Gil de Ferran retired from driving in IndyCar at the end of the 2003 season following his Indianapolis 500 victory and subsequently moved into team management and advisory roles in motorsport, including a stint as sporting director at McLaren Formula One team. When he returned to active racing operations, de Ferran chose sports car competition in the American Le Mans Series as his platform, establishing De Ferran Motorsports as both owner and driver.
The team ran prototype machinery and paired de Ferran with Simon Pagenaud, a young French driver who would go on to significant success in IndyCar. Pagenaud served as co-driver across both seasons, gaining valuable experience alongside a former champion.
The 2008 season began late for the team, with the first start coming at the Utah Grand Prix. De Ferran and Pagenaud finished third overall on their debut — a strong result that raised expectations for the remainder of the campaign. However, the team was unable to sustain that level of performance through the rest of the year. A pit lane fire during one event undermined confidence and momentum. The team ended the season sixth in the teams' championship and fourteenth in the drivers' standings.
The 2009 season transformed the team's competitive standing. De Ferran Motorsports was selected by Honda Performance Development as one of two teams to campaign the new Acura ARX-02 LMP1 prototype in the American Le Mans Series, following the withdrawal of Audi Sport North America from the series. The factory-backed programme gave the team significantly upgraded machinery.
The first victory came at Long Beach in the second race of the season, which began a four-race winning streak — a dominant run that established the team as the class of the field. The team also won the season finale. Despite the strong results, de Ferran Motorsports finished second in the teams' championship, with de Ferran and Pagenaud taking third place in the drivers' standings.
The 2009 season also marked the end of Acura's factory American Le Mans Series programme, with Honda Performance Development choosing not to continue the works effort beyond that year, though HPD continued developing ARX-series prototypes for customer teams.
In August 2009, de Ferran announced he would retire from racing at the conclusion of the season. Initial plans called for the team to transition to IndyCar competition, but those plans changed and De Ferran Motorsports instead merged with Luczo Dragon Racing to form De Ferran Luczo Dragon Racing, which continued in IndyCar.
De Ferran Motorsports demonstrated that a former champion transitioning into team ownership could build a competitive operation in a relatively short timeframe. The team's 2009 ALMS campaign with the Acura ARX-02 produced one of the strongest single-season runs by an LMP1 team in the series that year. For Simon Pagenaud, the partnership provided a platform that helped establish his credentials as a top-level sports car driver, contributing to an IndyCar career in which he won the 2017 championship and the 2019 Indianapolis 500.