From a Radical SR9 in 2006 to a Le Mans class victory and LMP2 title in 2011, a British endurance team built its record race by race.
Greaves Motorsport is a British endurance team that entered the Le Mans Series in 2006. Its Zytek won the LMP2 class at Le Mans in 2011 and took the series title, and the team later competed in ELMS and the WEC, with Caterham backing for part of its run.
Greaves Motorsport is a British endurance racing outfit that Tim Greaves founded and ran. Its first Le Mans Series campaign came in 2006, and its best season arrived in 2011, when it took the LMP2 class at Le Mans and claimed the series title. Later seasons took the team into the European Le Mans Series and the FIA World Endurance Championship.
Who founded Greaves Motorsport and how did it start?
Tim Greaves founded the team and drove for it from the outset. In 2006 it ran the works Radical effort in the Le Mans Series, with Greaves and Stuart Moseley sharing a Radical SR9-AER entered as Bruichladdich Radical. Its opening round, the 1000 km of Nurburgring, ended with 15th overall and fifth in class.
The team kept using Radical machinery through 2007 and 2008, although the driver list changed often. Ben Devlin and Michael Vergers were among those who ran the car at various points. Greaves made the team's first 24 Hours of Le Mans appearance in 2007, but he crashed after 90 minutes and the team had to withdraw.
The 2007 season brought a ninth-place finish overall at the 1000 km of Valencia, where the car also ended up third among its class rivals. Robin Liddell joined Greaves and Stuart Moseley for that event. The team closed the year joint-eighth in the LMP2 standings on 8 points.
From a Radical SR9 in 2006 to the LMP2 class at Le Mans in 2011, a British team built its record one endurance race at a time.
How did the team change between 2008 and 2010?
For 2008 the team fielded Petersen, Leuders and Rostan as its new drivers. The remaining rounds produced no finish higher than 30th overall, either in the Le Mans Series or at Le Mans itself. The team ended the year joint-eleventh in its class with four points.
Pierre Bruneau joined for 2009, and the entry became the Bruichladdich-Bruneau Team while still running the AER-engined Radical SR9. Its season opener at Catalunya brought tenth overall and fourth in LMP2. A disqualification at Spa followed, and Rostan retired from Le Mans after 91 laps. Greaves returned for the Silverstone finale, where the car finished 16th overall and sixth in class.
In 2010 the team left Radical behind and ran a Ginetta-Zytek GZ09S/2 under the Team Bruichladdich name. The regulars were Greaves, Karim Ojjeh and Thor-Christian Ebbesvik. The 8 Hours of Castellet opened the year with 12th overall and fifth in class. At Le Mans, where Gary Chalandon took over from Ebbesvik, the car finished tenth overall and fifth in LMP2.
The 1000 km of Spa was a setback, with a blown engine in qualifying and Ebbesvik out after 15 laps. A second-place class finish at the 1000 km of Algarve, with fifth overall, was the year's first class podium. The season ended at Silverstone with 19th overall and eighth in class, and the team finished fifth in the LMP2 team championship with 46 points.
What did the team win in 2011?
In 2011 the team renamed itself Greaves Motorsport and was the first to race the new LMP2 Zytek Z11SN-Nissan. The LMP2 category at the 24 Hours of Le Mans went to the team for the first time, with an eighth-place finish overall, and took the Le Mans Series LMP2 title with Tom Kimber-Smith and Karim Ojjeh crowned as the class drivers' champions.
The year opened at the 6 Hours of Castellet with a class win, and the car ended up third overall with Ojjeh, Chalandon and Kimber-Smith aboard. Spa was a poor day, ending 37th overall and eighth in class, but the crew recovered with another class victory at the 6 Hours of Imola, where the car finished eighth overall.
A third consecutive class win came at the 6 Hours of Silverstone, where the car crossed the line tenth overall. Olivier Lombard took over from Chalandon from Le Mans onwards. The season closed at Estoril, where the car finished fourth and took second in its class, which was enough to secure the championship.
How did the team fare in the European Le Mans Series and WEC in 2012 and 2013?
In 2012 Greaves Motorsport contested both the European Le Mans Series and the new FIA World Endurance Championship. Its ELMS campaign ended third in the LMP2 standings on 48 points, and its WEC campaign reached fifth in the LMP2 trophy on 99 points.
The WEC programme opened at the 12 Hours of Sebring, where it was seventh among the WEC runners and fourth in LMP2. At Le Mans the team ran two cars. The No. 41 entry of Christian Zugel, Elton Julian and Ricardo Gonzalez came 12th overall and fifth in class, while the No. 42 car of Alex Brundle, Martin Brundle and Lucas Ordonez finished 15th overall and eighth in class.
Later rounds were a mixed bag. At Silverstone the No. 42 car took 12th overall and fifth in LMP2, and at Sao Paulo the team finished 11th overall and fourth in its class with Roberto Gonzalez standing in for his brother Ricardo. The season finale at Shanghai ended 15th overall and eighth in class.
The 2013 programme was shaped by a Caterham partnership. At Le Mans the No. 42 car of Michael Krumm, Jann Mardenborough and Ordonez finished ninth overall and third in LMP2, while the Caterham-branded No. 41 car came 23rd overall and tenth in class. The team then withdrew from the 3 Hours of Red Bull Ring after failing to find drivers, its first ELMS withdrawal since making its debut in 2006.
Later in the year the team also raced at Circuit of the Americas, where it took fifth in LMP2 and ninth overall, and the team ended the WEC season fifth in LMP2 on 81 points. In the ELMS the year finished ninth on ten points.
| Season | Series | Notable result | Standing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | Le Mans Series | Ninth overall, third in class at Valencia | Joint-eighth in LMP2, 8 points |
| 2010 | Le Mans Series | Tenth overall, fifth in LMP2 at Le Mans | Fifth in LMP2 teams, 46 points |
| 2011 | Le Mans Series | LMP2 class win at Le Mans, eighth overall | LMP2 champions |
| 2012 | ELMS and WEC | No. 41 12th overall at Le Mans | ELMS third, 48 points; WEC fifth, 99 points |
| 2013 | ELMS and WEC | No. 42 ninth overall at Le Mans | WEC fifth, 81 points; ELMS ninth, ten points |
| 2014 | ELMS | Fourth at the 4 Hours of Silverstone | Fourth in LMP2, 68 points |
| 2016 | ELMS and Le Mans | Sixth in LMP2 at Le Mans | Top six at Red Bull Ring |
What happened in 2014 and 2015?
Greaves Motorsport returned to the European Le Mans Series in 2014 with two Zytek Z11SN cars, after Caterham withdrew its backing over the lost Le Mans place. The team finished fourth in the LMP2 standings on 68 points, level with Morand Racing, after a season built around newcomers.
The Silverstone round of 2014 gave three newcomers their debuts: Matt McMurry, James Littlejohn and Tony Wells. McMurry finished fourth, while Littlejohn and Wells came sixth. Littlejohn had led at one point, and Radio Le Mans nominated both him and McMurry for Driver of the Day.
At Le Mans in 2014 the No. 42 car ran under the Caterham Racing banner, shared by Matt McMurry, the youngest competitor the event had ever seen, with Dyson and Kimber-Smith. It finished tenth in class and 25th overall. The No. 41 car retired after suspension damage following a crash.
At the 4 Hours of Castellet, Shulzhitskiy and Bacheta challenged for the lead before finishing fifth, while McMurry's car crashed out at the first corner.
The European season also brought a fourth-place finish at the 4 Hours of Imola, and at the 4 Hours of Red Bull Ring the two entries finished fourth and sixth. The team's year ended at the 4 Hours of Estoril with a seventh-place finish for McMurry, Miguel Faisca and James Fletcher.
The team's 2015 entry was announced on 16 December 2014, subject to approval, for the LMP2 class of both the ELMS and the WEC. The cars were Gibson 015S machines, an updated Zytek Z11SN from Gibson Technology.
What did the team race in 2016?
In June 2016 the team ran a Nissan-powered Ligier JS P2 prototype at Le Mans. It finished sixth in the LMP2 class and a top-ten place overall, and three of its drivers completed 348 laps between them. The switch from Zytek and Gibson-built machinery to a Ligier chassis marked a change of car.
A top-six finish came in July at Red Bull Ring, the third round of the 2016 ELMS season. The team also took part in the WEC 6 Hours of Mexico, entered through a link-up with the event's organisers.
Which drivers raced for Greaves Motorsport?
Tim Greaves, Stuart Moseley and Ben Devlin drove the early Radical entries, while Karim Ojjeh, Gary Chalandon and Tom Kimber-Smith formed the core of the 2011 title team. Later drivers included Chris Dyson, Michael Marsal, Olivier Lombard and Matt McMurry.
The 2012 and 2013 rosters widened the pool considerably. Alexander Rossi and Eric Lux joined Kimber-Smith in the 2013 Le Mans car, while Michael Krumm and Jann Mardenborough partnered Ordonez in the No. 42 entry. Mark Shulzhitskiy made his WEC debut at Shanghai in 2013 alongside Lux and Bjorn Wirdheim, and Wolfgang Reip debuted in the series at the 6 Hours of Bahrain that year.
What is the legacy of Greaves Motorsport?
The team's headline achievement is its 2011 double, a class win at Le Mans and the LMP2 title in the series. Both came from a British operation that began with a Radical in 2006 and reached the top step of the LMP2 class five years later.
Seen as a whole, the team's record divides into two halves. The first covers the Radical and Ginetta years, when results were modest and the squad was still finding its feet. The second covers the Zytek era, when a stable LMP2 package and steady driver pairings produced the 2011 titles and a run of results in both the ELMS and the WEC.
Its later years show how sponsorship shaped the programme. Caterham backed entries in 2013 and early 2014 before withdrawing support, and the team went on to Gibson 015S cars in 2015 and a Nissan-powered Ligier in 2016.
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