Over the past few years, owner-driver Eric Gordon has taken BAK40 Motorsports from the newest team in the American rallycross paddock to a player at the front of the field in multiple classes. He’ll look to grow that momentum by taking the team to RallyX Euro League for 2025, heading to Circuito Internacional de Montalegre later this month with a multi-car lineup led by returning full-time driver Lane Vacala and international rallycross champion Tanner Foust behind the wheel of the team’s Star Car.

In part two of our two-part interview, Gordon talks about getting to add Foust to the team in Portugal, when he might get back behind the wheel himself this season, and his ultimate goals for the championship. If you missed part one, click here to read!

To be able to add to the team with the Star Car for Portugal, a name like Tanner Foust has to be incredibly special for you guys to be able to take on. He’s had so much success that in some ways he’s been the face of American rallycross.

I agree with that statement. It’s surreal for me for sure. That’s what I used to dream about while watching, like “that’s Tanner Foust, that’s awesome.” To have him racing under the BAK40 name and our banner adds a little pep to my step. But it makes me a little nervous—like “oh man, I can’t mess this up!”

At the same point, he’s such a laid back guy, and he’s so reliable in a car that I don’t have a lot of fear of that. He’s not going to second guess himself. But to have that exposure with him obviously is going to help us, and it’s going to help the RallyX brand in general. It shows that we’re capable. We’re across the pond and out of our element a little bit, I think he’s going to be the one that we lean on. My goal is basically just providing the best car that I can. And I’m sure, in typical Tanner Foust fashion, he’s going to give us the best show he can.

To learn from him, from his experience, and his car control, just kind of controlling the race and whatnot, I think it’s going to bring so much value to the whole team—to the whole paddock, really. But for our other drivers to be able to bounce things off of him, since he’s been at that level before, and competed at that level with those drivers, I think it’s going to blow people’s minds. And so I think a lot of our drivers are really, really looking forward to it.

Obviously you’ve got multiple cars, so I’m going to put it back on you as a driver for a second. You’ve talked about the tracks and obviously you’ve driven these cars. You’ve been a driver yourself for quite some time. Are you going to be running any of these races as a driver?

Oh yeah, absolutely! I never thought I’d have a conversation as an owner, not driving the car. but, going into this, I figured I’ll go over, I’ll race, we’ll have two or three. We have four cars total, I figured I’d drive one, we’d lease the other seats out and put our drivers in them. And then it became such a hot item, I guess, you know, everybody wanted to drive. I figured if I don’t drive, if I don’t compete over there, it’s going to bum me out a little bit, but I have fun with all the elements of it. I like managing it. I like driving it. I like working on them. I like advertising, you know, all the stuff. So I’m looking at that from that standpoint. So it’s gonna bum me out a little bit, but I’m also there to build the team, and help the team out. And that’s kind of where we’ve gotta be.

If one of my seats are available, like we don’t have a driver for that seat—which right now it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be the case—but, if there isn’t a driver for that seat, I will 110% be in that seat. As everybody knows me with driving, it’s not a secret that my goal when I go out and drive is I go out there strictly for fun. Would I love to win another championship? Yes. But those days are probably done for me, just because my goals are for the team itself. I want to compete, I can still run at that level, I can still do what I want to do. But being that I know that there’s a chance that I might not be in the next race because my seat might be for another driver, I have to accept that I’m not running for the full championship, I’m running out there for certain tracks.

There are going to be certain tracks that that come across that are really going to drive me nuts. Like “I’ve been wanting to drive this my whole life!” So maybe when we clean up on Monday, I’ll take a couple laps, or maybe during shakedown, and that’ll settle me down a little bit. But I think Tanner’s going to keep me pretty busy. So I’m just going to drive in the headset, and I’ll feel like I’m driving, and that’ll be fun.

Finally, like we’ve talked about, you’ve grown this program quite a bit over the past few years. You started from scratch, and now your seats are hot commodities going into a European season as one of the biggest true American teams in rallycross. With that all in mind for the Euro League, what do you consider a successful season for you with the FC2 and with the team?

That’s a good question. Just being honest, I really don’t know how to answer that. The team evolved to what it is now kind of by accident, I guess. Like everything in motorsports, it evolved very fast, like, you don’t know what happened! That wasn’t really part of our model that we were going to do. Like, we wanted to go out there and dabble a little bit. But now that we’ve learned, have all four cars there, the team, our drivers, I want us to go over and show them the American boys have got what it takes and win a championship. That would be the ultimate win for us.

But honestly, if we go over there and compete and keep our team together the way it is—our goal is to come back home. If we promote what we’re supposed to do and we come back to America as a full team and we still have all the cars intact and the team intact, that’s still a win for us. This is a whole new ball game for us, honestly with the FC2 in general, but also going overseas. So to go over there and just put a full season as a team and not have too many hiccups, I honestly consider that a win. If we can keep retaining our drivers—hopefully we retain Tanner in the car, but either way, we’re operating the Star Car—to do that properly and end the season with that, I think we’ll consider that a team win no matter what.

Photos by Raceline Media