For Driver Robert Wickens, There’s Plenty to Be Thankful For, Including a Corvette Z06 Race Car

As you read this, Robert Wickens might well be on a Walt Disney World golf course—he and his wife are spending this week in Florida, because the Disney courses are equipped with handicap-accessible golf carts. Race car driver Wickens, you may recall, is paralyzed from the waist down.

His world, as he knew it, ended on August 19, 2018, when he crashed in the IndyCar ABC Supply 500 at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania. His car touched wheels with Ryan Hunter-Reay’s car, launching Wickens into the catch fencing above the wall, in frighteningly similar fashion to the 2011 Las Vegas crash that ended driver Dan Wheldon’s life. Wickens suffered multiple serious injuries in the Pocono crash, and the damage to his spine left him a paraplegic. Even though he missed the last three races of the season, he had collected enough points to be named the 2018 IndyCar Rookie of the Year.

Wickens refused to believe, though, that his racing career was over. On May 5, 2021, Wickens tested a Hyundai TCR car equipped with hand controls for Bryan Herta Autosport at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. The following year, it was announced that Wickens would compete in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge—that series typically runs the day before the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Challenge, using slightly slower cars in a sprint racing format. Wickens, using those hand controls in the Herta-owned Hyundai, won twice that season with his able-bodied teammate, and in 2023, Wickens and co-driver Harry Gottsacker won the Michelin Pilot Challenge championship.

Today, Wickens, 35, is announcing his next step back—he’ll be driving five races in 2025 in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s GTD class for North Carolina-based DXDT Racing, in a Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R. DXDT raced a Corvette last season in the SRO Fanatec GT World Challenge America series with remarkable success, including eight straight wins. The team will field a car in IMSA next year, and Wickens will contest the five shorter sprint races—DXDT has already named the drivers who will compete in the longer endurance races, starting with the season-opening Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona in January.

Wickens’ five outings will begin at the third race of the season, Long Beach, then there’s Laguna Seca, Canadian Tire Motorsports Park, Road America, and Virginia International Raceway. His co-driver will be named shortly. The three DXDT IMSA endurance drivers will be Salih Yoluc, Charlie Eastwood, and Alec Udell, who spent last season racing for the team in the SRO series.

For Wickens, who is leaving his ride with Hyundai in the Michelin Pilot Challenge, it’s a dream come true. “It’s no secret that I’ve been trying to make it up into the WeatherTech series,” Wickens told Hagerty. “I was introduced to DXDT as a team looking to get into IMSA GTD for 2025. We just started talking and hit it off, and things went to the next level, then to the next level, and we just found a way to make it work. I’m really looking forward to the opportunity. Coming back from my injuries to be racing at a championship level like this has always been a goal. Having a limited schedule for 2025 will give me a chance to try to prove myself and see if I can go full-time in 2026.”

Since Wickens’ first outing with the team isn’t until April 12, it gives them some time to perfect the hand controls for his new ride. “It’s not really a copy-and-paste from how we adapted the Hyundai Elantra over to how we’re doing it with the Corvette,” Wickens said. “Pratt Miller,” the builder of the car, “General Motors and Bosch are all working hard to adapt the system into the Corvette GT3 car.”

Earlier this year, engineers at Bosch developed a new braking system that Wickens said is a leap forward in technology. Previously, Wickens applied the brake by pulling on a ring located behind the steering wheel. It used hydraulic pressure, and to match the force his able-bodied co-drivers could use on the foot brake, Wickens had to pull the ring with that same amount of force using his hands. Bosch adapted an electronic braking system originally developed for IMSA GTP cars to the hand controls, and it requires much less force to engage.

The old system required Wickens to use both hands to apply the brakes as he came into a corner, while the new system allows him to use one hand for the brakes, freeing up the other hand for downshifting.

“Going from the old system to the Bosch EBS is a massive improvement,” Wickens said. “I’m very grateful for the partnership with Bosch and the trust they have in me—if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have been able to have this conversation with DXDT.

“When we won the Michelin Pilot championship in 2023, and I had ambitions of trying to get to WeatherTech in 2024, it was tough finding the funding to get behind me, let alone tell the team, or an OEM, ‘By the way, you have to design a full braking system for me.’ The Bosch system solves that equation. Honestly, it’s been nothing but promising in these early stages of our partnership, and I’m excited to see what the future holds.”

The immediate future, as mentioned, will be spent on the greens for Wickens and wife Karli, who he married in 2019, and with whom he has a two-and-a-half-year-old son. “She and I both took up golfing last year. They make these adaptive golf carts that I can use, but they’re really hard to locate. Disney is at the forefront of accessibility, and they have adaptive golf carts at every Disney course. For Thanksgiving we’re going down to Orlando to go to a couple of Disney courses and play some golf.”

It’s been a long road for Robert Wickens since August 19, 2018, but this year, there’s plenty to be thankful for.