Racing lines: Driver Harry Tincknell on life after Mazda
This IMSA season will be the fifth and final for Mazda, so what next for its star driver?
There’s a growing buzz in the world of sports car endurance racing right now, and everyone with a vested interest is attuned to it. The all-new Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) class will come in this season, before the parallel Le Mans Daytona Hybrid (LMDh) cars join the party in 2022, unifying this too often fractured form of motorsport to allow the same cars to contest all three ‘majors’: the Le Mans 24 Hours, the Daytona 24 Hours and the Sebring 12 Hours. As in real life, the future can’t come soon enough.
That buzz is why it was something of a slap in the face when Mazda announced recently that it would end its increasingly successful IMSA campaign in the US at the end of this season, when the current DPi prototype era closes. The Japanese manufacturer’s Multimaticrun 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-powered RT24-P will head to Sebring this month with high hopes of a second consecutive victory in America’s greatest sports car race (more of which next week), following a podium in Daytona that might have been a win with a more favourable twist of luck.
Larry Holt’s Multimatic squad remains well placed to fly in the LMDh era, but it now needs a new partner. In the wake of such growing momentum in IMSA, it’s hard not to feel that Mazda is turning its back on a genuine shot at adding a second Le Mans victory to its famous sole win, the first for a Japanese firm, way back in the Group C era in 1991.
*Tincknell pushes on*
Harry Tincknell, who has fast emerged as one of the finest long-distance racers of the current era, could be forgiven if he felt a bit cursed when it comes to fickle car makers pulling the plug.
Having scored an LMP2 class win on his Le Mans debut in 2014, the British driver was snapped up by Nissan for its experimental GT-R LM campaign – which abruptly turned into a shortlived disaster. No matter: four fruitful years with Ford’s high-profile GT programme followed, but then the Blue Oval left the field. Last year, he joined Aston Martin as a third driver at Le Mans and scooped his second class win at the ‘big one’, this time in the GTE Pro class – only for the British marque to end its 15-year works-team commitment at this level. And now, after four seasons developing the Mazda in IMSA, here’s another blow.
“There has definitely been uncertainty in my career,” says the Devon-born-and-bred 29-year-old. “I’ve moved around as programmes have stopped and found good ones to replace them. It’s sad that Mazda is stepping back, but it probably wasn’t a huge shock after they reduced to a one-car entry this year and with new rules coming that require fresh investment.
“If Mazda were going to stop, this was probably a natural conclusion. But the programme has been on an upward trajectory, and we now have to finish on a high.”
*The right man in his corner*
Tincknell will surely bounce back, as he has before – and it helps that he’s managed by one of the greatest sports car drivers of the past 25 years. Three-time Le Mans winner and ex-Formula 1 driver Allan McNish was at first a mentor to Tincknell when he was a teenage single-seater hopeful, and he knows how lucky he is to have such experience on tap.
“In Allan, I’ve got the right man in my corner,” says the self-professed boxing fan. “He’s seriously competitive himself, and he has instilled a lot of that in me. It’s invaluable to have him. You need the right person dealing with the business side and getting your name out there.
“If I can do the job on the track and get the results, that gives him the ammunition to go out and find me these good drives. Hopefully that will be the case when LMDh comes in, which looks really exciting. I’ve not known it where so many programmes have been announced so far in advance, which is great – but it leaves this lull period in the next year or two.”
*The next move*
Toyota and American low-volume specialist Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus will race LMH cars this year, followed by Peugeot in 2022. Those seats are all taken for now, but Acura, Audi and Porsche are committed to LMDh from 2023 and more car makers are expected to join them. Opportunity will knock, especially for proven talents such as Tincknell.
“I don’t know how it’s going to play out,” he says. “I’ve got a long-term deal with Multimatic and there has been quite a bit of press around their links to potential LMDh teams, but whether they will run a full programme I don’t know.
“What I do know is that I want to be in a competitive programme in LMDh, and the best way to do that is get results on track and stay as fit as I can be. I’m going to be 30 as LMDh starts – just coming into the peak of my career, when I have got good experience and still a good amount of speed. I’m really looking forward to the prospects of it all.”
He’s not the only one, of course. “I can see people who haven’t looked at sports cars before starting to align themselves with this form of racing,” adds Tincknell. “[Ex-F1 drivers] Kevin Magnussen and Paul di Resta are at Peugeot and have already been dipping their toes into sports cars. You will see more of that, plus GT drivers wanting to show that they can be quick in prototypes, too. There should be lots of seats and lots of competition.”
For now, finishing up with Mazda in IMSA and a return to the European Le Mans Series with TF Sport will keep Tincknell in the frame. Expect him to thrive when he drives whatever comes next.
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