Strakka at the AUTOSPORT International Show

Jan 13, 2012

Strakka Racing took centre stage, quite literally, at the AUTOSPORT International Show this week when Piers Phillips and Jonny Kane were interviewed by Haymarket Publishing’s Henry Hope-Frost on the main stage.

The Team Principal/Technical Director and driver took time out of their busy pre-FIA World Endurance Championship schedule to visit the NEC in Birmingham for the show, representing the team while Nick Leventis and Danny Watts were abroad training.

Piers and Jonny discussed the build of the brand new Honda Performance Development ARX-03a, plus their thoughts on the season ahead.

"We'll have the car finished and built by the end of the month with a view to testing early in February and then shipping off to Sebring," Piers told the AUTOSPORT International Show crowd.

"We were ready to step up and measure ourselves against the big boys. We have a great driver line-up and great car and with the new World Endurance Championship and obviously incorporating some of the classic events it was the perfect place for us to be.

"Any successful team or result is based on the partnerships of those concerned. Wirth Research do a fantastic job on the car and they are very heavily involved with the support in terms of engineering, aero development, team strategy. We obviously work extremely closely with HPD developing their product.

"The decisions about the car and the engineering of the car come down to the team and we've got some great personnel in the team and some great individuals and we really want for nothing in terms of how we perform."

Jonny, a former McLaren AUTOSPORT BRDC Award winner, added that he was genuinely enthused about stepping back to the top level of sportscar racing and the opportunity to race on some of his favourite tracks.

"I'm really looking forward to the year," he said. "Some new circuits that I haven't been to before; but hopefully we're going back to Interlagos which I have raced at before and really liked that circuit. Then there are the usuals like Silverstone and Spa and Le Mans.

"We are a private team but with a lot of experienced people. We have great support and we just try and operate at the best level we can and sometimes that brings better results than other people expect but nothing more than we hope for itself."