Economic Development News

STUART - American Le Mans racing has come to Martin County with Scott Sharp's Extreme Speed Motorsports.

Derek Granison, team manager at Extreme said the team's new location at 7782 Southwest Jack James Drive was a no-brainer.

"Stuart offered us the financially best location and being that it is centrally located to racetracks in this area, so for us it was the best place for the space that we have," he said, referring to tracks in Sebring, Homestead and Daytona.

Sharp, internationally known as an Indy racing league driver turned American Le Mans Series competitor, has added two new Ferrari F430 GTCs to his four-man driving team.

The team heads to competition March 19 in Sebring and then travel countrywide and to Canada during the race season.

With the team comes about 30 highly skilled, well-paying jobs said Crystal France, marketing and public relations manager for the Business Development Board of Martin County.

"What it will bring is 30 high-tech, high paying jobs because these are technicians that are going to be very skilled, very well trained," France said. "They have to understand these high performance vehicles so they are going to have engineering degrees and have high-tech degrees. They are going to bring expertise ... "

France said Extreme settling in Stuart will help give the county a special branding.

"The reason they came is we are centrally located between lots of racing assets, and that is exciting to be recognized as sort of a hub for racing in Florida," she said, adding that the company will join local aerospace and marine industries, all "high performance industries".

"If you think about it, at this most elementary level all three are all based around speed and high performance, and that's kind of neat," France said.

France credits landing the American La Mans team to the Board of County Commissioner's new economic stimulus plan adopted last year that makes the permitting process easier. Once a lengthy ordeal that may have discouraged new business ventures, has been reduced to just hours in some cases, she said.

For more information about the team expects its new Web site to be up by February at www.esmracing.com , or look at www.americanlemans.com for more information about this sport.