Cuzata Racing

**Team Name**

Cuzata Racing Team

**Team Owner Name**

Kolink Helsera

**Team Headquarters Location**

Croft, UK

**Team Primary Sponsor**

EasyAdmin

**Team Background**

Originally founded back in 1959, Cuzata Race Engineering would begin its history as a team running its own chassis and engine at le mans throughout the 60s. The team would prove themselves quick and competitive, though due to faults with reliability and driver errors would never wind up winning any championships or the big endurance races until the 1982 Le Mans. The team's last Hurrah at le mans in 1982 saw them build a turbo monster powered group C car that would take them to win in the team's final race before shutting its doors immediately after taking the trophy home.

One of their drivers from that Le Mans victory, a golden fox from Britain named Kolink Helsera would go on to race successfully in GT and Touring series until 1994 where he decided to revive the team that brought him into the spotlight and kickstarted his career, hoping to do the same for other young drivers looking to make their way into the sport as well as to race once more in the wine coloured livery.

The newly revived Cuzata Racing Team would have a fairly small budget, but would take it's tentative first steps into racing for the 1994 season of the BTCC. Helsera would catch onto a loophole in the regulations regarding car aerodynamics and would buy a pair of Lhasa Romeo 155s for the season, due to them technically being allowed to run with wings despite the car not really being supposed to. This move by Helsera would bring Cuzata to finish 2nd behind only the Lhasa works team in their first season, giving the team an immediate kick that showed they weren't messing around.

Helsera would jump at the opportunity granted by the influx of sponsorship money to try and move up into GT racing, especially given the combination of the loophole being closed and his accurate prediction that the costs of the BTCC would soon wind up running privateers like CRT to the sidelines. Cuzata would show up for the 1995 British GT series with a Panther Storm car, which Helsera would bring to yet another 2nd place result for the team on UK soil, netting the team more sponsor deals. Using the incoming money to expand the team, Helsera would run the same car in 1996 with the European Le Mans series, seeing some solid finishes but being generally a bit less successful than the team's debut seasons.

In 1997, Helsera had managed to get a contract with Parroz to run the number 37 Parroz Esperante GTR-1 in the European Le Mans series until the 2000 season. The team would see success from the start, taking the unusual looking new GT1 car to race wins each season, claiming the GT1 title in 1999 and 2000, and the race win at Le Mans in class in 1999 too.

The success of the CRT GTR-1 would be hindered by a rule change in 2001, removing the GT1 class they had made a home in recent years. In response, CRT would retire their championship winning Parroz and start a partnership with FMW, returning with their new M3 GTR for the 2001 to 2004 seasons, claiming the G2 class title in 2003 and winning at the Spa 24 hours in 2004.

The team would continue to race and expand their operations in GT racing over the next few years with continued success, winning two more titles over the following decade. Come 2012, Helsera announced a new program to try to bring the team to more series across several disciplines, sponsoring drivers in a variety of junior classes of Touring cars, GT, openwheelers and prototype racing. The first of these expansions came in 2014 where the Cuzata Racing Academy would be founded with cars in both the British Radicat Onemake series and in Britcar Class 3 with a Genetta G55 GT4. These two series would become CRT's driver scout series, picking up Blaze Pine and Mozilla Redwood as the team's first academy drivers.

Cuzata would soon wind up bringing a car to the top class of Le Mans for the first time since the 1980s, claiming regular podiums over the decade and even winning the event in 2017. Around this time, rumours began to circulate about the team to moving into Furmula One in the coming years, however to the surprise of fans, Helsera announced a Furmula E team in late 2018, with Mozilla being signed to be its lead driver. However, due to delays, the team was not ready for the 19/20 season and held back to join in the 20/21 season instead. This forced them to have to find a new seat for Redwood, eventually signing a deal with Wellfleet to have Mozilla run with them in exchange for a CRT Sponsoship.

With the team debuting its FE car, hype was rolling to see what else was planned, and few were disappointed by the team unveiling its plans to run in the 2021 Furmula One season, citing the new aero regulations as being a perfect fit for the team's philosophy and development preferences, making this a perfect opportunity to get into the sport. The budget caps brought in around the same time are also believed to be good encouragement for them to step into the sport afresh.

The team looked good in testing for the 2021 season, drivers Cassandra Ouellet and Marcello Kesselmann showing off the car's impressive low-drag/high-downforce chassis by topping the speedtraps all week long in testing.

This F1 endeavour would quickly prove to be more than a pipe dream, with Oullet claiming a win in the team's debut race, and continuing to be dominant for much of the early season. The team's limited budget meant that they weren't able to keep up with car development through the season as quickly as other teams, but would be able to maintain their Constructors championship lead long enough to claim that title. However, Cass would end up losing enough points to rival Thorvaldsson and finishing 2nd in the drivers championship.

In the run up to the 2022 season, Cuzata would sign on F2 champion Avogadro Lo'Raven, who through ties with his junior teammate, would end up getting along well with the Cuzata Racing Academy. The team would also unveil a their new car for 2022 to much surprise from the audience. The car was significantly overhauled from the previous design, maintaining their long wheelbase but giving the car much more aggressive aerodynamics. The more aggressive looking body would be paired up with a shocking change of livery, taking on a British Racing Green design to show off the Birdley branded engine and their new British driver all in one go.

2022 would show that Cuzata's debut season in F1 wasn't a fluke, as they would carry on for a third place constructors finish at the end of the year, though there was obvious disappointment in the Cuzata garage with this result as their car had proven time and again though the season to be the single quickest car on the track. Kolink would confirm in an interview after the season that the car was proving to be extremely sensitive to changing fuel loads, making it difficult to keep the car behaving consistently across a race distance. This is suspected to be the cause of the car's struggles to make good on it's pace throughout the season, including possibly causing incidents between the two drivers, most notably at Monaco where Cass wasn't able to let Lo'Raven pass due to difficulty controlling the car at the later stage of the race.

With 2023 on the way and Cuzata continuing to be a dominant force in Closed cockpit racing as well as posing a very clear threat to the more established Furmula One teams. Helsera has stated he wants 2023 to be the first year that Cuzata gains titles in multiple different championships in a single year. This ambitious claim is certainly backed up by the team's previous performances in various fields, but for now we must wait and see what happens with their 2023 car reveals.