Team Perfect Circle

Consultancy

Client: Team Perfect Circle

Team Perfect Circle is a wonderful story. I was fortunate enough to be involved from Day 1 of the resurrection of this brand - and I still am today. In 1969, Porsche raced the 917 at the Kyalami 9h in South Africa. Andre Bezuidenhout was there as a small boy, captivated by the excitement and the Porsche that won the race with Factory race drivers, ‘Dickie’ Attwood and David Piper.

It started a life-long passion for Porsche and racing for Andre, so when the SRO announced that the Kyalami 9h would return in 2019 – exactly 50 years later – Andre knew he had to be a part of it.

He purchased a 911 GT3R and contacted me asking me to help him deliver this ambition. After speaking with David Piper, he agreed to allow us to bring ‘Team Perfect Circle’ back after 50 years. From there I created a period-correct look to the new Porsche that complimented the 1969 designs (this can be seen below). The worlds motorsport media picked up the story and went viral. Here was a man in his 50’s fulfilling a dream against some of the best teams in the world.

Ultimately, the car Andre purchased for the 2019 race did not get to the finish. That did little to diminish his ambition though so from there he started to run a two-car Team Perfect Circle team in the South African Touring Car Championship (which they won) with two VW Polo’s; he raced Porsche GT3 Cup cars in the Middle East and went back to Kyalami in a brand new GT3R - and won the Pro-Am title. After the nostalgic 2019 Anniversary year, I redesigned the team Livery to be more contemporary and that new design has slight tweaks each year to ensure it’s always the car that the photographers want to photograph!

Prior to the 2019 race, we needed some imagery that we could use for Press and promotional use to get our story out to the World. The day that the GT3R was loaded onto the shipping container to leave th UK for South Africa was th same day that the decals were applied to the car. I went, with my camera, and took pictures from all around the car - at different heights and using a few different lenses - to ensure we had a enough source material to give Tom Wheatley so we could create the above image. This was always going to be a tough ask, but I wanted our GT3R positioned next to the Porsche 917 from 1969 on the Kyalami race track. We had pictures from an industrial estate of the GT3R, but the 917 hadn’t had that livery on for over 50 years - so Tom took pictures of a small diecast model and got t work creating this ‘art’ you see here. Johannesburg in the background, flames from the 917… the image is a masterpiece and found its way into the press all over the world.
We also created a second ‘hero’ image using Tom Wheatley’s talent and that was used for the promotional posters, driver cards, sponsorship promotional marketing and local press.
To celebrate this wonderfully romantic motorsport story, we created a hard-backed book that was sent out as a gift to all sponsors, friends, family and journalists that had supported Team Perfect Circle. With a Foreword by FIA President, Jean Todt, and text written by Wilhelm Lutjeharms, I was privileged to do the design and layout. A special memento.
The updated Team Perfect Circle livery applied to the Porsche GT3R.
The first iteration of the modern livery was seen in the Porsche Middle East Sprint Challenge in Dubai. Andre rented a brand new GT3 Cup car from Lechner Racing and jumped on a plane! I had to design a ‘livery’ that looked professional but that could be cut from vinyl in South Africa and rolled up into a cardboard tube and taken on the plane! The stickers were applied in the garage on the morning of testing! If you look closely, you will see the side and hood designs are exactly the same pattern, just with the Team Perfect Circle ‘logo’ rotated for the hood application. Simple, but effective.
A lifetime ambition realised – the Kyalami 9 Hour in a new Porsche GT3 R. Winning the Pro-Am Class, the team finally delivered a win at Kyalami - the first since 1969!