Alex to race for PT Autosport / JDX Racing in Porsche Deluxe Carrera Cup North America

PT Autosport brings its program of diversity and opportunity to the 2023 Porsche Deluxe Carrera Cup North America series, partnering with JDX Racing to field a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car for racer Alex Sedgwick.

Team owner Jeph Dais, co-founder/team principal Jason Myers and Sedgwick formed the team with a mission statement dedicated to giving young racers the opportunity to chase their motorsports dreams, forming an in-house ladder system for drivers, engineers, mechanics and business professionals. Fostering an environment focused on learning and developing race craft on and off track is at the core of the team’s endeavors.

Both Dais and Myers have significant youth and young adult mentoring experience and have seen the positive effects first-hand. Dais, a Hoboken, NJ resident, has over 15+ years of operations experience in the finance industry and has been involved with the youth mentoring program, DeMolay International, since the age of 12. Myers, currently living in Charleston, SC, spent eight years in the Marine Corps with three tours in Iraq before he entered the motorsports world, working with private and manufacturer-backed teams for the past 15 years. During that time, he became a peer-to-peer counselor with the VA and a volunteer mentor for veteran-based nonprofit organizations.

Co-Founder Sedgwick, 24, a native of Warwickshire, England, came up through the karting ranks and has driven a wide range of race cars – including GT cars, prototypes, single seaters, stock cars and touring cars. He also has extensive experience as a driver coach, but it was his work with a European driving tour company that actually led him back to racing – and to PT Autosport.

“With so few available opportunities, I had moved away from racing at this time last year,” said Sedgwick. “I worked as an operations manager with Ultimate Driving Tours on an event last year that was a driving tour through Europe and ending with an event at the Monaco Grand Prix. Jason was on the tour and we got on really well. I got a message from him the following week telling me that Jeph had bought a Porsche Cup car and would I come to NJMP to coach him? The more we started talking, the more we started coming up with a concept of what we could do together, what we could build.”

Part one of the team’s master plan was their shootout last November, designed to find a deserving young driver to start his or her journey up the racing ladder. The inaugural winner was 22-year-old Londoner Henry Drury, but the former competitive figure skater has been sidelined after artificial disc replacement surgery late last year. Undeterred, Drury, who lives in Tampa, Fla., has remained a part of the team, working on marketing and social media until he can return to the car. 

“Henry won the shootout based on his talents and performance, but it’s been a stroke of luck that he has the marketing skillset as well!” said Sedgwick. “As we get into the race season, he’ll be working on videography and social media, but we’ve got a tentative schedule for him across a variety of series later in the spring and summer once he completes his recovery.”

The team considers part two of that plan to be establishing the PT Autosport name at a high level in the sport alongside 2022 champions JDX Racing. They will have IMSA’s two-day test March 6 and 7 to shake out the brand-new No. 98 Porsche Cup car and gel with the new team ahead of the race weekend. It’s a tight schedule, but Sedgwick feels confident.

“My whole racing career has been about jumping in and figuring it out,” said Sedgwick. “We had an exploratory test with JDX in November, so we have a baseline, and I know we’ll hit the ground running. It has been a very natural partnership with JDX – we’re all focused on being as competitive as possible!”

“With JDX, we couldn’t have picked a more established or accomplished team to help us campaign the series with Alex in 2023. We have been impressed with their professionalism and competitiveness from the start,” said Myers. “PT Autosport was nothing more than an idea until June of last year, and because of that, we needed an established, top-level team to help start our first real season in professional sports car racing. So far we have achieved every milestone set forth, taking a lean, calculated approach as we jump-start a professional level sports car racing team with the main goal of helping expand and enrich this incredible industry with drivers, engineers and crew who might not otherwise have had or known about the opportunities within the motorsport community.”

To that end, part three of the plan will be to continue the annual shootout concept, with the 2023 edition scheduled for August. PT Autosport aims to continue building out the program, working to identify a second junior driver to develop and compete alongside Drury as well as fleshing out the team to support that racing program.

“That will provide more opportunity to find deserving individuals the chance to get involved in racing,” said Sedgwick. “We don’t want just to be a race team and that side of it is really exciting.”

With payment solutions and business technology giant Deluxe as the series’ title sponsor, the domestic Carrera Cup enters its third season with a stellar lineup of race venues. Eight race weekends will host two 40-minute races at some of the top IMSA tracks in the country, including Sebring, Long Beach, Watkins Glen, Indianapolis, and Road Atlanta. The series will also join the Formula One Grand Prix circuit at two of its United States stops, Miami and Austin, Texas, and be the headline racing event at the Porsche Rennsport Reunion VII in Monterey, California.

The 2023 Deluxe Porsche Carrera Cup North America makes its season debut at Sebring International Raceway March 16 and 17, as part of the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring weekend. Race one takes the green flag Thursday, March 16 at 9:15 a.m. Eastern, with race two later that afternoon, at 5:35 p.m. The race will be broadcast live in the U.S., on IMSA.tv, the NBC Peacock streaming app and PorscheCarreraCup.us.