Brett Jacobson and the seat he could not always fill

At Road America in August 2023, the Giddy Lamborghini had a driver missing. Brett Jacobson, the company’s founder and CEO, was away because of work commitments. His regular partner, Joel Miller, would drive alone. The change even moved the entry from Pro-Am into the Pro class. A scheduling conflict had become a sporting classification.

It is a wonderfully unglamorous detail in a world of very glamorous machinery. There was a Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2 to race, and the boss had work to do. For Jacobson, whose business life is based in Austin, the two calendars did not always cooperate. The car could make the weekend without him.

That absent seat offers a useful way into his story. The founder’s name appears on a company, on advertising credits and on racing entry lists. But the racing record gives him something rather more interesting than an extracurricular flourish: a place where he describes himself as a learner, thanks his coach and admits he would have liked to do better.

The coach came along

Before the Lamborghini came a Ferrari. In 2021, Jacobson competed in Ferrari Challenge North America with Miller as his driving coach. The season produced four podium finishes, a pole position and fifth place in his championship classification. There was enough progress to make a second season plausible, and enough unfinished business to keep the exercise interesting.

One of those podiums came at Road America in September 2021, when Jacobson finished second in Coppa Shell Am behind John Cervini, with Roy Carroll completing the top three. His entry was associated with Ferrari of Houston. By November, he was also on the Coppa Shell Am podium at Mugello in Italy, finishing third in the first North American series race there.

These are class results, a distinction that matters in customer racing, where several competitions can share the same stretch of asphalt. The pleasure lies in the specificity. Second in a particular class on a particular Sunday is an achievement with edges. It leaves room for the next person ahead, the next circuit and the next uncomfortable look at a stopwatch.

When Flying Lizard Motorsports announced its Lamborghini program in February 2022, Jacobson and Miller arrived together. The coach would now share the race car. They would run the No. 11 Giddy entry in Pro-Am, alongside separate Flying Lizard entries for Slade Stewart and Tom Tait. The relationship survived the change of badge on the bonnet.

“My goal is to continue learning”Brett Jacobson · February 2022

Jacobson also wanted to win. His announcement put those ambitions together: learn, become competitive, aim for the front. There is no great mystery in the sequence, but there is some honesty. Owning a business gives a person authority in one setting. It cannot confer familiarity with a different car.

A new car, with the clock already running

At Laguna Seca, the preparation did not unfold neatly. Jacobson’s Lamborghini arrived after the team’s preseason test. Other entries had already had a chance to get acquainted with their machinery; his had missed that opportunity. The opening weekend would have to accommodate work that ideally belonged somewhere earlier in the diary.

Jacobson’s first laps at the circuit came during qualifying. He and Miller treated the event as a practice round, learning the car, the track and the procedures while the championship was already under way. They finished fifth in their class in the first race. The result was useful, though it was short of what Jacobson had hoped for.

His explanation afterward was practical. Time in the car mattered. They had not tested. The first day had been difficult; on the second, he had handed the car to Miller. He looked ahead to Watkins Glen and more seat time. There was no need to decorate the lesson. Practice was the thing they needed, and practice was the thing they had lacked.

The two-driver format added another task. Jacobson had said before the weekend that he was looking forward to learning that dynamic. A shared entry means a driver’s stint belongs to a larger effort. The car has to pass from one person to the next, and the result will contain both their contributions.

For someone accustomed to the title of CEO, that arrangement has an appealing lack of ceremony. Miller’s experience was part of the plan from the beginning. Jacobson brought his existing coach into a new competition and publicly acknowledged the help. The team’s engineers and preparation mattered, too. The photographs may isolate the driver; the job does not.

Sixth place, and something to take home

Watkins Glen was familiar territory. Before the June 2022 weekend, Jacobson called it one of his favorite tracks. Having already encountered the Lamborghini at Laguna Seca, he could arrive with one fewer unknown. His enthusiasm was directed at the business of driving the car around a place he enjoyed.

The weekend supplied the usual mixture of promise and interference. In the first race, the No. 11 started fourth in Pro-Am and ran among the top three. A pit-stop infraction brought a drive-through penalty, and the entry finished sixth. In the second race, Jacobson started sixth and later handed over to Miller; the pair again finished sixth in class.

A pit-stop penalty is a particularly sharp reminder that driving quickly occupies only part of a race. The standing at the finish contains the procedures as well as the pace. Whatever promise the early running had shown, sixth was what remained on the result sheet.

Jacobson’s response was to talk about learning again. He thanked Miller and the team, and welcomed the pressure of a higher level of competition. That is the most consistent thread in his racing remarks: an appetite for improvement expressed through particular weekends, particular cars and people who can help him get quicker.

“Each time on track I learn a little more”Brett Jacobson · June 2022

The car went on without him

Road America brought a different sort of lesson in August 2022. Jacobson had a prior commitment, so Miller took the No. 11 into the Pro class alone. In the second race, rain and tire strategy complicated the afternoon. Miller finished second overall, giving the car its first overall top-three result of the season.

Jacobson was absent from that drive. The distinction is essential: it was Miller’s result in their usual shared car. Yet Miller’s comments afterward still included his missing partner, and his thanks included Giddy and the crew. A racing program can have a collective life even when its usual occupants cannot all attend.

The following year supplied an echo. At Road America in August 2023, work commitments again kept Jacobson away, and Miller again ran solo in Pro. By then the partnership had moved to Forty7 Motorsports and the car wore No. 55. The team and number had changed; the pairing, and the difficulty of keeping every date free, remained.

Official entries for Indianapolis in September 2023 put Jacobson and Miller together in the Giddy-backed Lamborghini again. The November Vallelunga entry list in Italy also named both drivers for Forty7, this time with No. 155. The paper trail follows a continuing partnership across teams and countries.

A second set of credits

Racing was not Jacobson’s only activity outside the conventional CEO description. A December 2022 Giddy advertising campaign, titled “You Cant Say That on TV,” listed him as both producer and executive producer alongside Augusto Aguilera, who directed it. The credits place him inside the making of a piece of brand communication, as well as at the head of the company behind it.

His public business voice also included a December 2020 essay in Austin Startups. Even its title, “‘Unprecedented’ was always Giddy’s business,” belongs to that crowded period when the word seemed to appear in every announcement. Jacobson was writing in his own name, presenting the company through a founder’s account.

There is a recognizable overlap between the credits and the race entries: Giddy travels with him. It appears on the car and on his suit. The founder and the business occupy the same visible space, whether the immediate task is a campaign or a race weekend. A sponsor logo has the rare advantage of remaining legible when its wearer has stopped talking.

The next lap has a modest requirement

The most revealing ambition in Jacobson’s racing story is also the least extravagant. He wanted more time in the car. It appears after a rushed debut and in his anticipation of returning to a familiar track. Before a better result could arrive, there was a smaller, quite literal requirement: get back behind the wheel.

That gives this part of his life a human scale. There are podiums, a pole, a coach who became a co-driver, and weekends when another obligation won the argument. There are results he shared and a result earned while he was away. The distinctions make the story worth keeping intact.

Return to the empty seat at Road America. The founder had work commitments. His partner had a race to run. For all the speed available to them, neither could persuade a calendar to provide another afternoon.