EMKA Racing

EMKA Racing was a British racing team founded in 1980 by Steve O'Rourke, manager of the band Pink Floyd. The team occasionally ran under the name of EMKA Productions, the name of O'Rourke's management company. The team's name comes from O'Rourke's two daughters, Emma and Katheryne. O'Rourke and EMKA concentrated on sports car racing with brief interludes into British Formula One until 1985 when the team was broken up before returning again in 1991. The team was finally dissolved in early 2004 following O'Rourke's death. The team had won the drivers championship for O'Rourke and Tim Sugden in the British GT Championship in 1997 and 1998.

Following Steve O'Rourke's years of amateur auto racing, he had succeeded in entering the 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans where he took a respectable 12th-place finish in his own Ferrari 512BB. With Pink Floyd's scheduling becoming less of a conflict, O'Rourke was able to fully concentrate on racing and formed EMKA Racing, a division of his EMKA Productions record label, for the 1980 season. Debuting at the Six Hours of Silverstone, he took a seventh-place finish before taking 23rd at Le Mans.

Now established, O'Rourke purchased a BMW M1 and signed driver Derek Bell as his co-driver. The team took a second-place finish at Silverstone before suffering problems at Le Mans with drivers David Hobbs and Eddie Jordan, future owner of Jordan Grand Prix. For Brands Hatch, EMKA took a third-place finish although O'Rourke himself did not drive the car.

For 1982, Derek Bell was replaced on the team by Nick Mason, drummer for Pink Floyd, who had been participating the past few years with the Dorset Racing team. The team did not see much success. In the same year, O'Rourke and EMKA also entered the British Formula One series for two races with a Williams FW07, scoring a third place at Thruxton Circuit.

...
Wikipedia