De Phillippi “Confident” for First Season with Random Vandals

Photo: Connor De Phillippi FB

Connor De Phillippi says he is both “excited” and “confident” about his first full season GT World Challenge America campaign powered by AWS with Random Vandals Racing, which kicks off this weekend at Sonoma Raceway.

The BMW M factory driver will be spearheading the Random Vandals two-car Pro class effort, piloting the No. 99 BMW M4 GT3 EVO alongside full-season co-driver Kenton Koch, with Conor Daly joining for the season-ending Indianapolis 8 Hour presented by AWS.

“I’m excited.” De Phillippi told Sportscar365. “It’s a new team for GT3s with BMW, but they have a lot of experience in GT4 stuff as well as their engineer [Drew Wikstrom], he’s been around a long time with GT3. So I’m pretty confident going into the season. We have a good group of guys around us to execute.”

De Phillippi’s only other outing with the Paul Sparta-led program and in SRO America competition came at last year’s Indy 8H, also sharing the car with Koch and Daly.

“Kenton and I have known each other for a long time,” De Phillippi said. “We both grew up in California, so we’ve known each other for probably 15 years. We’ve driven against each other a little bit early in our careers, but in recent GT racing, he’s either been in GTD and I’ve been in [GTD] Pro or vice versa.

“Indy was the first time driving together, and right away it was a natural fit, so I think that’s why it made sense to put us together for a full season, and I think Paul saw that BMW saw that, and we’re both excited to team up.”

De Phillippi will be racing in a sprint format for the first time in many years in GT World Challenge America, having become a mainstay on the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship grid, where he is handling Michelin Endurance Cup duties for Paul Miller Racing this season after two years in the championship’s GTP class.

“I haven’t done a sprint format since I won [ADAC] GT Masters back in 2016,” De Phillippi said. “It’s just kind of a very different dynamic of race weekend. You still have the driver change portion, but the way you drive and the time you have to be on a set of tires is very different. So it’s a different mindset than the typical race weekend for me.

“I think it’s just going to be refreshing to go back into that purely focused on more performance rather than stint length and those types of things.”

“It’s one of my busier years I’ve had in recent years, so I’m excited about that. Also balancing different teams, and different tires as well. Michelin in one and Pirelli in the other. That’ll be something I haven’t had to do in a couple of years, but I’m excited for it.

“I always like bouncing between different things. I think it keeps you sharp as a driver to adapt to different scenarios, so the more seat time the better, and this is one of those years we’ll have a fair chunk of it, so I’m excited to have that.”

De Phillippi Providing “Knowledge” of M4 GT3 EVO Characteristics to Random Vandals

Having already completed two long-distance races in M4 GT3 EVO machinery with Paul Miller in the WeatherTech Championship this season, De Phillippi has had considerable seat time in BMW’s updated EVO-spec GT3 machine, which will make its global SRO race debut in Sonoma this weekend.

“Not a lot of teams have run the EVO yet in race format,” said De Phillippi. “So having the experience from Daytona and Sebring and just being able to guide them in the direction of what has worked, what hasn’t worked, and how the EVO has affected balance, what issues have arised from the Evo as far as handling or whatsoever.”

“That’s been a benefit of knowledge I can bring to them to try to help guide us in the right direction. But at the end of the day, they’re also a team that wants to start with their own clean sheet of paper and develop their own program.

“So it’s a balance of being respectful to what their goals are in wanting to develop their deal, and also trying to bring in my two cents to the equation.

“I live in Charlotte, so we’re all close to each other, which is really convenient. I’ve never been in that position to be located close to a team like that.”

The team also recently turned testing laps in Sonoma ahead of this coming weekend’s season-opening action to dial in their new brand No. 99 BMW chassis.

“It’s a totally new car,” said De Phillippi. “With it being an EVO, they just chose to buy a whole new thing. They shook it down in South Carolina, which went smoothly.

“I think going into the first race, there’s a lot to learn in a short amount of time. So we’ll try to do our best to hit the ground running, but I think we have solid preparation done so far and [I’m] excited to get things going.”