Joe Foster: “Well, I’ve known Charlie and Charles for many years now. Charles and I used to work together at the Panoz Racing School in Road Atlanta and at Sebring, and we met Charlie as part of both activities… golly, way back in 2000! By 2015, Charlie had done quite well in the US – he’d won a couple of championships with Charles – and they decided to do something different and go race in Europe. And the 24H SERIES was a wonderful opportunity to sample that. 

“At the time, I was running in ALMS [the American Le Mans Series] with Dempsey Racing, and was also doing IMSA. Then at the end of 2014, the Porsche program I was doing in the US came to an end, as these things do, and [Charlie] invited me to join them as part of their European extravaganza.

“My first race at Paul Ricard was a longer race, so we actually brought another friend over from the US, called Dave Russell, who was a compatriot of ours for years in the instructing world – he was one of the lead instructors at Skip Barber for years – and still owns an Aston Martin team in IMSA. We all had a great time!”

JF: “I think it’s the food!” [Laughs] “Obviously we love coming to Italy, and we love Mugello: it’s a high-speed track, it’s a daunting track with a lot of fast, blind corners, and it’s super fun to drive, whether it’s in the 991 class or the GT3. We just love going there.” 

JF: “Xavier and Andy are both fantastic, accomplished drivers. Charles and Charlie met Xavier back when they were running with Prospeed [Competition] at some of the British GT and SRO [Blancpain Endurance Series] races in 2013. He ran with them in Zandvoort: he’s Dutch and he was bloody quick there! 

“Andy emigrated to the US when he was quite young, and most of his racing has been done there. Obviously he was an incredibly successful factory driver for General Motors. So he was a great addition to the program and helped us get on the podium with the 991 at some of the longer races. But Andy had extended opportunities in the US, so… I think after Andy was when Shane [Lewis] stepped in…?

JF: “Oh Adam, another great addition! Bear in mind, as we got more and more success with the AMG GT3, Mercedes themselves took more and more interest in us. And that brought Adam to us, as a factory AMG guy. We all wanted to raise our game, and the best way to do that was to work with somebody who knows the car like the back of his hand, which Adam absolutely does. We learned a lot from Adam, and we were very grateful to have him in the team.”

Notable results (2015 and 2016)

2015 – MRS GT-Racing (Porsche 997 Cup) – 997 

-       First series start

         -       24H PAUL RICARD 2015 – 8th in 997 (with MRS GT-Racing)

2016 – MRS GT-Racing (Porsche 991 Cup) – 991

-       First 24H SERIES win

         -       12H MUGELLO (with MRS GT-Racing)

         -       3 class podiums (Paul Ricard / Barcelona / Brno)

JF: “Yeah we had some great races that year and really hit our stride with the Porsche. We definitely hit on a good setup that maximized the Hankooks, and that sort of played into our strength as the ‘older, craftier, strategic guys’ trying to be more consistent against the quicker drivers over one lap. And there were some folks in the 991 that year who were crazy fast! Amazing Porsche drivers that came across from the Supercup. I mean, if you look at that year, we won six out of seven races, but never once qualified on pole!” [Laughs]

JF: “That was the year we went to the Red Bull Ring, and that was a crazy race! Everyone had much higher brake pad wear than anticipated, and we were just throwing pads at the car over the 12 hours. We were trying to stretch to the end of the race without stopping, but for most of the last 30 minutes, it was metal-to-metal with the front brakes. I remember, I even drove through the gravel a couple times just to slow the car down! At the very end, I didn’t drive into the pits, or parc fermé, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop. I just let [the Porsche] grind to a halt on the front straight.

“I still have those metal backing plates in my office to look at every day!”

Notable results (2017)

991 Drivers’ champion

PROsport Performance (Porsche 991 Cup) – 991 

-       6 class wins (Mugello / Red Bull Ring / Paul Ricard / Imola / Portimao / COTA)

-       Overall GT Drivers’ (Europe) championship – runner-up

JF: “Honestly… I don’t know. This has always been a very competitive series, but I think, now, it has hit another level. There’s a new wave of competition come into the series with the [Porsche] 992 GT3 and the [Ferrari] 296. And we are still, to all intents and purposes, in the same car as 2018!” [Laughs] “So there’s a natural evolution happening, and it’s definitely more competitive now than it was in 2018. And 2018 wasn’t easy.”

JF:[Laughs] “We were successful, honestly, because we used the same philosophy as we did with the 991. We had great engineering and great preparation, and we really worked hard on the tyres on long runs, and worked to perfect the strategy. It was a lot of effort.”

Notable results (2018)

Overall GT Drivers’ champion – Europe and Continents

PROsport Performance (Mercedes-AMG GT3) – A6-Am

-       4 class wins (Imola / Portimao / Barcelona / COTA)

-       3 overall podiums (Navarra / Portimao / COTA)

JF: [Laughs] “No no, Shane was actually a huge addition! 

“I think you have several things at play. You’ve got the series growing and getting more competitive, which is a good thing. And also, with strategies and especially the Code 60s, anything you do strategically is still a highly-educated guess. Sometimes you win those gambles and sometimes you lose them. And in 2019, honestly, we just lost more of them than we won.”

JF: “Certainly it was a development of a new process, in terms of how the team operated. There was a change of base and some personnel, but the core personnel that were actually working on the car stayed the same. That’s something Charlie’s always tries to do, to keep that part consistent.

“We also took on a large logistical challenge by running a concurrent program at the Nürburgring in the NLS, meaning we had two cars built to dramatically different rules packages. So 2019 was a big step in terms of optimizing the processes away from the track. But in terms of the on-track performance, all we could do was control everything we had control over, and the rest was up to the racing Gods.”

JF: “I thought it was a lot of fun! Like Mugello, the food was amazing!” [Laughs] “But it was a new venue, quite unique, and you could really picture what racing there must have been like in the ‘60s and early ‘70s when [Autodromo Pergusa] was in its heyday. We’re not sure the circuit suited the Mercedes very well, compared with, say, the shorter wheelbase cars that were good in the short chicanes. But we certainly enjoyed it. 

“Also, at that time, I was still in recovery mode. You’ve probably noticed that I missed the first race in Dubai at the beginning of that season. I was quiet about it at the time, but the reason was, in December [2019], I found out I had throat cancer. So I spent most of 2020 dealing with surgeries and radiation, and all of that.

“I will say, the race in Sicily was a really big deal for me emotionally, because I had spent that whole year, quietly in the background, fighting this other deal. I had to move to Houston in Texas, from Atlanta, for a while for treatment.”

JF: “The things they do to you to make it go away aren’t friendly! In fact I’m still having side effects from all of the treatment. But I’m in remission now, so it’s all good.

“I can’t lie, 2020 was a shitty year. And in the middle of Covid too. So at the end of the year, to have such a fun result with the team – Shane drove an amazing closing stint – meant so much. I still wasn’t myself, but the guys were very patient. Charlie didn’t have to do it, but he let me drive because he was using ‘getting back in the car again’ as motivation to fight.”

JF: “Not necessarily. We still had a good time in 2021, regardless of what the stats are. And the key thing is, as you would expect, the series continued to get more competitive, went to some new circuits – which is great – and we had some bad luck mechanically that year. But if you look at our overall finishing record… the preparation by our crew was just outstanding! Racing’s a numbers game, and sometimes these things catch up to you.”

JF: “Roger Penske used to say that all you can do is put yourself in a position to win and hope you get lucky. We’re always hoping for overall podiums, and we always do the things we can control to put ourselves in that position, then hope things work out. At Portimão, it finally did! 

“We put ourselves in the right position, we had a competitive car, and honestly, we all really, really love Portimão. It’s a super fun circuit – it’s fast, it’s blind, it’s uphill, it’s downhill – and we’ve always enjoyed it there. We’d actually gone testing there earlier that year in February, and we’d worked really hard on getting the data.” 

Notable results (2021 and 2022)

2021 – CP Racing (Mercedes-AMG GT3) – GT3 class 

-       1 overall podium (Hungary)

2022 – CP Racing (Mercedes-AMG GT3) – GT3 class

-       5 wins, 2 overall (Dubai / Spa / Portimão / Barcelona / Kuwait), 1 podium (Estoril)

JF: [Laughs] “Well obviously both are amazing events. Phil [Quaife], I believe, was helping us in Dubai, and that was super fun: he’s a great kid to race with and learn from. Very fast. And obviously Kuwait was very special. It’s clear that even an older guy like Espenlaub must want to win pretty badly if he’s willing to put himself through those last 30 minutes!*

“It was clear we weren’t the fastest car on the track. Honestly, the [Manamauri Energy by] Ebimotors guys were just faster over one lap the whole weekend. So it was a real team effort to ‘serve up’ Charles for that opportunity, in the sense that we were doing a fuel conservation strategy leading up to it. I had to double stint a set of tyres and basically ‘make’ fuel to shorten the last pit stop. For that final driver change, from myself to Charles, we came up with our quickest change all season, and the pit crew came up with their quickest tyre change all season. All of that got Charles out just barely in front of the Porsche, and after that, it was an incredible closing drive from Charles.

“Had he not gotten out ahead of the Porsche, Ebimotors would have won, easily.”

*Amazingly, in a straight fight to the finish, Charles Espenlaub secured CP Racing’s overall win at the 2023 Hankook 12H KUWAIT by just 0.537 seconds!

Notable results (2023)

GT3-AM Drivers', Europe and Continents

CP Racing (Mercedes-AMG GT3) – GT3-Am

-       1 overall win (Kuwait), 2 overall podiums (Monza / Kuwait) and 3 class wins (Dubai / Monza / Kuwait)

JF: “At this point in my life, any day I can show up at the track with Charles, Charlie and Shane is found money for me, and I’m super grateful to be there. This is my 41st year in some form of professional motorsport: I first moved to England to do British Formula 3 when I was 17. It’s been a long and crazy road, I’ve had a really good run, and I’m just full of gratitude. Why wouldn’t I want to keep going?!”