The orange and black liveried G-Drive Racing cars have been a familiar sight on the ELMS grid since 2016.
At the end of the 2021 4 Hours of Le Castellet, G-Drive Racing secured not only their first win at the French circuit, but also their tenth ELMS overall victory in five years.
The Russian team were already a force to be reckoned with on the world stage, having secured the 2015 FIA WEC LMP2 Championship title.
The 2016 ELMS season saw the final year of the open topped LMP2 cars and it was the no38 Gibson 015S-Nissan of Simon Dolan, Harry Tincknell and Guido Van Der Garde that took G-Drive’s first ELMS victory in the very first race at Silverstone. The Anglo-Dutch trio added a second and third place finish in the next two rounds before finishing off the season with win number two at Estoril to secure the 2016 ELMS LMP2 title.
In 2017 another win was added to the tally, this time by Memo Rojas, Leo Roussel and Ryo Hirakawa in the no22 G-Drive Racing Oreca 07-Gibson at the 4 Hours of Monza. While it was the team’s only win in 2017, four second place finishes secured G-Drive Racings second championship title in a row.
2018 was a bumper year for the Russian team with three wins at Monza, Red Bull Ring and Silverstone, with Roman Rusinov, Andrea Pizzitola and Jean Eric Vergne steering the no26 Oreca 07-Gibson to G-Drive’s third championship in a row.
Two wins followed during the 2019 season for the no26 G-Drive Racing Oreca, with maximum points at Monza and Barcelona. Roman Rusinov and Job Van Uitert took the two wins, with Norman Nato at Monza and Jean-Eric Vergne in Barcelona. However, the team were beaten to the title by just 4 points by Idec Sport, the Russian team having to settle for second place in 2019.
While United Autosports proved to be unstoppable in the shortened 2020 season, G-Drive Racing were still a force to be reckoned with three podiums from the five races. Victory in the season finale in Portimão for Roman Rusinov, Mikkel Jensen and Nyck de Vries secured the team’s ninth ELMS win.
With three races completed in the 2021 ELMS season, G-Drive Racing’s win at Le Castellet notched up their tenth ELMS victory and puts them second in the championship standings, just 3 points behind Orlen Team WRT as the ELMS heads to Italy for the 4 Hours of Monza.
