DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — AO Racing checked plenty of boxes during the 2024 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship – just its second season of competition.
Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) class team title?
Check.
GTD PRO driver’s crown for Laurin Heinrich?
Check.
GTD PRO manufacturer’s championship for Porsche?
Check.
Multiple pole positions and a podium finish in the team’s first year of Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) competition?
Check.
European Le Mans Series LMP2 championship, LMP2 Hyperpole and podium finish at 24 Hours of Le Mans (all partnering with TF Sport)?
Check. Check. Check.
What’s more, AO Racing co-founders P.J. Hyett and Gunnar Jeannette and company checked a box that didn’t even exist at the start of the season when IMSA named them inaugural winners of the Team Marketing Achievement Award in recognition of their “on-track excellence and fan-friendly presence.”
The latter was embodied by the playful “Rexy” and “Roxy” liveries of the T-Rex No. 77 Porsche 911 GT3 R(awr) and “Spike” the No. 99 ORECA LMP2 07 dragon – not to mention team members who brought countless giggles and grins to fans of all ages in paddocks and autograph sessions from Daytona to Long Beach and Le Mans in their inflatable Rexy, Roxy and Spike costumes.
“The thing that P.J. and I, as we do this more and more, we understand that when it comes down to it, we’re still in the entertainment business,” says Jeannette. “Yes, it’s a sporting event and on the competition side we’re putting a massive effort into it because we’re here to win races not just run these character cars. But you can do that and fulfill this other side of the business as well, which is entertainment and giving your fans something to root for on multiple levels.
“I really want to thank Kelly Brouillet who does all the day-to-day management of our social media, public relations and autograph sessions. A lot of the idea initiation comes from myself and P.J., (but) she’s on that same wavelength and spectrum of crazy, fun ideas. How she helped give Rexy, Roxy and Spike a voice through social media and interaction with fans is definitely one of the main reasons why we as a team got the marketing award.
“Sometimes extra effort can go a long way in adding to the experience that fans have at the racetrack.”
Paradoxically, the genesis of AO’s dinosaur and dragon cars lay in the ultra- traditional livery the team used in its debut in the 2023 Rolex 24 At Daytona. Given that Hyett owns the 1985 Rolex 24-winning Swap Shop Porsche 935, AO ran a Swap Shop tribute paint scheme in their coming-out party. But that only went so far, according to Jeannette.
“After that race we were all sitting in the RV saying, ‘We can’t run this livery for the rest of the year so what are we going to do?’” Jeannette asked. “P.J.’s helmet was there with the T-Rex on it and he kind of jokingly said, ‘We could turn the car into a T-Rex.’ And I said, ‘We could turn the car into a T-Rex!’”
Thus, Rexy debuted with much fanfare amid the annual craziness that is the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, later to occasionally be supplanted by the distaff member of AO’s T-Rex family: Roxy.
“Roxy came about because P.J.’s daughter wanted the car to be something,” Jeannette recalls. “Her birthday is around the date of the VIRginia International Raceway IMSA race, so we did the Roxy livery and she picked her nail polish colors. So that was fun.
“Then came the decision to move into LMP2, so we were tasked with coming up with a new character. The lines of an ORECA 07 are not the easiest to deal with, so we came up with Spike the Dragon. Which had its own success this year with the most poles of any car in the WeatherTech (Championship) and also getting on the Le Mans podium which was very special.”
As anyone who’s attended an IMSA event of late can attest, AO’s dinosaur and dragon liveries are just the start of the team’s fan engagement efforts. After all, it’s kind of hard to miss a ten-foot-tall dinosaur or dragon roaming the paddock, let alone the lines waiting to take a photo with those fan-friendly beasts during an autograph session, especially if there is a bit of entertainment or swag involved.
“We did some big autograph extravaganzas at Road America and Road Atlanta this year,” Jeannette says. “We want to give people something to cheer for, enjoy and interact with and so we’ll definitely be leaning more into that interaction and party atmosphere in the future. If you’re waiting in line for 30 minutes to get somebody’s autograph and you’re a kid, yeah you maybe want to play with a gun that shoots bubbles and get some beads and sunglasses . . . that kind of stuff.
“P.J. always points out the best feedback you can get about what you’re doing is at the IMSA autograph sessions. You have families and fans of all ages coming up interacting and giving you feedback. That has been one of the coolest things in this program over the past two years: seeing families that are able to connect with each other and form a bond based on the characters that we bring them.
“So, for a father who had a difficult time bringing his family to a race, now they’re able to bond and create memories together. I kind of get goosebumps talking about this because it’s such a cool thing to be able to give to people.”
And while there are plenty of dads out there who can use the lure of meeting Rexy, Roxy and Spike as an incentive for the family to spend a day at the races, that equation increasingly works the other way.
“Honestly, we’ve heard parents say, ‘Hey, we came to this race because the kids wanted to see Rexy or Spike,’” says Jeannette. “That in itself proves how strong social media is if the kids are seeing us on social media.”
So, the $64 question remains who exactly dons those giant dinosaur and dragon suits on race weekends? The answer is…it depends.
“At first anybody who was new to the team had to spend at least one session in the costume,” Jeannette says. “You find out about someone real quick, just based on their reaction. With Rexy we have a team member who is the absolute perfect person for it: He genuinely enjoys doing it and how he reacts with people, in particular the kids. He calls it putting on the Superman suit.
“We have a couple other people who dress up as Spike. Spike is a little bit of a challenge because he is larger, and his wings make it a little more difficult to get through the crowds. But everybody has taken their turn.”
The fun will continue in 2025 as Rexy, and at times Roxy, seek to defend the GTD PRO title and Spike looks to turn one or more of those pole positions into a win. In addition, AO will reprise its partnership with TF Sport in the European Le Mans Series.
Job No. 1, however, is the 2025 Rolex 24 At Daytona, where the team is shooting for an AO double, namely wins in both GTD Pro and LMP2. Beyond that, Jeannette and Hyett would like to get to the point where AO has a Double Dino GTD PRO program, running Rexy and Roxy together and perhaps look to even bigger things on the prototype front.
“We do have aspirations to continue to grow and go for overall wins and partner with manufacturers,” Jeannette says. “But every year we’ve been expanding to this point and right now we want to focus on doing the best job we can in LMP2 and GTD PRO before we set our sights on that next goal.”
That next goal may require a balancing act between the performance and marketing sides of the sport, but rest assured, entertainment will remain a core component of AO Racing’s future.
“A lot of our focus at this point is into going into making what we’re doing sustainable for the long term,” says Jeannette. “That includes finding partnerships and bringing people on board who want to be involved with these fun character cars. It doesn’t mean just going out and throwing a bunch of stickers all over the cars. It means having partners who want to create what we’re creating in the space of families and kids. We feel there’s a lot of opportunity for that, but it means putting the effort into building that.
“So, we are building out our team. We just brought on a new chief commercial officer, Brian McKinley, from the Stewart-Haas NASCAR team. Previously he was in a pretty interesting space with Feld Entertainment where he looked after Monster Jam, Supercross and Disney on Ice. It was important for us to bring in somebody who has a similar mindset to P.J. and myself; not stuck in ‘motorsport only’ box because we’re doing things differently than most motorsports teams out there. Brian is extremely bright and encourages that out-of-the-box thinking.”
In other words, for 2025 and beyond, AO Racing seeks to continue checking boxes while, or better by, thinking outside of the conventional racing box. So far, it’s a formula that has worked rather well.