Legendary Racer Authors New Chapter in Post-Ownership Role
By John Oreovicz
BOWMANVILLE, Ontario – Ron Fellows could walk around Canadian Tire Motorsport Park like he owns the place. But the legendary Canadian sports car racer prefers a more subtle approach.
Fact is, for 15 years (2011-25), Fellows was part of the ownership group that introduced a host of safety and amenity upgrades and brought Canadian Tire on board as naming rights sponsor for the historic Mosport Park road course in 2012.
The Ontario native was recently back on his old stomping grounds (which include three wins under American Le Mans Series sanction in 2001, 2002 and 2003) for the Chevrolet Grand Prix, the only Canadian round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
“I’ve been really lucky to have a contract with GM Canada and GM US for 32 years, as a racing driver first, and then an ambassador when I stopped full-time racing,” said Fellows, who retired from active competition after the 2008 season. “I was at CTMP to celebrate the production car track record we set there last September in a Corvette ZR1. Chevrolet does a tremendous job with the Corvette Corrals, and it’s always a pleasure to visit with the Corvette owners.”
When it comes to Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports, Fellows is the “OG.” He was one of Corvette Racing’s original drivers for the 1999 establishment of a sports car juggernaut that has gone on to claim 15 driver’s championships in ALMS and IMSA competition. Fellows earned three consecutive ALMS GTS titles from 2002-04.
In marquee endurance races, his Corvette record includes four class wins at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, a pair of class triumphs at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and an overall win in the 2001 Rolex 24 At Daytona International Speedway with co-drivers Johnny O’Connell, Chris Kniefel and Franck Freon. A second Corvette that included Dale Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt Jr. with Kelly Collins and Andy Pilgrim finished second in GTS, fourth overall in 2001.
“GT racing is a different world from when I was running,” Fellows observed. “From the late 1990s and through the 2010s, the majority of the manufacturers were in GT racing, not in prototypes, and certainly when I was there, it was mainly factory teams. Now the manufacturers are building customer cars.
“It’s in a good place,” he continued. “You’ve got more manufacturers now than ever before. If I look at the era that I was part of racing, there was a little bit more freedom from an engineering standpoint and the cars were quite a bit more powerful. You can see the crazy evolution where sports car racing has gone into improving the production cars.
“I think at this point, the Corvette Z06 GT3.R race car makes about as much power as the base model Corvette, and you’ve got four models of Corvette that make substantially more power than the race cars. That’s modern racing for you.”
Per GM, the Z06 with Z07 performance package makes 670 horsepower with the Z06 GT3.R race car at 500, although that varies by series. The 2027 Corvette ZR1X, which paced the Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic, is the most powerful and advanced Corvette in its history with 1,250 combined horsepower (1,064 horsepower from the LT7 5.5L V8 engine plus 186 horsepower from the eAWD electric drive unit).
Fellows has remained closely connected to the Corvette Racing program since his retirement. In 2009, when Chevrolet introduced the ZR-1 version of the C6-generation Corvette, he established the Ron Fellows Performance Driving School, which offers programs from a base in Las Vegas and at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
“Initially the idea was they were coming out with the most powerful Corvette ever, with 630 horsepower at the time,” Fellows related. “The brain trust thought, ‘You know, maybe we should do performance driver training as part of the ownership experience.’ They asked me if I wanted to get involved with it, and I said, sure.
“We looked at some options, and Spring Mountain Motor Resort and Country Club, west of Las Vegas, became the home for what is now the Ron Fellows Performance Driving School. When we initially started out, when you bought a ZR1, it came with a two-day school, and that continued when the seventh generation came out, and now eighth.”
Every buyer of a new Corvette receives a certificate that brings the cost of a two-day performance driving program down to $1,000.
“We’ve been able to add more infrastructure at Spring Mountain, and now we’re running about 6,000 Corvette owners a year,” Fellows said. “It’s great to be part of that, and it keeps me connected with the Corvette production engineering team. It’s fun to occasionally get to do a little bit of testing work on the production team.”
For many years, Fellows and his wife, Lynda, operated a karting championship to encourage young Canadian racers. He’s excited to see the latest generation of Canadian sports car racers, including Robert Wickens and Roman De Angelis, and the opportunities that the WeatherTech Championship offers.
“I’ve watched Robbie since he was a kid and also watched Roman come through the ranks through the IMSA Porsche GT3 Cup,” he said. “Wickens, he was in our series that we put on back in the early 2000s. Certainly to see the comeback that Robbie has made is amazing.
“Formula 1 is just super popular, and all the young kids want to be the next Canadian F1 driver up here – me included, 50 years ago!” he added with a laugh. “But I encourage them that sports cars is a nice way to make a living. That was the advice that I got a long time ago, and it still holds true. The open-wheel route wasn’t viable for me financially, and the advice that I got from Harvey Hudes, the longtime owner at Mosport, was, ‘Ron, you need to go pursue sports car racing, because that’s where the manufacturers are spending money. And if you’re any good, they’ll hire you.’
“You can be a paid professional for a long time if you do it well.”