How Jarvis Found A New Home

How British ace turned adversity into triumph post-Audi.

- Rob Ladbrook

Last October, Oliver Jarvis had the rug firmly pulled out from under him. The 33-year-old from East Anglia had the world at his feet, which were then clad with custom Audi Sport race boots. He was firmly established in Audi’s full-time FIA World Endurance Championship and Le Mans squad, and one of just six drivers to enjoy a seat in one of the R18 e-tron quattro LMP1s.

Couple that with a breakthrough WEC victory back in May at Spa, and the fact Jarvis and his team-mates were well and truly in the picture for the world championship fight, and you can see that life was pretty sweet for Jarvis.

He’d made it. Properly made it. After years of toil to prove he was one of the best sportscar drivers in the world, he had made it to the top of the mountain.

And then. Bang. It was all taken away in the stroke of a pen in a Wolfsburg boardroom.

Volkswagen ordered sister brand Audi to cease its sportscar programme. Jarvis and the other drivers were told just hours before the public announcement was made that their services would no longer be required. Harsh, yes. Cruel, perhaps. Crushing, absolutely. But that is the nature of the sport’s bad days.

Now the key question, what next? For Jarvis, it meant hard work, frantic reviewing of options, and one chance phone call that really paid off.

“When Audi pulled out, the immediacy of the decision really didn’t do us [the drivers] any favours,” says Jarvis. “It massively narrowed the options as most manufacturer and top-line teams like to have their driver line-ups set sooner rather than later, so most deals were already signed and sorted that late into the year.

“From the outside it may have looked like we’d have a queue of manufacturers offering us deals after Audi was gone – it would have been lovely if that had been the case, but it was completely the opposite. I was left with a phone book, and that’s it.