Praga champions Idola Motorsport joins GB4 Championship
Praga Cup champions Idola Motorsport will branch out into single-seaters in 2024, after confirming plans to join the GB4 Championship. The Cheshire-based squad, headed by Team Owners Al Boulton and John Whatley, won the inaugural Praga Cup UK title in 2022 with Jimmy Broadbent and Gordie Mutch, and ran five cars throughout its debut season.
Success followed this year with additional silverware across multiple championships in the UK and Europe. 2023 also saw a racing return for ex-GP2 and IndyCar contender Rodolfo Gonzalez, a former test driver for the Lotus and Marussia F1 teams.
Idola is a relatively new name to the UK motorsport scene, founded in the same year as its Praga title success, but is built on the foundations of the successful VR Motorsport team, which has claimed multiple sports car championships across the past decade.
With over 20 years experience of motorsport competition, across saloons, single-seaters, historics, sports prototypes and sidecars, members of the team management have also competed themselves, earning titles across the UK and Europe. The team is one of the few Praga-approved operations in Europe and has also worked closely with single-seater powerhouse Arden Motorsport, running the team’s young drivers in its Praga machinery across the past couple of campaigns.
As well as its racing experience, Idola has a background in media, aerospace engineering, defence electronics and software, and its venture into single-seaters will come with an initial single-car entry, utilising a chassis purchased from GB4 front-runners Evans GP, with plans to expand the entry further down the line.
The team has already commenced a testing programme with its Tatuus F4-T014 car, starting with a day at Anglesey shortly after the final GB4 event of the season in October.
Idola Motorsport’s driver line-up has not yet been confirmed for the 2024 season and it has winter testing opportunities alongside its Praga fleet and 2024 season packages available for enquiry.
John Whatley, Idola Motorsport Team Owner and Technical Director said: “We have always kept a keen eye on the GB4 Championship for its evenly matched cars and close racing. We spent the last year evaluating the next step for the team and felt that a single-seater approach was the best solution as we hope that the application of principles in aerodynamic dependable prototype racing could be transferred to single-seaters. We look forward to understanding the GB4 car more over our winter testing schedule and hope to bring a competitive package to the beginning of the 2024 season.”
For more championship information, visit www.gb-4.net