Era Motorsport gets into the Shadows
They may both be sports racing cars, but there’s a pretty large gulf between a Shadow DN4 and an ORECA LMP2 07. But Kyle Tilley has an appreciation for both, having had time at the wheel of each. And his Era Motorsport operation has expertise in caring for both as well.
Era Motorsport is best known to IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship fans as a winning LMP2 team; this year especially, having captured victory in both the Rolex 24 at Daytona and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring to put Dwight Merriman, Ryan Dalziel and Connor Zilisch at the head of the LMP2 points. But across the Atlantic, Era Motorsport’s business is all about the classics. That UK branch, which normally houses about 30 historic racing cars, is taking eight legendary Shadow cars to the Goodwood Road Racing Club Member’s Meeting this weekend.
Shadow Racing Cars was founded by Don Nichols, first entering Can-Am in 1968 and eventually also Formula 1, where it scored a single victory, and Formula 5000. It was in Can-Am that the company found the most success, including a championship in the shortened 1974 season for Jackie Oliver in the DN4.
James Bartel is the caretaker of many Shadows, and has entrusted Tilley and his people to prepare the cars for the Goodwood Members Meeting, as well as having Tilley drive the MKI Mosport Can-Am car at the event. In all, Era Motorsport will be bringing eight Shadows to the Members Meeting, and 11 to the Goodwood Festival Of Speed later in the year.
“Everything from the Formula 1 cars, Formula 5000 cars through Jackie Oliver’s championship-winning DN4,” Tilley said of the variety. “Obviously, there have been a couple that have run over there previously, but the DN4 has never made it onto European shores before. So I’m excited to run that. And it’s great to have Jackie [Oliver] driving it at Goodwood as well. To reunite him with his championship winner is a lot of fun. Full credit to to Jim Bartel who owns all of the Shadows – I think it’s a labor of love for him. There’s certainly some serious bits of kit and, as I’m sure everybody knows, they’ve been upside down and things at various times and Jim’s always rebuilt them to immaculate standards and continues to run them. So full credit to him and a big thank you to him for trusting us with him because we all know they’re his pride and joy.”
Goodwood was a racing circuit that operated from 1948-’66 at Goodwood House in England. After Charles Gordon-Lennox, then Lord March and now the 11th Duke of Richmond, took over the estate, he sought to bring motor racing back with the Festival of Speed. It was a few years later that the racing circuit was revived with the Goodwood Revival for cars that could have raced in the first iteration of the circuit, and then the Member’s Meeting. This year’s MM will include a demonstration race for Can-Am cars in which several of Bartel’s cars will participate, including the Mk.1 that Tilley will drive.
The Mk.1 had a famously low frontal area, but that meant the driver’s feet were splayed out to the sides, and the steering wheel positioned quite low.
“I don’t even know how to describe it,” said Tilley, whose driving resume includes a 2021 Daytona LMP2 win with Merriman, Dalziel and Paul-Loup Chatin. “It’s a 1000hp go-kart, I think is probably the best way to describe it. Very, very strange thing to drive – dual rear tires, little 10 inch front wheels. And unique. I think it’s terrifying and unique. It’s a brilliant car to drive in lots of ways, and to get the opportunity to drive something with that kind of history…. Obviously, Don Nichols was relatively pioneering in the Can-Am era, but it’s certainly not a car which I would be overly interested in pushing on too much with.”
His favorite of the cars, though, is the DN4 that Oliver will drive again at the Members Meeting.
“I shook the car down at Road America last year,” he said. “I’ve spent a lot of time in a lot of different historic vehicles, Can-Am stuff included, and I’ve never driven anything like that before. It’s unbelievably fast, an unbelievable amount of torque. And actually, despite its kind of fearsome reputation, and despite being 1100 horsepower and probably just as much torque, it’s actually quite usable to drive. It’s very confidence-inspiring and it was one of those cars where I had to come into pit lane because it was just, like, inviting you to push and push and push. I’m sure once you got it there on the limit that’s probably where it would have bitten me.”
It will be a while before Era returns to running its No. 18 ORECA in the U.S. – the LMP2 class doesn’t make its return to the series until the Sahlen’s Six hours of the Glen at the end of June. Even so, the LMP2 program doesn’t leave a lot of time to pursue a classics program as involved as what Era is running in the UK – although the team does run one of Wayne Taylor Racing’s former Acura ARX-05 DPi cars for a customer in HSR, a bit of a natural fit. A second LMP2 car, on the other hand, would be easy to accommodate, and Tilley reports that the team has a second car ready to go. The team was trying to make something happen for 2024, but is ready should someone be interested for next season.
In the time between Sebring and Watkins Glen, though, Era will have plenty of historic motorsports business to concentrate on. Era will be running cars at the Monaco Historic Grand Prix and elsewhere. While Tilley has been working on historic racing cars since the age of 15, and the vintage world was kind of the idea behind Era Motorsport in the first place, he still considers it an honor for people to put their irreplaceable pieces of history in his hands both for preparation and as a driver.
“It’s special, for sure,” he said. “From my standpoint, to get to drive a lot of the cars – I’ve driven various Formula 1 cars, like early 60s Grand Prix cars, everything through to the modern LMP2. They’re just special cars to drive. And it’s kind of a glance back into history as to what it would what it would have been like. I can’t imagine like doing Le Mans in something like a mid-’70s prototype, how you’d have to nurse that through to the end. It gives you such a different understanding as to when we were at LeMans with [the LMP2], it’s basically a sprint race. It’s unique for sure. And I’m just very fortunate that we get trusted with lots of cool toys.”
