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| Through The Esses - Robertson Racing Plans To Fly In Their Ford GT-R |
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Shot of the Panoz by ZOOMPICS.com
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© Andrew S. Hartwell
In the American Le Mans Series GT2 class this past season, the veteran Ferrari and Porsche teams went at it pretty hard in pursuit of a championship. The class saw as many as five different marques on track (Ferrari, Porsche, Spyker, Panoz and Dodge) campaigned by up to eight different teams. With the well-established Risi Competizione and Flying Lizard Motorsports teams taking it down to the wire for the overall team championship, the rest of the grid had to settle for the remaining six positions.
At the bottom of the year-end standings lay the newest team to join the series in 2007; Robertson Racing. Running a Panoz GT-LM in just three events, David and Andrea Robertson hoped to educate themselves on what it would take to mount a full time campaign in a competitive way. And learn they have. Now they intend to take that education and - with the help of some veteran racing people like Dick Barbour, Kevin Doran and David Murry - apply themselves to the task of moving forward.
David and Andrea have a long history in the airline industry (both are pilots). They met there and soon realized they shared a passion for racing. She had been a drag racer as a teen, and he had once dabbled in sportscar racing in his younger days. For both of them, the realities of working and being part of a family kept them from pursuing their passion to go fast - on the ground. Eventually they were established well enough to allow themselves the pleasure of running in amateur racing and as might be expected, they were smitten with the prospect of taking their success in that world and stepping up into the professional ranks.
That led to their beginner's foray into the GT2 class in the ALMS this season. And now that they have tasted a small bite of it, they have decided it is time to go for the whole meal. For the 2008 season, Robertson Racing will field a brand new Ford GT-R, presently under construction in Kevin Doran's shop. It will mark the debut of the Detroit iron in the ALMS and Ford fans everywhere are sure to welcome back its familiar silhouette.
David Robertson talked with us recently and let us in on how it all started for the Robertson's and their racing team. He reviewed what that partial first season against professional competition was like, and he defined his expectations for the team going forward.
"Andrea was a drag racer in high school. She married young, had a daughter and had to give up any type of racing as 'family is first always' with her and, by this time, was a young woman raising her daughter alone. While working with Spirit Airlines (starting in 1992), I met Andrea. At the time, I was their Chief Pilot/Director of Operations and she was the manager of the dispatch department. Now, I am a 30 year veteran airline pilot and she has long since left the airline and started and sold a successful floral shop. Even though I am still an active pilot, I have retired from the management side to free up the time to go racing. Andrea has a full time job at home with all her animals and two wonderful grandchildren!
The Robertson's had to wait a long time to go racing again. As it is for most of us, work just got in the way of all the fun.
"I got interested in racing in the early 70's. I joined the SCCA and bought a roll bar for the Lotus I was driving in college and while still using it to go back and forth to work. I ran out of money before the first race and didn't get back into it until 1999. Andrea and I decided to get into sportscar racing by joining a club in Waterford Hills, Michigan that operates under SCCA rules. We ran in a Spec Racer Ford and just traded off. I ran a race and then she ran a race. We had a good time so we went to two cars the next year; I ran a Formula Ford and she raced the Spec. We did that for a while even though a big 6'5" guy like me doesn't really belong in a Formula Ford. And that car beat me to a pulp, turning me into the world's larges
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