Popular driver Memo Gidley, who was injured in a crash during the 2014 Rolex 24 At Daytona and who attended this year’s Rolex 24 as a guest of IMSA Chairman Jim France, is returning to the cockpit in IMSA competition.
Gidley is slated to co-drive the No. 14 Newmark Knight Frank Maserati GT4 from Motorsport USA with Cavan O’Keefe and Michael McAleenan in the four-hour IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge race at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca on Saturday, Sept. 23. It’s a fitting location for the California resident’s return.
“I’m super excited,” Gidley said. “It’s going to be great. One of my first goals was to get back out to an IMSA race, and I did that this year at Daytona. That was a huge, huge stepping stone to make that happen.
“The next thing was to get out and do a race. I would have loved to have done a race four or five months ago, but you have to wait for the opportunities. This opportunity came up, and I just jumped at it, for sure.”
Gidley recently joined his new teammates for a shakedown test at The Ridge circuit in Shelton, Washington before two days of testing at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca last week.
The opportunity came via the Washington-based Motorsport USA team operated by Jerold Lowe, with business support from O’Keefe. Lowe’s interest in Gidley predated the Daytona incident.
“A couple of years after (the accident), (Lowe) checked in with me just to see how things were going,” Gidley said. “He’d sort of been following what I was doing since Day 1, which was getting into go-karts with no money and then working my way up the ladder. He’s been following me for a long time.”
O’Keefe – who has made a handful of starts in the Continental Tire Challenge over the past few years, including one at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park earlier this season – was at Daytona when Gidley’s accident occurred.
“I was literally standing right there,” O’Keefe said. “I was down there with a couple of friends of mine who were running with TRG, so I happened to be there. I didn’t know him before we started testing, but it’s kind of a cool thing to bring him back to the series. He’s worked his butt off to make his way back, which is an understatement.”