Hertz Team JOTA: The Standard Bearer For Hypercar’s Corporate Case?

2023 is the first of two FIA WEC seasons set to see rapid growth in the Hypercar class with an array of factory teams opting to enter the World Championship.

For the longer-term health of the WEC however, potentially the most important entry made its debut at Spa, as Hertz Team JOTA became the first privateer entry in the new class with its #38 Porsche 963. It marked a crucial step in proving the business case, and therefore the sustainability, of the new vision for top-class sports prototypes beyond its initial explosion.

DSC caught up at Spa’s WEC race weekend with two of the men responsible for green-lighting the effort, and for the brand-building effort that is supporting it across the Hertz network.

“It started with a phone call from Jota co-owner David Clarke to the ownership group of Hertz,” said Tom Wagner, vice chairperson, co-founder and managing member of Knighthead Capital Management, LLC

“The call came in, and we had a series of conversations and ultimately, I decided, along with my partners to step up and commit to the financial obligations, and then took the opportunity to Hertz and presented it as a way to do a couple of things.

“The first would be to create, in partnership with Singer, one of those classic Le Mans liveries that would be talked about for a long time. And I think that Rob Dickinson at Singer has achieved that!

“Second would be to approach it in a slightly different way, given the fact that for our core constituency, the vast majority of them aren’t going to sit and watch an endurance race.

“However, everyone knows what Le Mans is. And everyone knows what it means to be in racing and to do something that’s forward-thinking and cool.

“The view was, let’s promote this through social media. What we are able to do by bringing in Tom Brady, and by bringing in Singer is to create more impressions around what we’re doing, and then present it around a very beautiful car.

“So we’ve started with that and we think that will only heighten the exposure, for HERTZ certainly, but also the brands that we have as our partners and also for the series itself.”

Stephen Scherr, the chair and CEO of Hertz , says creating an iconic race car has played a significant role in the relaunch of HERTZ Racing Gold, a part of the company’s brand identity that we are set to be seeing a lot more in the future.

“Hertz is a brand that’s more than 100 years old,” he said. “And there’s a long, long history of our involvement in auto racing and this is a great opportunity to bring ourselves back into it. And in doing it, we really wanted to create a very iconic car. And so a relaunch of Hertz Racing Gold, and what you see in this car, the fact that it’s a hypercar, puts us exactly where we want to be with a real winner and a real edgy product on the racetrack.”

The latest part of the JOTA promotional push with Hertz has included the emergence of several images of the #38 in some rather random US locations. The plan is to engage not only race fans but the wider public.

“We have three show cars of this car being placed around the world, two of them in the US, one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, and one in Europe and yes we have been putting the car in line of sight with the public in a number of cool places,” he explained. “You’ll see the images of that in due course (several were displayed in the team’s Spa hospitality lounge).

“The amount of attention this car is getting is really pretty stunning. And that’s not the real race car, that’s just the model. But you can see in the pictures, it’s just a sharp-looking automobile. The HERTZ Racing Gold really stands out on the track. And we’re hearing very, very positive feedback and attraction to it.”

So is this simply a process of viral photo opportunities? Or is there product support with the car to explain the context?

“I gotta tell you,” Scherr responded. “This has taken on sort of a life of its own well beyond that which we thought it would. There’s a lot less we need to do to activate and put this out than we thought we might need to. It’s sort of taking lift, people are just undeniably attracted to what this car looks like and what it means.

“I think you’re going to see a lot of it. The show cars are being placed in our largest markets in the United States. So think of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, think of Miami and Orlando, and even, you know, pulling it up into the summer season in places like New York and Boston. So the iconic nature of this, the edgy nature of it, this is the kind of direction we want to take our brand. And it’s capturing people’s attention in a very real way.”

The corporate language speaks to something slightly edgier than the safe strategies usually employed by major brands in Europe and the United States.

This is because Hertz believes it needs to adopt a more modern tone in its messaging as it transitions to becoming a more forward-thinking organisation.

“We don’t aim to be yesterday’s rental car company,” he said. “We’re always looking out for opportunities to rent our product to leisure customers and corporate customers in the very classic way.

“But we’re forging new territory too, we’re renting Hertz cars to Uber and Lyft drivers. These turned out to be really affordable entry points into electric vehicles. So we’re taking this company in a very different direction.

“Our fleet is now 10% electric, it’ll get to 25% electric by the end of 2024. That’s a very big investment and a very big statement we’re making about a 21st-century rental car company.

“We think this car is emblematic of that, it is evidence of a different and new direction.”

What is the scope and scale of the commitment in terms of time and in terms of potential expansion?

“When we launched the car, and the 48 hours after the launch, we had 2.2 billion impressions, which exceeded, I think, the previous 18 months of our efforts at Hertz and promotional activity,” said Wagner.

“Secondly, I think, you know, we’re committed to doing this for three years. We’re looking at ways to grow with Jota. We’re looking at offshore electric powerboat racing, we’re looking at other series within racing, not solely endurance racing, but other opportunities.

“So we’re committed to being involved in this for the long term. And I think, for us, a key component of that would be to remain involved in WEC. The reason behind that is the commitment that the manufacturers have made, I love the idea that we can compete as a privateer brand against the manufacturers. I think that’s very compelling. So I suspect that we’ll see other interests from other brands, beyond those that we currently have involved.”

So, in many ways, Hertz is positioning itself as a challenger brand.

“It’s definitely a challenge,” Wagner added. “And it’s intentional. It’s welcomed by the folks at Porsche, the only ones who (currently) have privateer teams, which says a lot. Porsche Motorsport is based on the idea of having customers compete. We’re certainly customers, and we have a unique relationship with Porsche given our investment in Singer so we obviously celebrate the brand.”

Clearly, Hertz wants to back a winning horse, but the competition in Hypercar this year is world-class and deep. And next season, with additional top-class entries from Alpine, Lamborghini and BMW coming, it’s only going to get tougher for privateers to fight for wins.

So what does success look like for Hertz and the JOTA team?

“My career spends 30 years on Wall Street, which is obviously a very competitive industry,” explained Stephen Scherr. “It focuses on the profitability of an organisation. And I came to Hertz to run this organisation to win.

“We’re not looking for second place. We’re not looking for third place. And so we take that through to the spirit that’s behind this car. It’s an edgy car, it screams a winner. We’ve got a really young team who themselves are quite successful. We won at Sebring, not with this car, and we aim to win again as soon as possible with this car.

“We’re patient but nobody should mistake the direction we want to take this!”

After a very encouraging debut at Spa, the team went to Le Mans with high ambition and perhaps somewhat lower expectations.

The end result wasn’t there, but early in the race the team starred and the #38, which started at the very back of the field, went on to lead the race. That was until conditions got the better of a storming Yifei Ye, who had an off at the Porsche Curves that required extensive repairs. Subsequent woes would see the car unable to recover the lost ground but a finish would be scored, 40th overall, despite the time spent in the garage.

These positive early signs can only be a good thing in encouraging other teams, and crucially other brands, to look at the opportunities presented by Hypercar.

In particular, JOTA has shown that with the right backers, the right package and the right team, Hypercar can be a happy hunting ground for the privateer.

The question now is: who’s next?

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