Optimum Motorsport strengthens structure with Technical Director appointment

It has been an incredibly busy and rewarding season of GT3 racing at Optimum Motorsport, with a great deal of success and, importantly, momentum and motivation heading into its second season as a McLaren Customer Racing team in 2021.

To further strengthen its motorsport operations, Optimum Motorsport is pleased to announce that Ian Smith will head up the Technical Director role.

Ian brings over two-decades of motorsports engineering experience to the team, having started in historic racing for JSWL in 1988. Stints at Parabolica Motorsports 1994 were followed by Lister Cars and then on to RN Motorsports in 2002.

Ian moved to Creation Autosportif in 2004 as Technical Director and was heavily involved in the design of the CA06/H and CA07 LMP1 cars, before leaving for Rebellion Racing. After a season of freelance work with the team, he returned in 2011, again as Technical Director, and remained in the position until 2018 when he switched to McLaren as Senior Development Engineer of the 720S GT3.

Ian Smith, Technical Director

“I’ve joined Optimum Motorsport at a great time, they have grown a great deal over the last few years, and I’ve come in and immediately become immersed in the winter test and race programmes. We have great engineers already in Rob [Courtneidge], Alex [Fleming] and Tom [Sander] and it’s my job here to help support them and look at maximising the performance potential of the McLarens in the various championships in 2021. There are many links in the chain to success, so many small details that must be correct to win. It’s already a great team and I am confident that we will achieve further success together in the near future.”

Shaun Goff, Team Principal

“It’s great to be bringing in someone with Ian’s talent to the team with a clear remit of extracting performance from the McLaren package. This is something we all do as a team, but to have someone with his experience dedicated to this week in and week out, we expect to make gains and build our technical base in the process.”

Optimum Motorsport are currently putting its finishing touches to its Winter Programme and will be announcing details of this in the coming days.

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