RGR Sport by Morand was officially launched in February after the new team formed by Ricardo Gonzalez joined forces with Benoît Morand’s outfit (Team Morand). It will be the only squad flying the flag for Mexico in the World Endurance Championship and at the 24 Hours of Le Mans this season.
What ambitions does this brand new outfit have in LM P2, a class where the competition is hotter than ever? The main goal is to be competitive from day one, asserts Gonzalez. “It’s a completely new organisation but everyone involved in the team has a lot of experience. We have experience with the Ligier, with Gautier Boutellier (Ed. who worked with G-Drive Racing in the World Endurance Championship last year) as our engineer, and support from Onroak. So we just fit the pieces together but everyone is quite experienced, the drivers included.

Gonzalez is not only a racing driver and team owner: he is also the promotor of the 6 Hours of Mexico, the new race to be held for the first time on 3 September this year at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. All in all, the 38-year-old Mexican is a busy chap! Yes, now being the promotor for Mexico puts a lot on my plate workwise. I’m having to spend a lot of time now in my office thinking about racing and not necessarily my main business! But things are going very well and the reaction from the Mexican public has been very positive. We’ve already had a press conference to launch the race in Mexico and with the sponsors and media present, we had quite a good turnout. There’s still a lot of work to do before the event, but if things continue to go the way they are going, I think it’s going to be a great event.

So can we say that this season, you’ve got two big moments? Le Mans and the 6 Hours of Mexico?   I would say Le Mans and the Championship We always have to see Le Mans as an independent race, and focus on that to try and win it. And the rest of the time, we need to think about the whole season. But yes, Mexico’s going to be an important event for me, with all the Mexican crowd there, but I think the aim is the championship.
 

The Mexican colours will be clearly apparent on the livery of the team’s LM P2 car, which also sports the new race’s logo on its rear fairing. Mexico’s profile will be higher than ever in endurance racing in 2016. So is there a “Mexican way” of approaching endurance? I guess so! What I can bring to the team is making sure that everyone is having a good time! It’s hard work and the guys put a lot of time into this, so I think that having a good time and being thankful to the guys means a lot to them. That’s something I always pay a lot of attention to.

 

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Une photo publiée par RGR Sport (@rgr_sport) le 24 Mars 2016 à 20h05 PDT

In his quest for victory at Le Mans and in the World Endurance Championship (WEC), Ricardo Gonzalez has called on Filipe Albuquerque (two Le Mans appearances with Audi in LM P1 in 2014 and 2015) and Bruno Senna (who has raced at Le Mans three times, including two outings with Aston Martin Racing in LM GTE Pro in 2013 and 2014). So how did you choose your drivers? It wasn’t easy and we spent a lot of time on it. In the beginning, the list was quite long! And we came out with a bunch of factors that were important for us. The most important being the driver’s experience of Le Mans. Because at Le Mans, even if you come from Formula 1, there’s a learning curve. As we’re a new team, we wanted to keep that learning curve as small as possible so that was a very important point. Another point was making sure that we would get along well throughout the whole year. On the personal side. Just to pass that on to the whole team and have everyone get on well together. I guess those were my main points on that long list of factors!