How Derani's long road to title success exorcised painful memories

When Action Express Racing pair Felipe Nasr and Pipo Derani clinched last year’s IMSA SportsCar Championship title in November’s Petit Le Mans finale, it marked an important milestone for one of the two Brazilian drivers sharing the #31 Cadillac DPi-V.R.

For Derani, it was the final achievement in the North American series missing from an already-glittering CV, the Brazilian having already won the Daytona 24 Hours, the Sebring 12 Hours - three times! - and Petit Le Mans, as well as the Endurance Cup that links those three races plus a six-hour fixture at Watkins Glen.

It means, after just four full-time seasons, Derani has done everything there is to do in IMSA. And what makes that achievement more significant is the fact he has assembled such a great body of work Stateside after a relatively lacklustre junior single-seater career.

In four seasons of Formula 3 between 2010 and 2013, encompassing stints in the German, British and European series, Derani mustered only two wins (both in the 2012 British F3 series) and a best championship finish of eighth (in 2013). But since making the switch to endurance racing in 2014 and to IMSA (initially part-time) in 2016, he hasn’t looked back - even if the road to the championship title itself was longer than he might have imagined when he first joined Nasr at AXR in 2019.

“Honestly, the first few successes came quickly - Daytona and Sebring straight away [in 2016], and in the first four years I won Sebring three times, which hasn’t been achieved since Phil Hill in the '60s,” reflects Derani. “At that time I didn’t realise how much I had done in a short span of time. To be honest I’m a bit shocked.

“It’s only been six years since I made my IMSA debut and now I have achieved everything there is to achieve, the big wins and championships. I’m really happy that finally after all these years, and after winning all the big races and the Endurance Cup, I’m able to put the championship on my CV. But it didn’t come easily. We had two really competitive seasons [in 2019-20] and the championship didn’t materialise.

“Mentally that is hard to cope with, because you put so much effort into the season and in the end it doesn’t come and you have to wait another 12 months for another chance. You put even more pressure on yourself to make it happen, and finally it came.”

Derani and Nasr saw off the Wayne Taylor Racing Acura after a late surge in form

Photo by: Bill Gulker

When reflecting on the long and tortuous path to his current position, Derani doesn’t shy away from the fact that his record in junior single-seaters was less-than-stellar. He cites two factors for his underperformance - the fact that he perhaps tried to rush his move up the ladder, making his F3 debut in the German series in 2010 at the age of just 16 after a single season in Formula Renault 2.0 - and then realising that a team-mate belonging to a Formula 1 junior programme was being given preferential treatment that year.

“Not only that, but I was also being penalised deliberately by the team,” explains Derani. “Some years later I met an engineer who was there at the time, and he told me, ‘I’m happy you are where you are today, because what happened to you that year wasn’t fair’.

"I never had the chance to do GP2 or World Series by Renault with longer races or pitstops. I really needed from those years from 2011 to 2013 to be able to get better as a driver and make the switch properly, and deliver from the beginning" Pipo Derani

“Together with the fact I was so young and inexperienced, I couldn’t understand what was going on, so I started doubting myself and I went backwards. Trying to find ways to turn the season around was never going to work because my car was 1.5 seconds a lap slower to start with.

“To be able to recover from that took me a long time, and I have to say that I believe many people would have given up in such a situation. I was persistent and was able to dig myself out of that hole and in the end I was able to have some strong results in F3 - I finished third in Macau [in 2013] and won a couple of races in British F3. But the whole process was very difficult.”

It should be said that Derani’s two wins in British F3 came in 2012 against a high-quality field including the likes of now-Ferrari F1 star Carlos Sainz Jr, IndyCar racer Jack Harvey and current sportscar racing rivals Alex Lynn and Harry Tincknell. But by then it was clear Derani didn’t have the money to go any further up the single-seater ladder.

After one final season in F3 in the European championship in 2013, in which the Fortec man struggled to make an impact against the dominant Prema, Carlin and Mucke teams, Derani made the switch to sportscars the next year with two European Le Mans appearances for the Murphy Prototypes LMP2 team - even starting his debut race at Paul Ricard from pole.

That led to a World Endurance Championship drive with G-Drive/OAK Racing for 2015, and then a spot with the now-defunct Extreme Speed Motorsports operation for 2016 that also gave him the chance to race in IMSA part-time, winning the first two races at Daytona and Sebring in its HPD-powered Ligier.

Podium at Macau in 2013 alongside Lynn and da Costa was the high point of Derani's single-seater career

Photo by: Sutton Images

“Without that one difficult season [in 2010], my career could have gone in a different direction,” continues Derani. “But recovering from that made me stronger and helped shape who I am today, fighting head-to-head with guys who had better results than me.

“It’s a side of the sport that’s really sad, because this kind of team decision can end up destroying someone’s career. And by that point I had been racing for nearly 10 years in go-karting - to think all that investment was almost for nothing because of one team deliberately ensuring my car was not as quick as someone else’s. I am quite lucky that I managed to get out of it and made a career, because many people wouldn’t even have the chance.”

But Derani doesn’t think that making the move to sportscars sooner than he did would have done him any favours in the long run.

“I really needed those extra two or three years to get back on my feet in terms of being competitive and being ready for a more professional environment,” he argues. “I never had the chance to do GP2 or World Series by Renault with longer races or pitstops. I really needed from those years from 2011 to 2013 to be able to get better as a driver and make the switch properly, and deliver from the beginning.”

Derani had no chance of winning the IMSA title for ESM in the troublesome Nissan DPi, with Cadillac proving the dominant force when the new regulations were introduced for 2017. But when the team closed its doors he was handed a golden ticket by AXR to replace Eric Curran, who had just won the 2018 title alongside IMSA rookie and F1 convert Nasr, for 2019.

That year Derani and Nasr were unlucky to lose out on the title, losing vital points with a loose wheel at Long Beach and an early puncture at Watkins Glen. The following year, they were in a strong position to avenge that defeat until Ricky Taylor’s ambitious lunge at Petit Le Mans put the #31 Cadillac off the road.

By contrast, in 2021 the title looked almost hopeless at the mid-point of the season until the AXR crew embarked on a miraculous run of three wins in four races. The deal was finally sealed when Nasr brought home the #31 machine second at Road Atlanta, incidentally after surviving an even more long-odds dive from an attacking Taylor on the last lap.

Sebring win in 2016 was Derani's second victory in as many starts, after stirring drive at Daytona

Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Images

Asked if he did anything differently in 2021 after two near misses, Derani replies: “I have always been extremely aggressive in my career and most of the time it worked for me. But in 2021 I found a slightly better balance between aggression and being smart at certain times.

“I’m not saying that’s the only reason we won the championship, because it’s a full team effort, but I learned to be a bit more patient, knowing I have the ability to pass and be aggressive but also knowing when to back off and wait for a better opportunity. I think I achieved that especially in the second half of the season when we were behind in the championship and we really needed to get good results to get back in the hunt.”

"It has been a long and exhausting ride up until now, but from now on it’s going to be even harder, because you have made a benchmark for yourself and you have to maintain that" Pipo Derani

So, what next for the driver that’s done it all in IMSA? Derani says his motivation now stems from the knowledge that the looming LMDh era, which kicks off in 2023, is going to bring a major influx of new teams and manufacturers to the championship’s top division - and that staying on top is only going to get harder and harder. In the meantime, he has a title to defend with new team-mate Tristan Nunez, who takes over from Nasr as the latter prepares for life as a Porsche factory driver.

“I think now my career is entering a new phase,” says Derani. “It has been a long and exhausting ride up until now, but from now on it’s going to be even harder, because you have made a benchmark for yourself and you have to maintain that.

“As a sportsperson you always want to confirm everything you achieved wasn’t just luck, that there was a reason behind it. So I would call this the third phase of my career and I’m already putting in the work behind the scenes to stay at the top.”

Now in what he deems the third phase of his career, Derani will defend his title with new team-mate Nunez this year

Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Images