Outside of football, Thibaut Courtois is an avid motorsport fan – so passionate that he’s teamed up with Roberto Merhi to launch his own team in Spanish F4 this year.
By Juan Arroyo
“He loves motorsport. He likes to drive. He likes to watch. He has the best simulator you can have at home. I mean, he loves motorsport.”
If you had to guess who Roberto Merhi is talking about, chances are that Thibaut Courtois wouldn’t be the first to pop up in your head.
For those unfamiliar with the football world, Courtois is one of the best goalkeepers in the sport, playing for the most successful club in Europe, Real Madrid. Over his illustrious 15-year career, the Belgian has won nearly everything there is to win on an individual and team level. Away from the pitch, he’s decided to take his passion for racing to the next level.
Courtois expressed his desire to create his own team to Merhi, a current racing driver, in May 2023. In June, TC Racing was officially born.
“We had the conversation that he wanted to do something in motorsport, and my recommendation was to start doing something in [Spanish F4] because he’s playing for Real Madrid. I think it’s good to have the team next to home,” Merhi said.
By August, they found an official base south of Spain’s capital, where they would begin assembling their new cars. Having presented a proposal to RFEDA – Spain’s motorsport federation – the team finally gained approval to compete in Spanish F4 in November.
“It was complicated to get the entry. It was complicated to find the people. I think it started to take shape around November, December. Now, we are pushing flat out. Even if it looks like we have time, we haven’t done exactly what I wanted to do in all the areas,” Merhi said.
“We covered most of them, but there are a couple of things that I want to do still to improve from the team that I think we will do through the year.”
Days out from Spanish F4’s season opener in Jarama, Feeder Series spoke to Merhi about the journey to TC Racing’s debut and his collaboration with Courtois.
Spanish F4 finds itself in somewhat of a golden era right now. Grids have never been stronger, teams have never been more interested, and the level has risen since the championship’s inception. For TC Racing, this was the ideal series to enter in geographical and sporting terms.
However, with this surge in interest comes fierce competition. To lead the pack, TC Racing must beat established giants like MP Motorsport and Campos Racing, along with several other seasoned contenders. It can take years for teams to establish themselves at the front in a new series, and most never do.
Often, what separates these successful teams from the backmarkers is the personnel being hired. While every team can offer a relatively similar salary to engineers and mechanics, the larger operations – those with squads in FRECA, F3 or F2 – hold a distinct advantage in promising career paths. For smaller or newer teams, such as TC Racing, attracting top talent requires extra effort.
“If you go to teams like MP, Campos, they are bigger. They [compete in] F2, F3, they have many categories. They can say to the engineers, ‘Look, we start in Formula 4 and then I will promote you to Formula 2,’ and people will accept it. At the end of the day, the engineers are like the drivers; they want to start in Formula 4 and end up in Formula 1,” Merhi explained.
“It’s quite a handicap for us, [from] what I see this year. But hopefully we can make a decent year and then try to grow as a team, and let’s see if we can do these steps in the future.”
The team has ambitions to grow beyond Spanish F4 in the future, but Merhi isn’t rushing to make expansion plans. However, if expansion were on the cards, Eurocup-3 and the Formula Regional European Championship would be the safest bets.
“We obviously tell [personnel] that we want to progress, you know, that this is not our last step. We want to start in F4 and our target will be to grow as a team. That’s what I want, but obviously we need results,” Merhi said.
“For a team, I think it’s good to start in the basics. I think [Formula 4] is a very nice championship. When you see the drivers jumping from karting to formula, it’s when you can teach them how to drive a formula car.”
Part of TC Racing’s pitch to potential recruits revolves around its driver line-up featuring Gabriel Gómez and Cristian Cantú. Gómez, a standout from the karting scene, finished second in the FIA European karting championship’s OK class last year, while Cantú came close to winning the NACAM F4 title in 2023.
Despite their talent, neither Gómez nor Cantú has raced a season of single-seaters in Europe. This is where Merhi – tasked with leading the sporting side of the team – steps in. He has served as a reference driver during private testing and coached Gómez and Cantú during simulator sessions.
Still, coming in as a new team, TC Racing faced the challenge of convincing the drivers to join the team for their rookie season.
“Having Thibaut and me [in the team], we can give a good repercussion also for them, for sponsors. I can try to teach them as much as I can on the driving style, and I think that we make the difference compared to the other teams. If you see it like that, we are a good combo.” Merhi said.
“For [Cantú], it was clear because I helped him a lot at the beginning. He [had] driving tendencies that he was bringing in from Mexico [from] driving with very bad tires and very dirty tracks. If you drive like that here in Europe, you cannot perform so well.”
“I helped him a bit to understand how to drive, and the guy improved immediately. For example, for Cristian, that was what he liked from the team to join us.”
While Thibaut Courtois had no previous motorsport experience when he started TC Racing – if you don’t count his F1 Virtual Grand Prix appearances in 2020 – the Belgian’s insistence to learn and his accomplishments on the football pitch have made him an influential figure at the team.
“His mentality is very good. He’s a very successful sportsman, and I think that when he talks to the drivers or even to the team staff, everybody listens to him because he obviously is a very successful sportsman,” Merhi said.
“When someone like him tells you what to do, the people listen. It’s good from his side, and you can see he’s very passionate. He’s asking all the time about the team. He’s very, very pushing for the team.”
As for Merhi, this will be his first time in a role in which he’s helping run a team off the track rather than delivering results behind the wheel. But that doesn’t mean he can’t get some laps in occasionally – he was the first to test TC Racing’s car when it arrived and did another test with Gómez at Circuit Ricardo Tormo.
“It’s a new role that I’m going to take [that] I never did before. But for me, it’s a good thing. I’ve been in good [and] bad teams racing. I understand why a team is strong and why a team is weak.”
“I think it’s all about the método de trabajo,” Merhi said, which translates literally to working method. “It’s pretty important to have a good method that you give to the team. That’s what I want to do with this team and try to find the people.”
“I always remember my first season in formula racing. It was very nice. It’s probably the nicest years of my career. I’d like to relive that moment again now with the team,” he added.
Twenty years on from when he first began racing, Merhi remains as committed as ever to the sport. This year, he’ll take to the wheel in the Super GT Series, while also accompanying Carlos Sainz Jr during the F1 season. Balancing these commitments with TC Racing’s debut campaign will be a challenge, but it is one that Merhi welcomes.
“I think I will miss only one race, if I am not wrong. All the others, I will attend. I will attend as much as I can; that’s the plan, to go all the time,” Merhi said.
“This year is a bit crazy because together with the Super GT, the Spanish F4, the Spanish F4 testing, the private testing, and the commitments that I have with [Sainz], I think I’m going to do up to 30 races this season plus testing. It’s quite a tight schedule, but I am happy to have this challenge.”
Gabriel Gómez and Cristian Cantú will take to Jarama this weekend with valuable experience of the circuit, having tested there in late April alongside the rest of the Spanish F4 field. They will also be on a level playing field, as it’s been four years since the series last visited the circuit.
“The good thing is that it’s a new track for everybody. Being a new team, it helped us,” Merhi said.
“It’s going to be quite an interesting race, maybe not similar to the rest of the season, but that gives us more time to optimise our setup and to have our conclusions after the first weekend, that for sure there are areas that we need to work [on].”
“Most of the teams in the championship already did two or three seasons with this car. Of course, they will have more knowledge than us at the beginning, but our experience hopefully comes quickly.”
However, in a championship in which Merhi considers the driver to be “very important”, Gómez and Cantú find themselves at a relative disadvantage after having missed the Formula Winter Series in the early months of the year.
There are signs of promise, though, as Gómez clocked TC Racing’s best testing result – 13th, just 0.555s behind Campos’ Jan Przyrowski – during the late April test.
“If we can get some points, it will be a very good decision. The most important thing is to grow, to make a starting point. From there, going forward is our target. We need to focus,” Merhi said.
“The last test in Jarama was very positive, especially for Gabriel. It was quite okay. I couldn’t attend the test, but I’m sure [that] working on the small details, we can go up to the podium. It’s our target this season.”
For Merhi, Courtois, the drivers and the entire TC Racing team, Jarama signifies the culmination of a more than yearlong journey to prepare the team for this season and the start of a likely even longer road to success in Spanish F4.
Still, there remains a lot of work to be done at their Madrid base.
“We’re pushing flat out with all the testing, now the first race, organising everything,” Merhi said. “We need to put the stickers on the car, the driving suits. There are many things we need to do now.”
Header photos credit: TC Racing, David Merrett; design: Juan Arroyo
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