Rising Star Spotlight Series: Robert Thorne continues his climb up the sports car racing ladder

Back in 2011, Robert Thorne of Littleton, Colo., had set a goal of one day becoming a full-fledged driver in the Pirelli World Challenge series for championship-winning K-PAX Racing. Just under a year later, in the penultimate Touring Car race weekend of that season at Sonoma, Thorne got behind the wheel of the K-PAX Racing Volvo C30 and in impressive fashion promptly won his first series career race in his first series start. Adding to that accomplishment in 2012, Thorne also drove the C30 to the Driver's Championship in the United States Touring Car Championship. This past season, Thorne achieved his goal becoming one of team's full-time GT drivers for 2014 in Pirelli World Challenge piloting the No. 6 K-PAX McLaren 12C GT3.

"The relationship all started in Englewood, Colo., where I met Bob Raub, crew chief with K-PAX Racing in the fall of 2011," said Thorne. "After a few months of trying, I convinced Bob to let me rent the C30 at Sonoma from K-PAX team owner Jim Haughey. Things progressed quickly after that, and I was given some great opportunities to demonstrate my talent. As long as I continued to impress them, Jim let me stay in the car. It made for some very rewarding experiences which led to me running local testing for their Volvo S60 program. From there, I was able to bridge the gap from test driver to racing the McLaren in 2014."

Thorne has spent the better part of his life winning from behind the wheel of go-karts and race cars, alike. When Thorne was eight years old, he began racing karts after his godfather purchased a track to refurbish. It was then that Thorne realized that his racing talent came naturally. Thorne earned his competition racing license at 15 years old, a year before it was legal for him to drive on public roads.

In 2005, Thorne traveled to Valencia, Spain, to compete in Formula BMW USA’s licensing course. While he was there, Thorne became one of four drivers to earn the prestigious Formula BMW Scholarship for the 2006 season.

After the trip to Spain, his dreams of becoming a professional race car driver were set in stone. Thorne finished fifth in the rookie cup in his first year of open-wheel racing. Thorne saw even more success in 2007 with two podium finishes and a sixth place in the series’ championship.

In 2008, Thorne was ready to step up to a higher level, and signed with Racer’s Edge Motorsports, a team competing in the Rolex Grand-Am Series. Thorne’s initial test at Daytona and first drive in a sports car showed promising results when he broke the track record by half a second. Thorne and his teammates followed the performance by finishing in the top 10 at the Daytona 24 Hours in the GT competition class.

Moving into GT competition in PWC in 2014 came with its challenges for the up-and-coming driver.

"The start of the season was a steep learning curve for me," said Thorne. "There was a lot to figure out. The cars being new were a bit unsorted (K-PAX switched to running the McLaren 12C GT3 from the Volvo S60), and we had a learning curve with me and also the team in set up and development with me learning to work with K-PAX. With that we had some other struggles, we had some unfortunate tire punctures early on and some minor mechanical issues that we were able to solve quickly but that cost us races. Those frustrations can pile on each other."

On the first race weekend at St. Petersburg, Thorne got out of the box slowly qualifying 15th for Round 1 and finishing 23rd after retiring with a mechanical failure. Things improved with a 6th place qualification at Long Beach but mechanical issues led to a 20th place finish. At Barber, Thorne qualified 5th and 7th and steadily improved with a 4th- and 6th-place finish. Detroit yielded again improved results with a 6th and an 8th. Heading into Road America, Thorne and the team were confident they were about to hit their stride.

"It really took us until Road America that we had our first taste of success. I was finally comfortable with the car after coming off of the street courses at St. Pete and Long Beach that were a lot to deal with. We had these beautiful new cars that we didn't want to hurt. Getting to Road America and finally being able to get that second place finish was a big mid-season relief."

In Round 7 at Road America, Thorne qualified 14th and drove a tremendous race to finish 2nd, K-PAX's first podium of the year. But a major setback occurred the next day in Round 8 as teammate Alex Figge was involved in a major crash that wrote off the No. 9 car. Thankfully, Figge was able to walk away from the wreck. "With Alex's car basically being destroyed it kind of knocked us off our testing schedule and all the effort had to be put into building the new car. Our season was really filled with these very small spurts of success, and then huge struggles and big learning curves. As well the team was working with McLaren to develop the launch control system so we could get the cars off the line for the standing starts and be able to run up front at the beginning of the races and not be trying to fight our way through the pack which was taking a toll on some of the equipment."

As the team built a new car for Figge, Thorne raced the lone entry for K-PAX at Toronto and finished 15th in Round 9 and a respectable 4th in Round 10 and it wasn't really until Sonoma that Thorne and the K-PAX team got back into sync. "By the end of season, I was definitely feeling much more comfortable," said Thorne. "I had my teammate back, which was a huge help to have both cars to be able to run and test different things on. We were able to get my car sorted out pretty well for Sonoma, and get back on the podium for the second race." Thorne scored a third place finish in Round 14 at Sonoma after qualifying third and getting a good launch off of the standing start. The team had continued its work with McLaren on the McLaren's launch control system and the work was starting to pay off.

"The success we had at Sonoma helped us for Miller. With McLaren ironing out the standing starts for us, we had two great launches at Miller." In Round 15, Thorne, who started fourth, emerged in the lead after a great start and led most of the race and was poised to take the checkered for the win. But on Lap 14 contact with a GTS car spun the No. 6 machine pushing Thorne back to 5th, with him eventually finishing 6th on the day. Round 16 brought new hope for Thorne who, based on the second fastest lap in Round 15, started second on the day and off of the standing start took the lead and this time led flag to flag for his first career GT win and K-PAX's first win of the season.

"To finally put everything together for the end of the season race was an amazing experience for all of us. To get that victory for all of us will help us look back and feel like everything this past season was really worth it. The win is a huge motivator for us this offseason."

As for Thorne's plans for 2015? "I will be back along with K-PAX, and hopefully we will be a contender in 2015."