NME Enterprises

Mention the name “NME Enterprises” to anyone within the IMAS GT Championship orbit, and you will receive a plethora of negative comments about the team and the owner. Even among the other teams in the IMAS paddock, NME Enterprises is not well received even with the respectability they try to bring to the grid. On the surface, this disrespect may be undeserved… but once you begin to dig into the past circumstances that created the version of the team known today, the truth becomes far clearer.

In short, NME Enterprises is the current iteration of the former longtime Ferrari customer team Scuderia Litorale, an outfit that ran for ten years in the IMAS GT Championship’s AM class under the stewardship of Olivia Morgan, one of the most colorful and innovative characters within IMAS; someone known for her abilities to find obscure driving talent… and a tendency to go for unusual or counter-intuitive race strategies along with a deep-seated loyalty to FCA products.

That tendency for ‘questionable’ strategy decisions is what some believe led to the loss of major financial backing from the motorsport arm of FCA, although it is now known that FCA’s reduction in customer support was directly tied to the increased development push of the Ferrari 488 JSA-GT once the Empress Maserati MC GTE was revealed.

Seeking financial assistance to keep the team running, Olivia Morgan found a majority owner to cover the cost of running the team in the summer of 2016 – the now infamous Nicholas McElleby, the head of the automotive products giant StormSystems. That is the point in which Scuderia Litorale was destined to become something entirely different – what is now known as NME Enterprises.

In 2017, during the worst season the team had ever put forth and after multiple on-track incidents and mechanical failures, it was announced that by World Racing Journal that Scuderia Litorale would be rebranded at the end of the season, dropping to the lower-tier IMAS Sportscar Challenge, and making a switch to BMW – all decisions made by Nicholas McElleby, as a direct result of his full buyout of the team and the firing of Olivia Morgan – a move for which he may never be forgiven. The reasons for the fallout between the owners remain unknown, but one thing was clear – the team’s reputation was at the lowest it had ever been, and serious questions remained as to whether it was possible to climb back up into respectability.

That is the end of Scuderia Litorale as it was known. Despite the consistent success of NME Enterprises globally, first in the IMAS Sportscar Challenge, then in the return to the IMAS GT Championship and even in the GT Master League from star driver Victor Malarek’s unprecedented run to third in the final standings – the team still receives constant dislike and is viewed under a cloud of suspicion. Whatever led to the firing of Olivia Morgan has never been discussed publicly by either party, and it may never be known as both have kept their continued silence on the matter.

The only thing that seems to remain as a constant is the relative popularity of the team’s drivers versus the reputation of the team itself – Geoffrey Eastrize has always been a fan favorite and has shown a willingness to help rebuild the team’s reputation through precise and gentlemanly driving, while Victor Malarek has proven that he has the talent to compete with the best, even if his complete lack of social media presence has made communication with fans difficult. Even the oft-maligned son of the owner, Connor McElleby, has made the effort to turn his career around and rebuild his own repuation as a competent driver and not just a ‘walking paycheck’.

One of the most obscure drivers to have ever risen up into the ranks of the elite, Victor Malarek is one of the great success stories that came out of the original Scuderia Litorale talent pool – if you can ever get him to admit that. Not much is known about him because of his incredibly quiet personality and his unwillingness to ever put personal gain above team success. He refuses to discuss his childhood and upbringing, and seems to only focus on the present as it relates to the race car and the team he now is a welcomed part of. That being said, do not take his abilities lightly – it is said that his entire driving style is a product of his upbringing in which where he had to conserve his equipment as much as possible because the team he drove for had no money for spares, and therefore has developed into one of the best drivers through consistency and mechanical sympathy. His lack of social media presence has made it difficult to interview him or discover much about him.

A well-respected individual and personality within the IMAS paddock, Geoffrey Eastrize has been driving since the age of 6, beginning with karts for his family team. A solid if not spectacular competitor in karting and throughout the American Formula ladder, in 2011 he was given a test for Scuderia Litorale as a potential endurance event driver back when the series required four drivers instead of three for the IMAS GT Am class.
The impressive display in that test event launched his touring car career and he has never looked back, competing full-time in both the IMAS GT Championship starting in 2012 and the second-tier IMAS Sportscar Challenge from the day he took the test in 2011. Along the way, his easygoing demeanor and ability to get along with anyone, even rival teams and drivers, has made him one of a handful of drivers who command respect regardless of their actual skill behind the wheel – and one of the reasons that NME Enterprises can even be considered a likable team in their current iteration.
The nominal team leader among the current driver roster, noted for his extensive charity work outside of racing.

Son of the current team owner, Connor McElleby has been trying for his entire racing career to shed the stereotypical reputation as ‘just a rich kid pay driver’ and prove that he deserves a race seat on the basis of talent, not money. That focus, and his aggressive blocking style of driving has led him into his fair share of confrontations and collisions on the racetrack, none of which has helped him clear his name as nothing more than a pay driver until recently
Originally following a similar path to Geoffrey by making his way from karting through the lower American formula ladder, at the age of 15 he was involved in a controversial incident at the 2015 Belle Isle round of the American Formula C Trophy in which he suffered a serious leg injury caused by his own defensive driving while leading the race. That incident led to a five-race ban, although his recovery time was so long that he did not end up serving it until the start of the following season in 2017
Since then, he’s been competing in the IMAS Sportscar Challenge starting in 2018 for NME Enterprises – a promotion that drew its fair share of scorn from people who assumed it was just a way for the team owner to keep his son racing at whatever cost. From the first race in 2018, it became apparent that the tutelage of Geoffrey Eastrize had changed Connor’s mentality about racing, and his reputation both on and off the track had improved immensely by the end of the season. His signature defensive driving style remains to this day, but he has slowly refined his racecraft to be more of a complete driver, even if he still can be rather difficult to pass (and deal with) at times. The one glaring weakness in his driving is his poor performance on street circuits – which is believed to be entirely as a result of his serious accident at Belle Isle.

A classic car enthusiast with a particular fondness for BMWs, Nicholas McElleby is the definition of a self-made success story – building up his company, StormSystems, from the ground up in a small warehouse in Ottawa into the automotive products giant it is today. Some may find him difficult to work with, given his tendencies to remain quiet until all sides of an argument or story have been told, but his stoic demeanor hides a very intelligent mind and a burning desire for success. He does not take a hands-on position in day-to-day operations for the team despite his title as both owner and team principal, leaving a majority of the managerial work in the hands of his chief technical officer, Samuel Targus – but it is well documented that when difficult decisions need to be made, he is willing to make them.

One of the more interesting success stories to come out of the lower open-wheel formulae, Samuel Targus made a name as an engineer for one of the top teams in European Formula C after graduating from the University of Liverpool with a degree in mechanical and automotive engineering. Olivia Morgan decided to hire him as the chief engineer in 2007 at the very beginning of Scuderia Litorale’s racing programme. Olivia promoted him to Chief Technical Officer in 2014, and he remained in that position after her falling out with Nicholas and subsequent firing. Known as a man who can be ‘quite mad’ if people are not doing their jobs or performing to the standards he has set for the team, he is nonetheless well-loved by the team members and is regarded as the ‘glue’ that keeps the team together.