It’s October 2014. Within 48
hours of beating Corvette’s Antonio Garcia to win the inaugural Tudor United
Sportscar Championship at the season-ending Petit Le Mans, Chrysler drop the ultimate
bombshell; they would be withdrawing funding for the SRT Viper GTLM programme
with immediate effect, leaving newly-crowned Kuno Wittmer on the side-lines.
Now an integral part of the TRG Motorsports family, James Newbold spoke to Wittmer, the man behind Christina Nielsen’s
surge to the GTD class points lead.
Few could have seen it coming. At a time when Viper’s stock ought to have been at its most marketable, with a
title defence and a return to Le Mans on the cards for 2015, instead there was
only regret for the opportunity missed.
“It definitely hurt a lot,” Wittmer
admits. “When you become teams champion and drivers champion in Atlanta, then
Monday morning you get the call to find out that all of a sudden the journey
that I’ve been on for the last five years with Chrysler was over and done with,
it’s heart-breaking.
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| Wittmer took the 2014 GTLM title, but funding for the SRT Viper programme was cut shortly afterwards (IMSA). |
“The five years I had at Chrysler
were five of the best years in terms of my career. We pushed hard, we delivered
on track, we delivered off-track, both my team-mate [Jonathan Bomarito] and I,
and of course my two other team-mates on the 91 car [Marc Goosens and Dominik
Farnbacher]. But it wasn’t just the drivers that got hurt in this whole thing,
it was the team itself, Bill Riley and all his staff, everyone was affected by
it.”
Aside from taking GTD honours in
a one-off outing at Daytona in Ben Keating’s privately-entered Riley Viper, Wittmer’s
outings in 2015 were limited to a few appearances in the Continental Tyre SportsCar
Challenge. Although spending time with his young family was appreciated, the 33
year-old Montreal native was eager to get himself back in a competitive ride,
and leapt at the chance to join Kevin Buckler’s TRG Motorsports, who needed a
new co-driver to partner GTD title contender Christina Nielsen.
“You definitely never want to
stay inactive for a long time, you want to always stay active as much as you
can and always keep yourself going,” he says. “In the time I had away, I had
around six or seven months to reflect and look at where I should go with my
career. Yes of course spending time with family and staying physically active
was good, but to align myself in my career was the most important thing.
“It’s not something you want to
go crazy about, sitting on my couch all day long looking at my phone and
waiting for it to ring – I’m not like that, I always try to stay positive and I
knew something was going to come up. The deal with Christina was a really great
option, she gave me a really good opportunity to help out.”
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| Wittmer didn't take long to gel with his new team, collecting three podiums from his first four races (Kuno Wittmer Racing). |
Once it became clear that James
Davison would be forced to miss two rounds due to prior commitments in the Pirelli
World Challenge, Wittmer was parachuted into the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 for
Watkins Glen and quickly immersed himself with the team. Coming off the back of
three-straight podiums at Lime Rock, Road America and VIR, Nielsen now leads
the championship by six points heading to the Lone Star Le Mans at COTA, with
only the Petit Le Mans to follow. If they can get it over the line, would it
come as some form of redemption?
“Absolutely – my main focus is to
have her win this thing, that much is plain and simple,” says Wittmer. “As much
as I’m not on the top of the charts with my points, that’s not really necessary
for me; I’ll still feel very accomplished as a driver that I’ve helped out the
team and hopefully her secure the championship.”
Nielsen’s upturn in form isn’t
just down to Wittmer’s driving efforts however. Attending PWC races as her
driver coach has helped Wittmer form a bond with the Dane, a vital component of
any successful partnership, and the fruits are already beginning to bear.
“I would say the biggest
improvements I’ve seen in her is in the way she applies the things she learned
from one series to the other, Pirelli World Challenge being a sprint series
means you’ve got to get on top of things quickly,” says Wittmer. “It’s just
little things like that, where she improved her outlaps as far as getting up to
speed, attacking right away and defending aggressively and she’s brought that
over to the IMSA side as well.
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| The TRG Aston is firmly in the GTD title fight with just two rounds to go (IMSA). |
“I think she’s got it all going
for her. You just have to see in the last five or six races, the consensus in
the paddock is ‘hey, we don’t want to mess with this girl on track, she can
really race.’ People are really starting to notice her talent, which is really
great.”
The one thing missing thus far
has been a win, but that’s hardly unusual this season, with the Scuderia Corsa
Ferrari of Townsend Bell and Bill Sweedler at VIR the only winners amongst the
top four in points. Wittmer feels the elusive first win is not far away, but
rightly points out that it is of secondary importance at this crucial stage of
the season.
“We’re absolutely due for a win,
we’ve had three podiums and we’re right there, but priority always has to be the
end game,” he says. “All through my career it’s always about where we want to
be at the end of the season. If the second place championship contender is
running P1 in COTA or Atlanta and we’re running second, we’re definitely going
to go for it.
“We absolutely can’t take
anything for granted, there’s nothing won yet, we need to stay humble and treat
every round as just another race weekend. We can’t be thinking about what ifs
and start putting strategies in our mind. All we have to do is stay clean, race
hard and make no mistakes.”
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