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Meet Ryan Briscoe
If you had barely heard of Porsche’s only contracted
Australian driver until his recent appearance on the
Porsche stand at the Australian International Motor
Show, then you’re forgiven, for 26 year-old Sydneyborn
Ryan Briscoe has spent the majority of his 15
year long career winning races overseas.
Although he started racing karts in Australia aged
11, he was quickly on the International stage. After
being talent-spotted by top Italian karting team
CRG, he was living and racing in Europe with his
family’s enthusiastic blessing by the time he was
15.
After graduating to Formula Renault, Briscoe then
won eight races in the 2003 Formula 3 Euro Series
ahead of current BMW-Williams F1 driver Nico
Rosberg and F1 aspirant Nelson Picquet Jr. to take
the title and during the season he was invited to
join Toyota’s junior development programme .
In 2004 he became the Panasonic Toyota F1
Racing team’s second test driver and took part in
his first F1 Grand Prix as the third race driver on
the Friday of that year’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
But then his F1 career stalled. Following a major
reorganisation of their F1 programme, Toyota
signed two experienced drivers in Jarno Trulli
and Ralf Schumacher to long-term contracts and
Briscoe could see no opportunity to get into a F1
race seat for several seasons except by joining a
struggling team like Jordan.
“I could have gone F1 racing for a year at the back
of the grid, but I felt that was the wrong direction,”
he said. Instead, he accepted an offer to go to
the United States and race for Chip Ganassi in IRL
open wheelers in 2005.
It all started well, with a 10th outright in the
Indianapolis 500 and some other strong individual
race results, but then he had an horrific accident at
the Chigagoland Speedway that left him with a pair
of broken collarbones, a broken ankle and a badly
compressed back.
Closely watching his recovery and progress was
former racing great and highly-success team
owner Roger Penske, who was on the lookout for
drivers for his 2007 Porsche RS Spyder squad.
He was impressed by Briscoe’s professional
approach, his raw speed in Indycars and his ability
to quickly get on the pace in a variety of racing cars
and this led to him becoming a contracted Porsche
factory driver at the beginning of the year.
“It doesn’t get much better than being a works
Porsche driver and racing for Penske,” said
Briscoe.
“The RS Spyder is really amazing to drive. It’s like
an open-wheel car with covers on. With its ground
effects, it’s so quick in the corners and the way
it accelerates, stops, handles and the g-forces it
generates are more like some of the top level openwheelers
I’ve raced.
The unquestioned highlight of his 2007 season to
date came in the Utah Grand Prix, round five of the
ALMS series, when he and his German team-mate
Sascha Maassen took overall victory, with his less
powerful Porsche heading the factory LMP1 Audis
to the chequered flag. Outstandingly, he drove the
final 75 minutes of the race on a single set of tyres
and one tank of fuel.
As his ‘reward’, Briscoe was entered for the famous
Indianapolis 500 in late May driving a Symantec
Dallara Honda co-owned by Roger Penske’s
youngest son Jay Penske. He was in contention for
victory before a rain burst forced officials to show
the chequered flag early while he was running fifth.
Another highlight of his 2007 season was that
Roger Penske himself was the strategist and team
boss for his #6 RS Spyder all season. Working
that closely with one of the most celebrated team
owners in motor racing has seen the two bond in
a way that’s only positive for the Australian’s future
and the next phase has already played out, with
Briscoe already given a full-time IRL open wheeler
seat for 2008 with the team.
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