Meyer Shank Racing has announced their departure from IMSA, after 19 consecutive years of competing in the IMSA-based sportscar championship, with intentions to focus on their Indycar programme from 2024.
The team who currently run the #60 Acura ARX-06 GTP in this year’s WeatherTech Championship, are set to mark this month’s Petit Le Mans as their final race.
At the Battle of the Bricks, which took place at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, they surpassed their 350th start in North American sportscar racing.
With an Acura NSX GT3 and their DPi car, they claimed titles in 2019, 2020 and 2022, and won this year’s Daytona 24 Hours despite the team being caught artificially inflating the tyre pressure data submitted to IMSA, and thus took on reduced winning points.
“Making the decision to take a year away from IMSA was not an easy one by any means,” said co-owner Mike Shank.
“Our guys live and breathe this team, and have committed most of their lives to working on these cars and traveling to races – and many of them have been with us for nearly 20 years.
“For Jim [Meyer] and I, our main focus was getting our guys set and making sure they were all going to be OK, which we were able to do.
“There are a lot of projects that we have going at the shop, and of course some of the guys will be helping with our growing Indycar program.
“The third Indianapolis 500 entry for Helio [Castroneves] is a very big deal and I’m glad to have the right people in place to help us be as ready as possible for him to go get that fifth one. And then when we need to prepare for the IMSA program, we’ll still have this great group together and ready to go.
“I have so many people to thank who have had such an impact on me and how this team has grown – Jim France has been a supporter of us since we joined the series in 2004 and he’s someone that I cannot thank enough.
“Jon Ikeda, David Salters and everyone at Honda, HPD, and Acura, gave MSR a shot and trusted us to run this program for the last few years and we have accomplished some pretty awesome things since running together.
“All of my crew and drivers who have been with us – and we have a pretty large list – I can’t thank them enough.
“Most of these guys have changed my life since I started this team in Grand-Am.
“Like I said, we are not going anywhere, we’ll be gone for now, but definitely not forever.
“Taking next year to step back and focus on our Indycar program will be important for us as a team.”
Their first win was in 2006, at the ‘Discount Tire Sunchaser 100k’ in the hands of Ozz Negri and Mark Patterson.
MSR claims their departure will not be permanent, and that they will return at some point in the future.
They currently sit fifth in the standings, having won Petit Le Mans last year with Tom Blomqvist, Olly Jarvis and Castroneves.
For Acura and HRC US, their IMSA GTP class representation will reduce to one team for 2024, consisting solely of two Acuras run by the Wayne Taylor Racing outfit.
