Bryan Herta Autosport announced Thursday that they will enter the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship for the first time in 2026. They will field a full-time entry in the LMP2 class.
“Our entry into the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is vital for building our foundation for the future,” team co-owner/president Bryan Herta stated in the team’s press release. “The LMP2 platform gives us the opportunity to develop our personnel and systems in a way that prepares us to compete at the highest level. It’s the next logical step for our organization, and one that we’ve been planning for some time.”
The team views the move up to LMP2 as a “natural progression of the team’s growth trajectory” that will give the organization and the people working with them significant experience in WeatherTech. In addition, they have the room to make the expansion due to acquiring a new facility for the team in Brownsburg, Ind.
The new effort will not end the team’s efforts in IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge. They have every intention of continuing in the series, where they currently field five full-time Hyundai Elantra N TCRs. Whether it would remain a five-car squad in Pilot Challenge in 2026 remains to be seen.
This is new territory for BHA. The team is best known for fielding the winning entry in the 2011 Indianapolis 500 for Dan Wheldon.
However, the majority of their success has come racing TCR cars, first in what was then Pirelli World Challenge’s TCR class, then in Michelin Pilot Challenge. They started out with the i30 N TCR (based on a high performance version of a car sold in the United States as the Elantra GT), then switched to the Veloster N TCR and now the Elantra N TCR. They won the TCR championship in their first five years in Pilot Challenge (2019-2023).
In the background of this move, Hyundai’s Genesis division is also getting involved in prototype racing. They are currently testing the GMR-001, a new LMDh prototype, in Europe ahead of a full-time two-car effort in the FIA World Endurance Championship in 2026. When the effort was announced late last year, Genesis also revealed that they would have a GMR-001 on the grid in IMSA In 2027.
There is the possibility that this effort could be treated much along the lines of the current No. 18 IDEC Sport team in the European Le Mans Series. That team is staffed by Genesis Magma Racing members and is something of a dry run to get the team ready for the WEC.
The team did not announce any drivers for the effort. They indicated that partners and the driver lineup will be announced “in the coming weeks.” The team will officially make their public LMP2 debut in a test session at Daytona International Speedway in November.
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.
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