Motorsport Prospects Weekly Debrief for November 19, 2021 – Lessons Learned by a Pro Racer and More

Motorsport Prospects Weekly Debrief for November 19, 2021 - Lessons Learned by a Pro Racer and More

In this week’s Motorsport Prospects Weekly Debrief I bring you news of new driver development programs, what you can learn from a pro driver, how the growth of women participating in the highest levels of motorsport is key to its growth, tips for producing video content on Instagram, green tech company research tools for sponsorship acquisition and more. All this plus some awesome onboard videos. Welcome to news racers can use. Let’s go!

Driver Development News, Tips & Techniques

  • 130 Performance and Scuderia Fern Racing have announced a driver development program for 2022 and beyond bringing an “affordable path to F3 level racing.” Full details can be found here.
  • I had mentioned this in a previous Weekly Debrief but here are the details of Honda Performance Developments’ HPD Drivers Academy Program.
  • McLaren has announced that they will give a 2023 GT contract to their best Driver Development Programme driver competing in the 2022 British GT Championship.
  • The IMSA website is shining a spotlight on their IMSA Diverse Driver Development Candidates with the first half being featured here.

The Business of Being a Race Driver

  • With all the various social media platforms around, you need to understand their strengths and weaknesses and maximize them for your situation. If you are struggling to come up with ideas for Instagram video, Megan Lingner has published a great post that will help called Content Ideas to Use Instagram Video to Boost Your Impressions.
  • While there is a little bit of advertising for themselves, Sport Dimensions in their post Big Decisions with Little Experience talks about how sponsorship is not the same as most other marketing decisions that a business will make and why that is so.

Drive & Testing Opportunities

  • Rice Race Prep has some drive and test opportunities available. As per Greg Rice:
    • As you complete your racing, and look for your next challenge, please consider a program with our fine RiceRace team. We do not race F4 cars, or rebranded F4 cars. We do race FF/F1600 and FC/F2000 cars. FF and it’s big brother F2000, are the best development class for young drivers who want to move on to bigger things, or just have fun racing in the most competitive racing in the world, as it has been for almost 60 years. We have small SCCA club racing programs starting for as little as $30K and full Pro F1600 and SCCA programs doing a dozen events for 4x that price. We only have one F1600 Pro seat still available though so please reach out if interested. RiceRacePrep.com
  • K Hill Motorsports have one seat remaining for their annual 5 days of driver training consisting of 2 days of private testing on November 23-24, 2021 at Roebling Raceway then 3 days on November 26-28, 2021 at Sebring Raceway. You can contact the team through their website here.

Series News

Motorsport Prospects Weekly Debrief for November 19, 2021
  • Canadian racing team Exclusive Autosport will be making their long awaited debut in Indy Lights in 2022. This means that they will have their own complete driver development ladder from F1600 to the highest levels of the Road to Indy.
  • According to Road & Track, the Toyota GR Supra makes a superb GT4 racer that is “approachable for amateurs and enjoyable for professionals alike.”

Esports & Sim Racing

  • Speaking of Ross Bentley, he has just announced the launch of his Sim Racer Academy. From Ross himself:


This membership program is geared toward all levels and types of sim racers – from newbies to hard-core, experienced sim racers; from those who began by using simulators to drivers of real-world cars who have migrated to sim racing; and everyone in between.

The Sim Racer Academy has just one goal: to help sim racers be even better sim racers. (And yes, practically all of the content applies equally to real-world racing and track driving)

I’ve taken everything that I’ve learned over the past four decades from coaching Indy 500 winners, IMSA champions, NASCAR winners, junior formula champions… and winning sim racers, and put it into bite-sized and manageable learning resources, ranging from videos to illustrations to text to audio clips to demonstrations to… well, you get it.

Ross Bentley
  • ESE’s Digital Motorsports brand has launched the “First Annual Digital Motorsports World Cup.” Top professional drivers from around the world will participate in this unique esports race using Porsche 911 GT3 cup cars on the iRacing portal. Six drivers will compete in a state-of-the-art studio with the remaining drivers joining remotely from locations around the globe. The live event will have two hosts, two commentators, and three analysts, bringing Digital Motorsports’ racing to the same production level as major global tournaments such as CS:GO, Valorant, and League of Legends.

Business of Motorsport

Motorsport Prospects Weekly Debrief for November 19, 2021
Image courtesy of Envision Racing
  • Stop me if you have heard this before but Porsche is interested in getting involved in F1 but this time with a twist. It may come at the expense of their Formula E team which they have only committed to compete with until the 2024 season.

From the Motorsport Prospects Archives

Motorsport Prospects Weekly Debrief for November 19, 2021

Historic/Vintage racing is increasing in popularity. If you are wondering what the appeal is check out my article The Appeal of Historic Racing.

The Last Lap

Motorsport Prospects Weekly Debrief for November 19, 2021 - Lessons Learned by a Pro Racer and More
Porsche Experience Centre Toronto

Here are a few things that caught my eye over the last week that are related to motorsport in some way.

  • The Indy Autonomous Challenge powered by Cisco recently took place at IMS and the technology is pretty cool. And let’s be clear here. Nobody is saying that this is intended to replace human driver-controlled race cars!
  • This looks like an excellent documentary that will also support a worthy cause. Racing with Autism: Austin Riley’s Road to Inspiration is a a documentary following the Riley family across the country as their son, Austin, chases his dream of becoming a professional race car driver. Proceeds from the video will go towards sponsoring other young racers with autism. The video is available for viewing on the Vimeo link here. Watch the trailer below.
Motorsport Prospects Weekly Debrief for November 19, 2021 - Lessons Learned by a Pro Racer and More
  • Have a look inside Ferrari’s invite-only ‘Cavalcade,’ a 4-day road rally of prancing horses.
  • Ready for a few in-car videos? Here are three. The first is a lap of Bahrain with Alpine’s Nico Lapierre. The second is on board a Mazda MX-5 Cup Car at the brand new Ozark International Raceway and the last is onboard James Hunt’s 1974 Hesketh from the 2021 Monaco Historic Grand Prix.
Motorsport Prospects Weekly Debrief for November 19, 2021 - Lessons Learned by a Pro Racer and More
Motorsport Prospects Weekly Debrief for November 19, 2021 - Lessons Learned by a Pro Racer and More
Motorsport Prospects Weekly Debrief for November 19, 2021 - Lessons Learned by a Pro Racer and More

That’s it for this week. Stay safe and I will see you at the track!

Mark Boudreau
Author: Mark Boudreau

Mark is the publisher of Motorsport Prospects. As a former lawyer, he applies his legal background and research skills to assist race drivers by showcasing the resources they need to make their motorsport careers happen.