Difference between revisions of "Henri Racing Team"

Revision as of 21:15, 1 February 2014

The Henri Racing Team was founded in early 2016 by Jean-Phillipe Henri and his sons Agnes and Marc in the town of Snow Shoe, Pennsylvania. Jean ran a few teams in the past outside of the canon racing series, including Ferrari's factory outfit in the non-canon Women's GT World Championship, so he had some experience in the running a team field. His dedication to racing was shown when he founded his own team with his sons, originally Henri Racing Technologies, which the team continues to run by that name in some racing series.

History

RTSS

The team was founded in January 2016, by Jean-Phillipe, Agnes, and Marc Henri. The first racing series that the team originally came about to compete seriously was the Rejectrucks Super Series with Jukka-Pekka Kankaanpää, an up and coming Finnish teenager, driving the #42 truck. This would be the first attempt at a serious racing effort by the team.

The team showed up for the first RTSS race at the Adelaide Street Circuit, where the #42 qualified in 17th place. This was Kankaanpää's first big race, so the team didn'f expect too much out of qualifying. On race day, the team started to make up positions as around a third of the field suffered from black flags for pit lane infringements. The truck had to avoid several incidents, and Kankaanpää found himself in 6th position about two thirds of the way through the race. But, to the disgruntled team, their truck became one of the many with a lot of damage after a few incidents, plus a black flag, one of the many victims of pit lane speeding penalties on that day in March. The team would not finish.

Round 2 at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez would see the truck qualify 17th again, and the race was a procession, and the team finished lowly again, amongst some growing concerns at the Henri camp. Jean-Phillipe, despite being new to owning his own team, was starting to get a little frustrated with qualifying pace ruining any shot at the race win. Race 3 at Walt Disney World Speedway was worse. The team finished a low 16th after starting 22nd. However, the team saw that they had one of the top ten fastest laps in the race at one point, so they saw no reason to worry as of yet. Round 4 at Kawartha Speedway would prove to be their best finish yet, as Kankaanpää qualified below 20th place again, but through caution flags, chaos, and clean driving, as well as restarting on the front row as a lapped truck, he managed to crawl his way up to 11th by races end, just one position away from points, and only the second truck one lap down.

F1RSTC

The team after their first races in RTSS ebtered the F1RTSC. The team entered 2 BMW M3 E30 cars, one driven by Kankaanpää, and the other driven by another teenager, 19 year-old Clément Grandmaison, driving cars #42 and #43 respectively.

At the first round of the championship at the Spa Superprix, the cars wualified 16th and 22nd, Kankaanpää ahead of Grandmaison. Grandmaison would retire after only 6 laps thanks to mechanical problems, but Kankaanpää used good luck and pace to give the drivers in fro of him a taste of his quick pace, and would finish just a few tenths away from a podium in 4th place. The team were ecstatic after the race, and were sure not disappointed.

Porsche Reject Cup

The team entered the Porsche Reject Cup with the same driver lineup, for the sake of giving the drivers more seat time in touring cars and GT cars. The drivers would miss rounds 5 and 6 of the PRC to drive in F1RSTC, giving seats to Laura Hamilton and Kim Sung Ri. Round 1 was hosted at Oulton Park, where out of 44 cars, the 2 Henri cars would qualify 41st and 43rd. The cars weren't able to pass many people, mostly when people in front of the cars made mistakes, and as a result were usually just ahead of the leading trio and always on the brink of being lapped. They finished in 37th and 39th, Kankaanpaa ahead of Grandmaison.