TEAM STORY Elite Motorsport
Elite Motorsport began life as a team competing with the 750 Motor Club but has now grown to be one of the leading outfits on the British Touring Car support bill
How one team went from Sport Specials to become a Ginetta king
There is not a great deal in common between the 750 Motor Club’s Sport Specials Championship and Ginetta Junior. One is a club-level series that features a diverse range of sports-racers, many of which are one-offs or have been built by small organisations, while the other is a onemake category that appears alongside the premier circuit racing championship in the UK and requires a much larger budget. But there is a very close link between the two championships for one of the leading Ginetta squads.
Prior to becoming the team to beat in Ginetta Junior, Elite Motorsport was a regular in 750MC competition and ran its own Elite Pulse car in Sport Specials in 2014. The squad was founded by Eddie Ives, who had built kit cars as a teenager, and was focused around his own racing. That included the creation of the Elite Pulse, which Ives raced in the Classic Sports Car Club’s Magnificent Sevens series in 2013 prior to taking the Class C title of Sport Specials the following year.
Ives explains he wanted the Pulse to be different to the plethora of other Caterham Seven-style machines on the marketplace.
“Lots of the Sevens out there racing are variants of road Sevens converted to race,” says Ives. “We thought there was a gap in the market to have an out-and-out racing Seven – we built a single-seater-esque car with a Seven chassis.
“We built that in 2012/13 and took it to some shows. There was a bit of interest in it but it was a bit expensive for what it was.”
Despite being very successful – Ives was only defeated six times in Sport Specials all year in 2014 – it was at this point the team realised the Pulse was not going to be a commercial success when competing against more established
brands such as Caterham and Westfield.
“We got to the point where realistically, although it was very successful and beat everything in the same class with the same power, it was going to be hard as a business,” recalls Ives. “Then we decided to head down the race team route.”
But, even at this stage, there was no hint of Ginetta Junior on the horizon, as Elite was set to head in a very different direction.
“We went to the launch of the new British Formula 4 car and planned to go down that route,” says Ives. “It was supposed to be an entry-level single-seater series with dads and lads racing. But at the launch we saw the old F3 teams were there and thought it would be hard going against them.
“We ended up having a meeting with Ginetta a week later and our first Ginetta Junior was bought. It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t the end goal it was just a sequence of events.”
Given the massive change in direction for Elite, 2015 was always going to be a challenging season for the team. Despite signing reigning Fiesta Junior champion Geri Nicosia, running as a single-car team in a championship as competitive as Ginetta Junior was never going to be easy and ultimately that first season was all about Elite finding its feet.
“It was all a bit new!” says Ives, who was only aged 22 himself at the time. “We were up against some great teams like HHC, Douglas and JHR but we managed to get our foot in the door with one car.”
For the following year, Elite expanded to two cars, running Harry King and Tom Wood, and that was when success started to follow. And, in a stroke of good fortune for the team, it coincided with a major changing of the guard in the championship.
“There was a lot of luck and lots of things came into place,” says Ives about the team’s sudden expansion. “We had just started winning during 2016 – we won at Snetterton and had a 1-2 at Rockingham and that was all positive. Harry was running near the front and that coincided with HHC deciding not to carry on in the championship having been, in my eyes, the main team to beat – they were the pacesetters. And JHR had their unfortunate circumstances [the team was suspended from Ginetta competition amid accusations of illegal engines] so they weren’t part of the championship.
“That coincided very well with when we were running at the front. There was a lot of luck but we were in the position
[to capitalise]. We grew rapidly and ran six Ginetta Juniors in that following
year. It was super successful.”
And, if anything, that was an understatement. From the moment JHR refugee Tom Gamble joined the squad for the final three events of 2017 (and won four of the nine races en route to the title), there has been no shortage of Ginetta Junior success for Elite. Adam Smalley and Louis Foster swept all before them to finish first and second in the championship in 2018, as
Elite drivers won 17 of the 26 races. Then James Hedley crushed the opposition to take a very dominant title last year.
But Ives never expected he would enjoy such triumphs so soon after the team joined the Ginetta ranks.
“We were pretty level-headed – we were very ambitious but also very realistic,” he recalls. “We never imagined that [level of success].”
It was not just in Ginetta Junior that the squad enjoyed title glory last year, either. In 2018, the team expanded into the Ginetta GT4 Supercup with King and he finished third in the points. But last year he emerged on top of a close fight with Will Burns to add a second Elite crown.
King is now moving on to pastures new after winning the Porsche GB Junior shootout but has fond memories of his
four seasons with Elite.
“It was a defining four years I spent with the team, I saw it go through a lot of changes [as it expanded] and I’m proud to have been a part of that process,” he says. “It really provided me a platform to get me to the position I am in today, and without that I wouldn’t have had the opportunities I’ve received so far.”
While Ives says a slice of luck played its part, there are obviously a lot of factors that have contributed to Elite becoming a frontrunning team.
“I think the success is partly down to the dedication and determination of the team and, as a result, the growth certainly surpassed anybody’s expectations,” says King.
That growth includes a completely new series for the team in 2020 as it moves into the Mini Challenge JCW series for the category’s first season on the BTCC support bill. One of Elite’s new recruits for its first Mini foray, Renault UK Clio Cup runner-up Max Coates, has already been impressed by the dedication and attention to detail that King talks about.
Coates joined the team as it made one of its traditional pre-season visits to the Calafat circuit in Spain recently and saw the level of preparation Elite puts in.
“When you go to Spain you see why they’ve had the success in Ginetta Junior,” says Coates. “The kids that have gone out there have done full races. They’ve done race starts, safety car restarts, they’ve had experience of close combat racing. They learn other things like how to defend and what it’s like to attack.
“It just means when they come into it [and race] for the first time, it’s not a fresh experience.”
For Coates himself, the team’s track record of success was one of the big factors in him joining Elite as he moves into the Mini Challenge.
“That was initially the reason [he joined] – they’re a team that’s more than capable of doing a very good job in running racing cars,” he says. “The results speak for themselves.”
But Coates – who is joined by Lewis Galer and Max Bird in Elite’s three-car Mini line-up – also picks out the staff
Ives has recruited to help with the team’s first season of Mini competition as being another compelling factor. On the team’s books are Richard Skeels and Martin Poole, who were integral members of Eurotech’s Mini success with Brett Smith in 2017.
“While it’s a new team to the championship, it isn’t [because of the
Mini Challenge experience it contains],” says Coates, who highlights the friendly atmosphere within the team as also being important. “That’s part of Eddie’s success, he’s got good people around him to come and do the job.”
Ives feels the move into the Mini Challenge is a perfect fit for his team as he seeks to expand its reach.
“I want to provide a ladder for our
Junior drivers,” he explains. “With
Ginetta Junior you build up some lovely relationships and it’s a shame after two years not to have something for them to fall into. To have a front-wheel-drive touring car-style option is no bad thing
and all three of our Mini drivers started out in Ginetta Junior.
“It [Mini Challenge] is oversubscribed and the cars seem very good. It’s an exciting thing to be part of with its first year on TOCA.”
Ives has made it clear that his existing Ginetta operations will not be diluted down to incorporate the extra work of running in the Mini Challenge, saying that new staff like Skeels and Poole have been recruited to specially work on that programme. But he also acknowledges that the presence of someone with the experience of Coates means there is pressure to perform in the new series from the start.
“Max wouldn’t have come to us if he didn’t feel confident,” says Ives. “It adds a bit of pressure but we’re going to try and win more than two championships this year!”
To do that, Elite will have to make history in Ginetta Junior. No rookie has won the championship before but in 2020 Elite’s six-car line-up is entirely made up of first-year drivers. Despite this, Ives describes it as being a “strong” team and is keen to maintain the run of success.
“They’re all rookies but in no way does that faze us,” he adds. “We’ve done some really good winter testing and I’m quite confident that our rookies can run at the front.”
Another key factor that Ives believes has contributed to success in Ginetta Junior is the friendly environment he tries to create within the team for the youngsters.
“You need to have the right atmosphere – with Ginetta Juniors, you’ve got to remember they’re kids and they’ve got to have fun,” he explains. “If they don’t enjoy it, they won’t [perform].”
Away from Ginetta Junior, Ives has also got high hopes for his GT4 Supercup and GT5 Challenge drivers, which will be announced in the coming weeks, as the team seeks to expand upon its 2019 glories.
But, as for the future, Ives is not getting carried away by the success of recent seasons and is remaining level-headed.
“The key thing with motorsport is to see what opportunities arise,” he says when asked about what is on the horizon for Elite. “We had some cool opportunities this year with other series, which we haven’t taken and might in the future.
The key thing is reacting quickly to what’s best at the time.
“We’re very happy being among the support package for TOCA. I think they are the best championships to be in in the UK. It’s the place to be, and look at the people that have come through those categories over the years.”
As for his own driving career, Ives is more than happy to have switched to the team management role and stresses he does not miss racing himself.
“Every now and then I think I might do a guest round in something but I get just as much satisfaction – if not more – from working with our drivers,” he says. “It ticks all of the boxes for me.”
And it is a role that Ives has proved perfectly suited to having taken his team from its humble Sport Specials beginnings to becoming one of the most successful operations on the BTCC support bill.