Photos: Formula Motorsport Ltd
In the four months since AIX Investment Group acquired the Formula 2 and Formula 3 operations of PHM Racing, the team has already tasted victory in both categories. But its ambitions go much further.
As the rebranded AIX Racing squad’s CEO Morne Reinecke and sporting director Roland Rehfeld explain to Formula Scout, the team has been busy restructuring its engineering capabilities, embedding processes recruiting staff, “making sure we dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s,” in Reinecke’s words.
“The goal is obviously to be a top running team,” he explains. “We want to do this properly and, this being the feeder series from F3 to F2 to F1, if we can get this fully up and running the way we want it, at the top, then there’s no reason for us not to take the next step.”
By which Reinecke means that “effectively F1 is the goal, even if it’s by part ownership or part marketing strategy, but that’s a couple of years down the line.
“Obviously, stepping straight into F1 is not ideal, especially if you’re testing the waters to see from an investor perspective what the yield would be versus what you put in.”
The new owners saw their investment get off to a flying start in F2 with Joshua Duerksen’s podium at Imola, followed a week later by Taylor Barnard’s sprint race win in Monte Carlo, forcing Rehfeld to manage expectations a little: “I said ‘guys, it will not continue like this,’” he laughs. Duerksen went on to take a sprint race win himself, though, in Baku.
“We are in two of the most competitive championships in the world in formula racing, so [they needed to] be ready for that. Now they feel it and they have the right reaction. [AIX] gave us the time and are patient enough [but] sometimes you have to explain these things, but that’s absolutely a human factor, right? And it’s good that they’re taking care,” he says.
The departure of Taylor Barnard to McLaren’s Formula E team has left a large hole, not least emotionally as Barnard had been with the then PHM Racing from its inception in 2022, and still remains part of the now independent PHM Academy, which has stayed with PHM’s founder Paul Muller.
While the recruitment of backmarker Niels Koolen as Barnard’s replacement for Monza and Baku looked like a backwards step, Rehfeld emphasises that this is a temporary move. “We will have our 2025 driver in the car in Qatar,” he told Formula Scout at Monza, where Duerksen came within one off-track moment and an unluckily-timed pit stop of a potential victory.
Rehfeld sees it as “coming maybe from a reactive behaviour in this circus, now to be more proactive and that makes a difference. And that’s the same what we will do in F3.”
The F3 team had to wait until the Hungaroring in July for its breakthrough triumph, with Nikita Bedrin and Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak bringing home a one-two in the sprint race, much to the team’s joy and relief.
“I was absolutely happy for all the guys. They were running through a very challenging season so far. Nikita, all drivers and all the team itself,” Rehfeld said, while Reinecke praised the “massive team effort.”
As Rehfeld explained: “When suddenly there’s the result and even a podium, it releases a little bit the pressure. It was first time that we were ahead of the action mentally and also process-wise. At least we can see that, even though it’s quite late in the season, with some hard work on the organising side and the communication side, it starts to work.”
Although the team was unable to build on the win despite a strong qualifying performance at Monza, “it encourages [us], also when we have a kind of reset on F3 next year with a new car,” Rehfeld believed.
“AIX now is very committed on that [which] gives us the ambition and the perspective to know where we can end up next year,” he adds.
The AIX Investment Group, previously little-known outside the Gulf, first got involved as sponsors of Brad Benavides in F2 with the team in 2023, then running under the tag of PHM by Charouz Racing System, adding its support to Charlie Wurz’s Formula Regional Europe campaign.
The relationship deepened, says Reinecke, when “this opportunity came up first to be a title sponsor in November [2023, with the team appearing as AIX PHM Racing] and then from a sponsorship we realised that this is something that we can actually contribute to in a much more active way, and so the negotiations started with PHM and then we took over full management of the team on 1 May [2024].”
“Bruno [Michel, the man behind both championships] and FML [Formula Motorsport Limited] have been massively helpful to us, especially in the beginning, telling us what we should be looking at and doing, so a big thank you to them as well for that,” he added.
The cars’ bronze-gold livery certainly attracts attention on track. “Fundamentally, AIX being an investment firm based in Dubai, we do things a little bit different to the normal paddock with livery and things like that,” he continued. “With all the coverage for the brand [it] makes sense for us.”
Though Reinecke makes no bones about admitting that “for us from an investment business side of things, it’s effectively a marketing exercise, giving us a global audience” that does not necessarily mean that AIX is looking to sell on to the next bidder with cash to spend.
Motor racing history has not been short of investment funds, which have appeared from nowhere, emblazoned their liveries over multiple cars before disappearing again equally suddenly and without trace, other than a mountain of unpaid bills.
But Reinecke emphasises that AIX sees its commitment being for an extended period. “We’re in this for the long haul,” he said, before adding with a smile, “or for as long as they’ll have us.
“You’ll see new guys coming into the paddock and then they leave. We made a strategic decision to invest and to see this through for the long term.”
For Rehfeld, it is important that AIX are hands-on investors, and critically “that the people are petrolheads because at the end you need the kind of extra motivation when you love the sport, and they do definitely. It’s a business [on] one side, but it’s still a sport,” he said.
Nevertheless, the new owners come “from a completely different world of living and economy,” accepted Rehfeld, requiring a process of education if both parties were to gel.
“The good thing is they’re listening carefully, so then you can learn and that’s quite good. For sure, in some ways it needs time to fit together and to build up a philosophy.”
In its Charouz days, the team was often running on a shoestring, surviving from week-to-week. The investment needed to move things forward was sizeable and is still ongoing.
“It’s a money sport, right?” Reinecke asked rhetorically. “That’s the way of life, but obviously we saw where it was lacking, there were some areas where additional investment was required. We addressed that with some structures, putting key people in place which made a massive difference.”
“You can’t win without a fully funded team, a properly-tooled team, a properly-skilled team,” Reinecke commented.
What have been the main investment needs for Rehfeld and the team?
“Basically, it’s about the tools, how to prep the drivers and giving the tools to the engineers firstly [to understand] the car themselves and then to explain it to the drivers,” he said.
On the technical side, Rehfeld has been able to invest in “better tooling, to go deeper in the R&D. And we are still on the path to do even more. Especially in F2, we have done quite an aggressive driver preparation with a very dedicated sim programme that came online for the first time in Imola, utilising all that that we have learned from the in-season testing in Barcelona.”
Rehfeld’s next priority was to bring in the right personnel to complement the team’s backbone of experienced managers “like F3 team manager Kenny Kirwan and Bob Vavrik in F2. Speaking about F2, there are quite familiar faces [also from] the Charouz time – the chief mechanic, engineers and so on.
“On the performance side and in the back office, we were able just now to make some moves. You’re looking for people, but you also need to pay them right and the budget should allow that right now.”
But the key to getting the right people is more than a salary, but “also to convince these people to take part in that journey and the challenge [of developing] from an underdog to an established team,” he noted.
The team is not bound to the PHM Academy in its driver selection. “For sure there’s a connection, but we have connections to other good feeder series teams as well,” he stressed. “What I like is that the market already approaches us right now. That’s quite a good feeling for everyone in the team. I tell the team that it’s their value which makes us interesting.”
Reinecke is already thinking ahead to 2025. “We’re really looking forward to next year with a new [F3] car and then with the engineering base where it is now, we’re really looking forward to some positive early results next year.”
As a former racer, driver coach and AMG Driving Academy instructor, Rehfeld has been around motor-racing long enough to understand that success does not come overnight. “It’s a long path because we know who we are competing against. They have quite a lot of years in advance, but that’s the challenge we take and when we are now able to compete that’s already one step.
“I have to say on the F2 side, we’re already ahead of our expectations. The speed is there and that encourages [us] also for F3.”
For him, success would be “if we can shake the establishment in F2 and F3 for the next couple of years and become a very solid and established competitor in the field, so that we become so – famous is the wrong word – popular that we are able just to develop future champions,” affirmed Rehfeld.