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American LeMans
ALMS: Extreme Speed Rising To The Challenge
Scott Sharp-owned team makes debut in this weekend’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.
John Dagys  |  Posted March 17, 2010   Sebring, FL
Extreme Speed Motorsports debuts its two Ferrari F430 GTE's in this weekend's Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Fresh From Florida. (Rick Dole/ESM)
Less than six months ago, Scott Sharp was basking in the sportscar racing spotlight. Not only did the former Trans-Am and IndyCar champion notch his first American Le Mans Series title with Patron Highcroft Racing, Sharp also announced the formation of his own ALMS team that very same weekend at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

What was initially slated to be a single-car Ferrari F430 GTE program for Ed Brown doubled into an ambitious two-car attack in the highly competitive GT2 category. Extreme Speed Motorsports was born in early December, just three months before the season-opening Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.

For a typical start-up team, it would take months of planning, preparation and execution to just go testing, let alone prepare for its first race in such a short time-frame. But after talking to Sharp and seeing the squad he’s assembled, it’s clear Extreme Speed isn’t the average ‘new team on the block'. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
Scott Sharp transitions from LMP1 to the highly competitive GT2 category for 2010. (LAT)

With many teams forced to downsize or even close amid the continued troubled economic times, there was no shortage of driver and crew talent to fill the key positions within the organization.

Longtime Porsche veteran driver Johannes van Overbeek has been brought on board to pair with Sharp in the No. 01 Ferrari, and 2005 ALMS Rookie of the Year Guy Cosmo teams with Patron Spirits CEO Ed Brown in the No. 02 machine. German hot shoe Dominik Farnbacher and 2010 Rolex 24 winner Joao Barbosa round out the driving force for Sebring.

Derek Granison, formerly of Brumos Racing, has been appointed team manager, with longtime Fernandez Racing crew chief Tony Leith, who worked with Sharp in IndyCar in 2005, taking on the role of crew chief. The chief engineer position goes to another open-wheel turned sportscar veteran Steve Challis, who was the late Greg Moore’s engineer in Indy Lights and CART.

Featuring a mix of personnel from the former Fernandez Racing, de Ferran Motorsports and Champion Racing stables, the Florida-based team could not be in a better position for its debut season.

“We’ve been real fortunate to hire some great guys that are super experienced,” Sharp says. “They’ve done a great job preparing, but they’ve been working their tails off for the last three months just to get us to the point where we roll into the race pretty well organized and ready.”

With his new role as team owner/driver, Sharp is following in his family’s footsteps. Growing up around his father’s Bob Sharp Racing team, which won numerous SCCA national titles in the ‘70s and ‘80s, it was also where Scott got his start as a driver.

Sharp always took a keen interest in the team’s operation, soaking up every angle of the sport. From the nuts and bolts aspect to the management side, Scott always kept an open ear to how his father dealt with the complexities of juggling different hats at once. And that knowledge is helping Scott today.

“Building a team is all about the people and I think I learned a lot of lessons early on from my dad’s experience,” Sharp says. “Being a [teenager] and being in the shop after school and in the summers watching what goes on. While I was really young at the time, I still learned a lot and took a lot of it in. Listening to him at night helped me realize what made the team work well. So I learned a lot about that from him.”
Extreme Speed has shown impressive pace thus far in testing at Sebring. (John Dagys)

While many of the lessons learned 20 or even 30 years ago may not directly apply into the technologically advanced world of sportscar racing today, Scott learned that it’s the people that drive the team. You can’t have a winning car without having the right chemistry between a driver, crew chief and engineer.

Sharp’s experience as the Series’ newest team owner has made him appreciate the role many past and present owner/drivers have taken in the sport. As he quickly found out, it’s the attention to detail that’s key for success.

“It’s impossible your first time around to truly estimate every detail and every cost and every facet of a start-up [team], so it’s been much more intense than I could have ever estimated,” Sharp says.

“I’m a very competitive person and I don’t have a whole lot of patience. So it bothers me at times to see things take so long when we’re looking to complete a certain aspect of the program. There’s just so many items we have to do, from filling up the shop to purchasing equipment to preparing spares. The details are huge, no doubt. You can never fully prepare yourself for that until you’re in the middle of it all.”

The pressure is undoubtedly enormous, especially when stepping into the Series’ most competitive category. With no less than a dozen GT(2) entries contesting the nine-round championship, there’s little room for error, especially with the amount of factory or factory-supported teams taking part this year.

Defending class champions Flying Lizard Motorsports return with two Porsche 911 GT3 RSRs, while Corvette Racing and BMW Rahal Letterman Racing each field a pair of factory-backed cars. Risi Competizione has two Ferrari F430 GTEs for Sebring and one Prancing Horse for the entire season. Add Extreme Speed’s two Tequila Patron-sponsored Ferraris to the mix, and GT(2) is the most competitive it’s ever been.

“It’s going to be unbelievable,” Sharp says. “There’s just no one you can count out. I really don’t know where we’re going to stack up. I think it’s going to be something we’re going to have to work very hard with all year long. Everyone else is going to have to do the same.
Extreme Speed fields two of the five cars sponsored by Tequila Patron in the ALMS. (John Dagys)

“I think just from the battles seen last year impressed me. When I got out of the prototype sometimes last year or was waiting to get in, I saw the battles that were going on the track, nose-to-tail. I think that’s just going to be even better this year. There’s going to be some historic-type fights.”

Where Extreme Speed eventually stacks up in their debut race remains to be seen, but Sharp is taking a realistic approach to the season-opener. Following three successful tests at the 3.7-mile circuit over the winter, the drivers have plenty of laps around the bumpy airfield circuit. Both Ferraris have held up well. Now it’s time to see how the whole package fares when the green flag drops on Saturday.

For Sharp, it will be the realization of a dream and also a sense of achievement if the team can reach its first goal in its first-ever race.

“For us, going into Sebring, the mentality is certainly different than going into the next race,” Sharp says. “Whether we’ll ultimately have the last couple of tenths of pace obviously for a 12-hour isn’t nearly as important as just being consistent, staying out of trouble and getting to the end of the race. As a first-race team, that’s really what our focus will be.

“Sure, you’d like to win the race or finish on the podium, and any of those results would be incredible. But how many times have we seen guys throw it away in the first opening few laps of the race? We can’t afford to do that. As drivers and as a team, we need to go out and do what we have been doing. The trick is to get through the race unscathed. That’s our goal. If we can have both of these cars finish, we’ll have a great day.”

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