Bomarito added to Visit Florida Racing for Petit Le Mans
Jonathan Bomarito will join last week’s IMSA Laguna Seca winners Marc Goossens and Renger van der Zande in the Visit Florida Racing Ligier-Gibson for the 10-hour Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta.
Photo by: Jay Alley
Bomarito is on loan from Mazda Motorsports, which has been on hiatus from the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship since Round 7, as it works with Joest Racing for the 2018 season.
"I am really looking forward to the opportunity to work with Visit Florida Racing,” said Bomarito, who was testing for Mazda Team Joest at Hockenheim last week. “I have known [team owner] Troy Flis for a while now and he has a great program. I have worked alongside Marc Goossens in the past [in the SRT Dodge Viper team] and I know Renger [van der Zande] pretty well, so I think it will be a good fit.
“I just want to do a solid job as a third driver and make the transition as seamless as possible for the team. I am also thankful to Mazda for agreeing to let me compete at one of my favorite venues of the year."
VFR’s usual ‘third man’ for endurance races, René Rast, is on DTM duty the same weekend as Petit, as he contends for the title in the series finale.
“René is in an awesome fight for the DTM championship so it makes sense for him to concentrate on that, and with Jonathan (Bomarito) being available, it worked out that Mazda let us borrow him for the race,” said Flis. “We have a great relationship with John Doonan and the Mazda team so I reached out to them to see if they could help.
“Jonathan was eager to help so Mazda agreed to share him with us for Road Atlanta. This is another example of what makes this sport so great. During Hurricane Irma we had several teams reach out to offer us help and even at Mazda Raceway this past weekend we had to plug our transporter into one of the Michael Shank Racing team transporters for power because our generator was having issues from the storm. It’s just great to see everyone come together.
“René did an awesome job for us earlier this year and we all hope that he comes home with the big prize in DTM."
VFR’s best finish at Petit Le Mans was fifth in 2015, while the Ligier brand is looking for its second consecutive win at Road Atlanta having conquered this race last year with Michael Shank Racing.
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