Laura Klauser: Of Cars and Chocolates and Everything GM

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In: Racing News
By Mark Robinson
IMSA Wire Service

 

 

The idea of taking on the responsibility of the high-profile, high-pressure Corvette Racing program in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is daunting enough in normal times. Doing so in the midst and uncertainty of a pandemic would make it even more intimidating.
 
Not for Laura Wontrop Klauser. Named Sports Car Racing Program Manager at General Motors in January, Klauser now oversees the successful Corvette operation in GT Le Mans (GTLM) in addition to her previous duties supervising the Cadillac Daytona Prototype international (DPi) program as well as the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge Chevrolet Camaro project.
But considering the way she has followed her passion and risen through the GM ranks in the male-dominated world of motorsports, it’s no surprise Klauser has confronted the task head-on.
 
“Coming on board in the middle of a pandemic has been a challenge,” Klauser admitted. “Not that it hasn’t been a challenge for everybody, right? At the same time, it’s been a really great opportunity to get to know everyone. We’re all in this together.
 
“It’s made for a lot more team camaraderie as we work through how to shift things and where we’re going for races and all of that. It’s given us time to get really creative logistically, which I’m pretty good at that – putting budgets together and logistics and stuff like that. I think it’s been good for the team, especially on the Corvette side, to have me on board with having all the sports car things (under one umbrella). This way we’re able to quickly adapt and do what we need to do across the board instead of having to wait and check in one by one. It makes things faster.”
 
Faster is a recurrent theme in Klauser’s life. Growing up on a Maryland farm, her early thrills came from speeding around the property on a mountain bike. She realized that having a driver’s license and car were the lifeline necessary to participate in school, social and extracurricular activities. Her link to the auto industry was born from that need.
 
Klauser earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a master’s in engineering from the University of Michigan. She began at GM in 2008 and spent eight years on the passenger car production side – starting, in a foreshadowing, with design work on the Corvette C7. She was named Program Manager for the Cadillac ATS-V.R effort in 2016 and, a year later, helped launch the Cadillac DPi-V.R program in the WeatherTech Championship.
Now comes the vaunted Corvette Racing program, with its huge fan base and following. Combining management of the GM sports car programs was initiated to streamline the company-wide effort.
 
“Efficiency has been huge,” Klauser said. “When you’re talking to the same group of people on the GM side – myself and my boss, Mark Stielow – to get things done, decisions can happen very quickly. Also, when you are able to bundle things into a package, you can be a little bit more flexible. If one program needs to have a little extra money to do something over here, but another one didn’t need quite as much, you can shift things around easier when they’re all under one.”
 
Early results have also shown it benefits knowledge sharing within GM racing.
 
“What we found is the way we were operating with each racing program kind of being in its own silo, there wasn’t a lot of transfer between the programs,” Klauser said. “It would get back to the factory, which is great, but if Cadillac picked up on something that could help Corvette, or vice-versa, that wasn’t always happening.
 
“So from an engineering side, we’re trying to share that knowledge back and forth. And as we’re looking to the future and we’re trying to figure out what our portfolio is going to be – where we’re going to be racing, with which brands – it was better to take the holistic approach and we’re definitely baking a lot of the engineering side of that in.”
 
Baking is yet another theme in Klauser’s life. She excelled as a youngster, cooking with her mother and grandmother, and entering her work in 4H contests. “I actually won grand champion cherry pie one year!” she said proudly.
 
Calling it a creative outlet, Klauser continues whipping up delicacies in the kitchen today. She has a website, carsandchocolates.com, that highlights her professional and culinary exploits. She rewards victories by GM’s IMSA teams with treats. Action Express Racing calls them “win biscuits.” After Corvette delivered a 1-2 class finish in the Rolex 24 At Daytona in January, Klauser presented the team with black-bottom cupcakes with yellow icing – the colors matching the traditional Corvette scheme.
 
“Baking’s kind of like chemistry,” she said, “so I guess it kind of pulls a little bit on my technical side. But on the other side, you create something exciting and you get to share it with others, and I love that portion of it. … That’s the ultimate gesture of thank you.”
In addition to her dedication to hard work and passion for racing, Klauser credits GM’s advocacy of diversity in assisting her climb up the professional ladder.
 
“I’ve never felt different (at GM) for being a woman,” she said. “I’ve only ever felt different for being young when I had just started. … I feel like I’ve had a path that’s been relatively easy, where I’ve been able to move from job to job at GM.”
 
Klauser knows that isn’t always the case for women or others trying to shatter the norm. Just as she had mentors including renowned GM, NASCAR and NHRA engineer Alba Colon, Klauser is happy to pay it forward.
 
“There’s a couple things that I personally can do,” Klauser said. “The first is to be available for young women and young people in general. I don’t discriminate. I’ll talk to anyone who wants to learn about what it means to be in racing, what the different jobs are that are out there.
 
“I’m a firm believer that you have to work for what you have. That’s something that I do and I think everyone around me does. For those that are willing to work hard and show that they can hang with everyone, give them a chance. You’d be surprised. They’re working harder in some cases and they’ll surprise you even more, I think.”
 
Regarding her own path, Klauser is exactly where she wants to be. She and her husband own a 2013 Corvette C6 Grand Sport that they take to track events and gatherings where they meet hundreds of others who share their passion for the iconic make. At some point, Klauser’s career journey may take her away from motorsports – but she hopes it’s no time soon.
 
“This has been the best fit for me and my skill set and my passions,” she said. “In fact, the day they make me go back to production, I’m probably going to cry because it’s going to be hard leaving something that I love so much.”

 

Adam Sinclair
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