USC – James Hinchcliffe with Starworks Motorsports at Road America

Last year in Grand-Am, Starworks Motorsports entered a Riley DP powered by BMW, and won the Road America race thanks to the duo Brendon Hartley (today pilot Porsche en WEC) and Scott Mayer. The American, orphan of the young New Zealander, will therefore welcome the arrival of the usual driver IndyCar James Hinchcliffe, who plays car at Andretti Autosport, for what constitutes the return of the Riley from Peter Baron's team to the American endurance scene in USC, a merger of Grand-AM and ALMS. The other change comes from the BMW engine replaced by a Honda HPD unit.

“Obviously, we are all very happy with the return of the No. 78 Riley, explains the team owner. The project was not easy. We were hoping for a quicker return, but the engineering work and all the little details that went into redesigning the car took longer than expected. HPD and Riley invested a huge amount of resources into an initial design that was developed with the series, but was not approved in the end. It cost us a little over a month. But the good news is that we have a reliable solution and we are back to have a good chance to defend our victory from last year at Road America. »

James Hinchcliffe will want to use his experience of the circuit, rather than that of the car. “I haven't done much riding in a DP, but I know Road America and I'm sure that, with a team like Starworks, they will allow me to reach a good performance very quickly. Have a relationship with HPD (Honda powers the Andretti team in IndyCar, Editor's note.) makes this proposition even more attractive and should help make the transition easier. »

The No. 78 Riley-HPD will notably face the Corvette DP from Action Express Racing or the Spirit of Daytona, but also the LM P2 prototypes such as the Morgan-Nissan from Oak Racing and the HPD ARX-03b from Extreme Speed ​​Motorsports. The team will also field two Oreca FLM09s in the PC category for John Martin – Martin Fuentes and Renger van der Zande – Mirco Schultis.