75 entry has missed a considerable amount of track time since practice began on Tuesday, and has a steep hill to climb in its search for adequate speed to stake its claim on the grid.
It doesn’t change the fact, however, that the No. Driver RC Enerson is fast and smooth in whatever he races, and despite being a rookie, has only drawn praise for looking polished behind the wheel of the No. With only 33 cars entered in 2020, there was no threat of being knocked out after qualifying, but with 35 entries for this year’s race, Top Gun has been the one team under a constant spotlight.
MOTORSPORT MANAGER UNDERDOG CHALLENGE PLUS
In 2019, it was DragonSpeed Racing and rookie Ben Hanley, plus Juncos Racing and sophomore Kyle Kaiser, and Clauson Marshall Racing with veteran Pippa Mann, who were the clear pre-event favorites to miss the show, but all three made a mockery of those predications on their way to earning qualifying positions in the big race. But that’s why it has been a tradition for so many years at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to root for the smallest team on the entry list. His age also counted against him years of struggling to get established in All-Japan F3 meant he was already in his late 20s by the time of his maiden Formula Nippon title in 1998.īut Motoyama still looks back with pleasure on his two chances to sample grand prix machinery, having proved to himself he could hack it in the world’s fastest single-seaters at a point in his career that he felt he had done everything there was to do in his homeland.Every Indy 500 features at least one underdog, and in some cases like the brand-new Top Gun Racing team, the odds of making it into the field of 33 are exceptionally long and imposing. For all his obvious talent, he had no connections in Europe, and as a Nissan driver he also lacked the opportunities that could have arisen from being associated with Honda or Toyota. Realistically, testing or no testing, Motoyama was never likely to end up in F1. I liked the convenience and freedom of living in Japan
I knew that I wasn’t the type of driver who was aiming for F1. He would remain part of Nissan’s GT500 line-up until the end of the 2018 season, only standing down at the age of 47.
In 2005 he returned to Impul in a third car and won his fourth Formula Nippon title, and in 2008 he and Benoit Treluyer grabbed SUPER GT honours for Nissan, cementing Motoyama’s reputation as the finest domestic driver of his generation. And even landing a seat at a minnow team like Jordan or Minardi was always going to prove an uphill struggle without the financial backing that those teams needed to stay afloat during this manufacturer-dominated era. Needless to say, with Alonso and Jarno Trulli already signed up for 2004, there was no way for Motoyama to stake his claim to a race drive. But I thought in any case that nothing would happen if I didn’t get involved in things, and that if I tried various things something good could come out of it.” “I understood from the outset that testing for Renault did not mean I was going to get a seat with Renault. But I didn’t think it was especially difficult to drive. I don’t really know what they thought of my performance. Of his day in the R23B, Motoyama recalls: “Renault finished high up in that year’s championship, so compared to the Jordan, it was more refined, felt more high-quality, and was an extremely easy car to drive. Motoyama was benchmarked against Alonso in the 2003 Jerez test for Renault, but had no chance to earn a race seat with the Spaniard and Trulli already signed up It was the latter achievement that opened the door for a second bite of the F1 testing cherry. Driving around Suzuka, I was like, ‘Jeez, this is narrow!’”Ī week after the Japanese GP, Motoyama duly wrapped up his third Formula Nippon crown with a race to spare at Motegi, and the following month he and NISMO co-driver Michael Krumm delivered Nissan the title in JGTC, the forerunner to SUPER GT. There was a gap of something like 300 horsepower compared to Formula Nippon cars of the time.
But the thing that surprised me the most when I first drove it was the power. “They had semi-automatic gearboxes which almost felt automatic. “In those days F1 cars were very high-tech,” says Motoyama. Driving around Suzuka, I was like, 'Jeez, this is narrow!'īy 2003 Jordan was firmly established as the second-slowest team behind Minardi, but Motoyama was still blown away by the performance gulf compared to the one-make Lola-Mugen Honda package that would take him to that year’s Formula Nippon title.
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