Persistence pays off for WEC debutant Powell

‘Persistence pays off’: It’s a phrase that perfectly sums up the career of Eric Powell, who is about to race in the FIA World Endurance Championship for the first time after a long journey to the peak of the motorsport mountain.

It’s a story that began in Florida, with Powell’s father a scrap yard owner and part of the recovery crew for multiple races in the state – including the Rolex 24 at Daytona. That meant that he spent much of his childhood at race tracks, where the early seeds were sown.

“I always joke that he made the mistake of taking me to races since I was little,” Powell tells RACER. “It's just all I ever wanted to do since I was a baby.

“I begged and begged and begged my whole life, but honestly, I was kind of a bad kid. I was always getting in trouble, I was very mischievous, and so that was always held over my head like ‘if you behave for long enough or, you know, get good enough grades or whatever, then we'll think about it’.”

While Powell admits “I never stopped being mischievous”, he was to get his opportunity when his family acquired his first go-kart in 1997. And although Powell was a self-confessed “student of the sport”, studying and consuming races on TV, books, magazines, and video games, he had a lot to learn about karting itself.

When the time came to upgrade, they realized that going into actual cars would be a smarter financial decision. That put him on short ovals at the age of 14, and although that briefly pivoted the long-term ambition towards NASCAR, sports car racing remained in Powell’s mind.

“NASCAR was my goal at one point [but] I always wanted to race GT cars. I thought that maybe if I made it to NASCAR, that would be something I did occasionally on the side because I would be such a big superstar that I get to do these cameos,” he jokes. “But from the first time I ever drove on a road course, I was like, ‘oh yeah, this is the direction I want to go, and that's what I want to race’.

Powell eventually upgraded his stock car and dominated the local scene in Florida, but then headed to the Universal Technical Institute, not to gain an engineering position at a racing team, but to use it as a springboard for further driving opportunities – and it worked.

“I did all of that, not because I wanted to be a mechanic or have a role on a race team, but because I heard stories of guys that started by working as a race team, sweeping floors or whatever, and eventually convinced the team owner to give them a test,” he explains. “I ended up interning for some teams up in the Mooresville area as I was going through that program, and this team owner I was working for told me about this testing opportunity with this other team running Formula Mazdas.”

Sure enough, a Jim Russell Scholarship Shootout win followed on what was only his second road course outing. It led to a meeting with a Grand Am team which he’d divide his time with while running in the SCCA Pro-sanctioned Formula Russell series in 2007.

Looking back, and despite his long-held sports car ambitions, Powell admits that focusing on open-wheelers back then might have been a better call.

“Now I wish I would have actually used my scholarship and ran the whole championship,” he concedes. “It sounds crazy – I had the opportunity to do some Grand Am races, and here I am saying I should have ran the open wheel championship.

“But pretty much, every year, the winner of that championship won the Team USA Scholarship, and they won something else in Pro Formula Mazda. I chose to go jump into professional touring car racing.

Around the same time, Powell got a call from a mouse – Mickey Mouse, to be precise. Away from the circuits, he spent almost a decade driving in the ‘Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show’. Intended to show 5,000 guests, three times a day the inner workings of an action movie shoot, the job proved vital for Powell’s racing career.

“It helped massively,” he says. “It helped tremendously. I can't overstate that. It's not racing, it's not competitive, the objective isn't to go fast and find every tenth. It's about precision and accuracy and having good car control and being able to adapt to conditions, and also driving with different people.

“It brought my car control to a different level to where I immediately recognized, like in the rain, how much better of a driver it made me. We did that show rain or shine, and everywhere in between. 

“Not only that, but the stage that we did the show on had all these different surfaces, and you have to react to that instantly. You're in the middle of a drift, and you have very little grip on one surface, then you hit a big grippy patch. So being able to recognize and adapt to those things.”

Car control was one thing, but as with the endurance racing world he now finds himself in, it also taught him to handle a car in a busy environment and understand what those drivers around him may or may not do.

“I could be doing the same role, let's say 10 shows in a row, and each one of those 10 shows there's different drivers driving the other cars around me,” he says.“And they all have slightly different abilities, slightly different styles, slightly different placement of the car, and it's up to me to recognize those subtle or not so subtle changes, and adapt how I'm driving my car to match that, to be closer to them.

“That was something, doing that so long it almost became telepathic, and that I feel like helps me in racing, because if I'm side by side with someone or approaching someone like I've learned to recognize very subtle attitude shifts in a car, and that might help me predict what they're going to do before they even do it.”

While at Disney, Powell built and raced a Mazda Miata, with which had success at club level, two cruel misses at the brand's annual driver shootout notwithstanding. But he was soon back at a national level, racing in SRO Touring Cars where he won races every year from 2016-2021, culminating in a championship win in that final year with wins at Sonoma, Road America, and two Watkins Glen.

A stint in World Challenge GT4 followed in 2023 and 2024, where he'd carried out much of the development work on the Nissan Z to get it competitive – and took a pole position at the 2024 season opener at Sonoma – but he was let go part-way through that second season. 

That left Powell, as he describes, "kind of jaded by the sport", leading to him to briefly get a "real job" in medical sales. But a visit to Petit Le Mans would end up putting his alternative plans on the backburner.

“I ended up helping someone out at Petit Le Mans at the end of the year,” he explains. “I wasn’t really looking to get back into racing at the time, but while I was there, I was just inspired a little bit.”

Not your standard driver route to the WEC, but it worked for Powell. Photo by Dominik Wilde

That inspiration led to him getting a ride with Victor Gonzalez Racing in the TCR class of the Michelin Pilot Challenge. He earned podiums at Watkins Glen and Mosport, as well as wins at Indianapolis and Road Atlanta, but more was to come.

“Then I connected with Scott Dollahite – they were running the Mustang GT3 in SRO, basically as a first-year program, and they were running the Am class. They started the year with a certain driver, and then Scott let me know that they were thinking about making a change. So they organized a test.”

In the test he was quick right away, which led to a seat for the second half of 2025 with Dollahite Racing. He won three times – at Virginia International Raceway and twice at Barber Motorsports Park – to claim third overall in the Am standings despite not competing in the first six races of the year.

At the Indianapolis 8 Hour Powell co-drove with Stefano Gattuso, giving him an opportunity to show his worth against a solid reference of one of Ford’s WEC Bronze drivers. Powell wasn’t sure it would lead anywhere until his phone rang a week before the WEC season finale and subsequent rookie test.

“A week before the test in Bahrain, I got a call to come, which was crazy,” Powell recalls. “My wife had planned a huge birthday weekend for me and rented this awesome Airbnb for us and a bunch of our friends, to go down to Florida. And we had to cancel that last minute. Obviously I wouldn't miss that for the world.”

Birthday plans on hold, Powell hopped on a plane to Bahrain and after observing the 8 Hours of Bahrain, participated in the rookie test with Proton Competition.

“I got a couple very short sessions on used tires before jumping on to stickers and I think I actually went fairly quick,” he says. “My long run pace seemed solid as well”

The test impressed, but Powell was again left waiting to hear more. That was until he had a holiday that he was truly thankful for.

“I kept hearing that people were very impressed [but] I wasn't hearing anything until the day before Thanksgiving,” he says. “I got asked if I wanted the seat. So that was a pretty nice thing. Obviously, I was very thankful for that the day before Thanksgiving.”

Powell will compete the full WEC season in a Ford Mustang GT3 for Proton alongside Sebastian Priaulx and Ben Tuck, and while we’ve seen that Powell has never stopped climbing, now he’s in a position he wants to solidify.

“My goal is to make a home at the GT3 level with Ford and that starts with doing a good job in the car and being likeable and easy to work with, I guess,” he says. “I would love to be as quick as my teammates, but I have a lot to learn compared to them. But let’s see how it goes.

“Objective number two is to not make any mistakes. I'm kind of a role player. I'll be starting the races. Obviously, I need to be fast, but I'm not the one that goes and wins the race. It's my job to put the car in the best position I can, without damaging the car, without getting penalties, without tearing anything up. And my teammates will do what they can at the end. 

“Obviously, I know it's an important role, because if I don't do well, it makes their job much harder, if not impossible.”

Powell’s place in the bigger picture isn’t lost on him, either. Of course, the crown jewel of the WEC schedule is the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It’s a landmark moment for any driver, let alone one in a Ford.

“I still can't believe that  I'm going to be doing that race,” he enthuses. “It's unbelievable to me. The history… I could go on and on, it's just, it's so special.

"Racing in this championship and racing at Le Mans independently of each other, both just absolutely dreams come true. Just thankful to Ford and Proton, and just to have the opportunity to be a part of such an amazing manufacturer with such amazing resources, but also a great team with Proton. I love the people there already. Everybody is so professional, top notch, my co-drivers and the drivers in the other car as well, I feel like we all get along really, really well.”

Powell’s near-30 year career has been one of perseverance, but when he lines up on the starting grid for Sunday's 6 Hours of Imola, it'll all be worth it.

“It's easy as a driver to start developing a complex and I certainly have many times where I've felt like I'm the annoying guy,” he says. “You start recognizing that people don't want to take your calls as much because it's like, ‘what does Eric want now?

“I'm proud of myself for not only the work I've put in, but just for not giving up.”