Meyer Shank Racing announced Thursday (June 27) that they will partner with Honda Racing Corporation USA (HRC US) to field two Acura ARX-06 GTP cars in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship starting in 2025 in a multi-year deal. One will be a traditionally-run Shank entry, while the other car will see HRC US take a much bigger role with the car.
“First, on behalf of everyone at Meyer Shank Racing, I want to express our gratitude to David Salters and everyone at HRC and Acura for giving us this opportunity,” stated team co-owner Mike Shank. “We are supremely grateful to have earned this new opportunity and everyone on the team is looking forward to day one in our new relationship with Acura, and the new role we’ll be playing in HRC US’s IMSA program.”
For HRC US, they will be running their own GTP prototype for the first time in 2025. The group is excited for the new move.
“Running our own GTP car is the next, exciting step for our associates at HRC US,” said David Salters, president of HRC US. “We race to develop our people and technology and we are thrilled to be partnering with MSR to race our ARX-06 against some of the world’s best sportscar teams. This is why the next logical step for us is race engineer our own car: buckle-up HRC boys and girls!”
For MSR, it is a return to Acura. Prior to this year, the team had raced Acuras in IMSA since 2017. They were the IMSA factory organization for Acura’s entry into GT racing at the time, then ran the NSX GT3 through 2020. For 2021, the team returned to prototype racing with the ARX-05.
The team served as one of the factory teams for Acura in 2023 (pictured above at Watkins Glen) with Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun driving full-time. They were important to the original development of the Acura ARX-06, along with Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Global.
Last season saw Blomqvist and Braun technically score enough points to win the GTP championship on the strength of three wins and two additional podium finishes. However, the team was penalized 200 points in March after it was discovered that an engineer for the team, Ryan McCarthy, manipulated air pressure data that was being sent to IMSA during the Rolex 24 at Daytona. The only reason that the team wasn’t outright disqualified was that the results had already been made official before IMSA was notified by HRC US (then known as Honda Performance Development, or HPD) of the issue.
In addition to the penalty, McCarthy had his IMSA hard card stripped and was indefinitely suspended at the time. Blomqvist and Braun ended up third in the championship, 22 points behind champions Pipo Derani and Alexander Sims. That margin is less than the difference between winning a race and finishing second.
MSR will replace WTRAndretti as the factory operation next season. WTRAndretti released a statement in response to the news.
“We have had a successful run with HRC and Acura these past four years,” wrote Wayne Taylor, co-owner of WTRAndretti. “When it came to renewal, we listened and took their future plans into serious consideration, but in the end, felt we needed to go in a different direction moving forward. With three key races left in the season, our plan is to continue to focus on winning more podiums and races for Acura and to end the year strong. We are looking forward to announcing our plans for 2025 in the very near future.”
When MSR chose to focus on INDYCAR this year, HRC US put all their cars in with WTRAndretti. Blomqvist followed MSR to INDYCAR. Unfortunately, Blomqvist was dropped by the team after he wrecked on the first lap of the Indianapolis 500 and has been replaced by David Malukas.
Braun has spent 2024 racing in LMP2 with CrowdStrike Racing by APR, along with CrowdStrike Racing with Riley Motorsports in Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS. He is teamed up with George Kurtz in both series.
No drivers for 2025 were named in the press release. In addition, MSR’s new deal with HRC US for IMSA will not affect the team’s existing operations in INDYCAR. The release notes that the team will “…continue to operate and field multiple Honda-powered entries in the NTT IndyCar Series” next season..
About the author
Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the site's FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site's Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.
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