Having Served Its Time, a Determined Meyer Shank Racing Returns to IMSA

Yes, this weekend’s Rolex 24 at Daytona is just the opening race for the 2025 IMSA season, but if the overall win goes to the Meyer Shank Racing team, it will still be the comeback story of the year.

It could happen. Ohio-based Meyer Shank, co-owned by racing veteran Mike Shank and former SiriusXM Radio CEO Jim Meyer, is back with a solid two-car team, running Acura ARX-06 GTP cars, powered by a turbocharged 2.4-liter Acura V-6.

The team won the 2022 Rolex 24, as well as the IMSA season championship. They roared back in 2023, qualifying first for the Rolex 24 and winning the race, finishing four seconds ahead of another Acura, fielded by Wayne Taylor Racing.

Afterwards, all was well. Until it wasn’t.

The announcement came from IMSA on March 8 of 2023, more than a month after the Rolex 24, and a little over a week before the second race of the IMSA season, the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. “IMSA became aware of the potential manipulation of tire pressure data from the No. 60 car to IMSA as the monitoring point for the minimum tire pressure regulation. Following a thorough investigation of all cars in the class, IMSA officials today announced that the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing GTP team has been penalized.”

IMSA and tire supplier Michelin specify what the minimum tire pressures should be, in the interest of fair competition and safety. They read those pressures electronically. Someone at Meyer Shank developed a way to broadcast the accepted tire pressures to IMSA and Michelin while being able to actually run lower pressures, which may or may not have increased the car’s cornering and acceleration speeds.

While IMSA allowed Meyer Shank to keep the win, the trophy, and the Rolex watches given to the drivers, they forfeited 200 team and driver points, all prize money, and had to pay a fine of $50,000. In addition, Shank was put on probation until June 30, 2023, and the IMSA annual credential of the team engineer was revoked, and he was put on indefinite suspension.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was the source of the information that the tire pressures had been manipulated—it came from Honda Performance Development, which reported it to IMSA “after a detailed investigation” uncovered it. Honda issued a statement, quoting David Salters, president of HPD: “We are extremely disappointed in the misconduct of the Meyer Shank Racing team during the Daytona race.”

Meyer Shank issued its own statement, which read in part: “We want to apologize to everyone at Acura, HPD, and all of our partners. We have dealt with this issue internally and the team member that was responsible is no longer with the organization.”

Meyer Shank and Acura continued with the full 2023 IMSA season, though it ran under a cloud. It surprised no one when Meyer Shank sat out the entire 2024 IMSA season, although it continued to compete in IndyCar. Shank, a racer since 1989, said he’d be back, but details were scarce.

During that off-season, the team reconciled with Acura. With Wayne Taylor Racing returning to Cadillac for 2025, Meyer Shank again has both Acuras in the field.

Was there a time during the past year that Shank thought maybe he wouldn’t be back? “Sure,” he told Hagerty. “There was a time that I thought that. But you know what? I’ll tell you what the real story is—look at the recovery we had in 2023 after the problem we had at Daytona, and how we, in my opinion, dominated the rest of the year, and how we recovered from that setback,” he said, which included a win in the final race of the season, the Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. “That’s the true story. We would have won the championship by 150 or 160 points without our issue, and that’s a testament to my guys, buckling down, getting on top of the program again. And just carrying on with life. We’ll see what happens in ’25, but so far, so good.”

Good indeed: The Meyer Shank number 60 unloaded as the fastest car in the first session of last weekend’s Roar Before the 24, the mandatory IMSA test leading up to the Rolex 24. Today we’ll find out who will qualify on the pole, but in a 24-hour race, it isn’t that important.

“We were gone for a year but you’ve got to understand that I didn’t let go, in the hopes that I’d get another shot, with so many manufacturers digging for a program. We were fortunate enough to be able to put it back together with Honda,” said Shank, who through it all remains one of the most respected team owners in the paddock.

“I can tell you that we’re solid; we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel right now, we’re just trying to make sure both our cars are right before we go into the race. We’re not looking necessarily for the fastest car—we’re looking at the best execution. If we’re fast enough to be in the hunt with a couple of hours to go, that’s what you hope for, to be there in the top three and maybe go for a win.”

The team definitely stayed busy late last year: It was well after the IMSA and IndyCar racing season, but Meyer Shank had one of the biggest days in its history in November. Meyer Shank tested both Formula 1 champ Max Verstappen and then-unemployed American F1 driver Logan Sargeant in its cars—Verstappen at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and Sargeant at the Thermal Club circuit in California.

Sargeant drove a Meyer Shank Honda-Dallara IndyCar, and Verstappen drove the IMSA Acura GTP.

“Logan’s a great kid,” Shank said. “He’s only 23 years old. He’s been chewed up in the Formula 1 system. He had a bad go there, and I thought he deserved another shot. He performed exactly like I thought he would. We’ll see what the future holds. We’ll definitely keep an eye on him. I thought he did a really good job.” Since then, Sargeant signed with the new Genesis racing team to drive an LMP2 car in the World Endurance Championship.

And as for Verstappen, in his first drive of an IMSA GTP car: “We ran Max on Tuesday in Las Vegas before the F1 race, so at that point when he was in my car, he was just a three-time world champion. Of course after Vegas, he was a four-time champ. As you’d expect from a guy like him, he killed it.

“His intensity, his desire to be great at everything he does just shines through,” Shank said. Verstappen “absolutely” expressed an interest in driving in the Rolex 24 someday: “My great hope is that we have him in our GTP car at Daytona in the near future. Of course he’s not close to being done with F1, but that’s my wish, and I’ll do everything in my power to make it happen.”

Broadcast coverage of the race begins Saturday at 1:30 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock before moving to USA Network and Peacock from 2:30-6:30 p.m., and then will be exclusively on Peacock and IMSA.TV and YouTube until noon on Sunday. The conclusion of the Rolex 24 will run from noon through 2 p.m. on NBC and Peacock.