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Life in the fast lane<br />
M OTO R S<br />
THIS MONTH J’AIME’S MOTORING CORRESPONDENT AND RESIDENT RACING<br />
DRIVER MARTIN PLOWMAN UPDATES US AS THE SEASON COMMENCES<br />
There is a lot of activity in the motorsport world at<br />
this time of year; the winter weather is (or should be)<br />
leaving us and the race circuits get busier as people<br />
dust off their cars and bikes ready for the track. I<br />
wanted to give you a behind-the-scenes view of<br />
the preparations that go into the seemingly simple<br />
process of finding a driver pairing to race for the<br />
season and getting everything ready to announce<br />
them at the season launch media day.<br />
This season has been one of change for us at<br />
UltraTek Racing. The team is set up around the<br />
development of Richard Taffinder and, until this<br />
point, Richard had raced in every championship the<br />
team had entered. However, Richard is in the middle<br />
of a monumental business expansion plan and we<br />
agreed that trying to focus on this, and also the<br />
racing was going to compromise both programs. We<br />
decided that Richard would sit out the first part of<br />
the season and we would create a parallel program to<br />
start later in the season just for Richard.<br />
This left us with the task<br />
of finding drivers for one<br />
of our Nissan 370Z GT4<br />
cars. Now you would think<br />
that finding somebody to<br />
race is an easy task - who<br />
wouldn’t want to put the<br />
370Z through its paces<br />
this season? The approach<br />
to driver selection is a lot<br />
more scientific. Firstly,<br />
every team has a culture,<br />
like a business, we have<br />
a particular attitude,<br />
a way of working and<br />
values. At UltraTek,<br />
we pride ourselves on<br />
professionalism but also<br />
development delivered<br />
with compassion. We are<br />
a caring bunch with very<br />
high standards of business<br />
ethics and want people to support these values. Very<br />
often, teams can fragment with different drivers<br />
and management teams looking after their personal<br />
objectives. We spend a great deal of time at the start<br />
of the season making sure that the driver’s objectives<br />
and team objectives align. Simply put, if the driver’s<br />
hopes and dreams match the team’s hopes and<br />
dreams, you all pull together to achieve them. If they<br />
don’t, people are often drawn apart.<br />
The format of the car we had to fill was Pro-Am, this<br />
means matching a professional racing driver, typically<br />
a young racer, with an amateur driver. The skill level<br />
of amateur drivers is still very high, but it recognises<br />
those who joined the sport in later life (typically after<br />
30) as opposed to those who were born with a go-kart<br />
steering wheel in their hands.<br />
The most important job of the pro driver is to<br />
manage car setup and be able to communicate the<br />
feeling and handling of the car to the team. The<br />
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