Photo: Ammonite Motorsport
Leading Formula Ford 1600 squad Ammonite Motorsport will step up to slicks-and-wings racing after announcing a two-car entry in GB3 for 2024.
The team was rebranded from Low Dempsey Racing last year by team owner Andy Low, who bought the outfit from Cliff Dempsey in 2020.
Prior to that, the team had a successful three decades in single-seaters as Cliff Dempsey Racing, most notably in FF1600 where it won the FFord Festival four times and the Walter Hayes Trophy six times. It also ran in BRDC British Formula 3 (now GB3) in association with Hillspeed in 2017, and also competed in Irish Formula Opel, Formula Renault 2.0 UK and FR BARC.
Low previously worked in Superleague Formula and F3, and was part of Multimatic’s factory team racing Ford GTs before he acquired Dempsey’s outfit.
Initially he kept the Dempsey name alive, and the team won the WHT in 2021 with Max Esterson, backed by the Team USA Scholarship which has held a long association with the team in its different guises.
Following the full rebrand in 2022, Esterson returned to win the Festival with the team last October, and finished first on the road again at the WHT before being denied victory by a post-race penalty.
Ammonite has continued to run in both the BRSCC National FF1600 Championship and United FFord this year. It recently purchased two Tatuus-MSV 022 GB3 cars, and has already begun a testing programme on many of the circuits visited by GB3.
“We are extremely thrilled at the opportunity to expand our team with our new GB3 programme,” said Low. “In the last three seasons, 15 drivers from FFord, including five drivers from our FF1600 team, have progressed into the MotorSport Vision paddock, so we’re really looking forward to being able to offer our drivers that next step.
“The grids in GB3 speak for themselves, they are strong, competitive and full of driven individuals. We have already done a chunk of testing this season with much more planned for the rest of the year, and it is going really well. We can’t wait to bring our GB3 cars to the grid next year and are really excited about our future with MSV [GB3’s promoter].”