Cheers, Westy: One of IMSA’s Best Set to Brew New Post-Driving Career

 

“IMSA has been a family to me. It’s where I love to do my racing.”

 

A simple quote that, said during the NBC broadcast of the Motul Petit Le Mans season finale, came from a driver who did so much of it for nearly two decades – from 2007 through 2024 –before he hung up the helmet.

 

Richard Westbrook’s last race with the JDC-Miller MotorSports crew didn’t end with a fairytale result, but it did close a chapter on a sterling career as one of the best drivers in IMSA’s history who was unlucky not to win a full-season championship. 

 

As a factory driver for three iconic brands in Porsche, Chevrolet and Ford, as well as a competitor with other top-shelf manufacturers like Audi, Aston Martin, BMW and Cadillac across both Grand Touring (GT) and prototype racing, Westbrook’s career was as malleable as it was successful.  

 

To toast the success as he moves forward into his new career as head of a self-titled brewery in the U.K., Westbrooks Brewery, we look back on what he achieved behind the wheel.

 

Westbrook competed in both the GRAND-AM Rolex Series and American Le Mans Series for parts of seven years from 2007 through 2013, scoring five wins including a Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring class triumph with Corvette Racing alongside Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner in 2013. 

 

The best of his IMSA career would come over the next six seasons from 2014-19 in the unified IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, first with the Visit Florida Racing Corvette Daytona Prototype (DP) team and then as a key cog among the quartet of drivers in the Ford Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT effort in GT Le Mans.

 

Three wins across 2014 and 2015 included back-to-back triumphs at the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen but a bitter championship loss at the season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans to Visit Florida’s longtime DP rival, Action Express Racing, in that memorably water-logged race.

 

Come 2016 and Westbrook was back to his GT roots, sharing the No. 67 Ford GT with Ryan Briscoe for the next four seasons. Together, there were eight wins, 18 podiums, eight pole positions and four top-four championship finishes, albeit either second or fourth. 

 

The Englishman got Ford on the board with a famous fuel-saving run to win at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, when it seemed unfathomable he could make it home after a final 52-lap, 75-minute stint in the two-hour race.

 

“(The pit stop) cost us five or six seconds and five or six positions, and you aren’t going to drive it to the front from that position,” Westbrook said at the time. “So that’s what you get when you race with Chip Ganassi, you get out-of-the-box solutions.”

 

It was the first of three wins that year, also ticking the box at Watkins Glen again and at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, but shy of Gavin and Milner’s slightly better season for Corvette Racing.

 

After a winless 2017, it appeared Westbrook and Briscoe would finally deliver the championship in 2018. The year started with Ganassi’s 200th win as an organization in an intra-team battle between the two Fords at the Rolex 24 At Daytona. Westbrook, Briscoe and Scott Dixon got the better of Joey Hand, Dirk Mueller and Sebastien Bourdais.

 

“There was a little bit of strategy playing out between the two teams which was really cool – just to witness the whole thing,” Westbrook said after that race.

 

Wins at CTMP and Road America followed before, again, Ford fell short to Corvette even despite a rare error from Antonio Garcia at the season finale that left the No. 3 Corvette vulnerable. 

 

Another star drive in the rain at the 2019 Rolex 24, now in a vintage livery to celebrate IMSA’s 50th season, went unrewarded while two more wins followed at Lime Rock and Road America. Westbrook and Briscoe fell back to fourth in points, now behind Porsche and Corvette.

 

While his full-time stint in IMSA largely ended at that point, save for two separate seasons with JDC-Miller, first in a Cadillac DPi and then in the Porsche 963, the memories ensured “Westy’s” paddock presence would live on even if he wasn’t in it regularly.

 

That was revealed in the outpouring of support from his competitors when he announced his retirement on the eve of Motul Petit Le Mans. 

 

More than 180 comments streamed onto his Instagram post, from fellow drivers Gavin, Milner, Dixon, Mueller, Hand, Jordan Taylor, Mike Rockenfeller, Nicky Catsburg, Alex Lynn, Filipe Albuquerque, Ross Gunn, Andy Priaulx, Harry Tincknell, Pipo Derani, Olivier Pla, Christian Fittipaldi, Darren Turner, Guy Cosmo, Jules Gounon and Tijmen van der Helm – to name just 20. 

 

That’s before getting into the mix of more drivers from other series, media members, TV personalities, manufacturers and fans of the sport who also weighed in. 

 

Two more beyond those mentioned above stuck out, from his longtime co-driver Briscoe and Ganassi, his longtime team owner.

 

“Absolute legend! Some of my best years with you mate and never a dull moment! Love ya dude enjoy your last one!” wrote Briscoe.

 

Ganassi added, “You can retire from racing my friend, but you will always be a member of our team! #ilikewinners.”

 

How then, did Westbrook sum it up during his last TV interview held in the first hour at Motul Petit Le Mans?

 

“You can’t do it forever! I just felt it was the right time. I’ve done this for so long, worked with the best, I’ve had the best teammates in the world,” he said. 

 

“It felt like now was a good time. I’ve achieved everything that I can achieve in the sport. I’ve had a wonderful career. I really have. 

 

“I’ve met so many good people that are friends for life. 

 

“IMSA has been a family to me. It’s where I love to do my racing. For sure, I’m gonna miss it. But first of all, I’ll reflect on the last 10 years because it’s happened so quickly.”

 

There will be the stat book, with 134 starts, 44 podiums, 16 wins and those host of near misses going for IMSA titles. There’s also the Porsche Supercup and Carrera Cup Great Britain championships he nailed early in his career after recalibrating from open-wheel racing.

 

But next up, there will be a pint or two to celebrate a career well-driven.