Silly Season, Sports Car–Style: Big Changes Coming for IMSA in 2025
Grand Touring Prototype, the top class in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship since GTP’s creation in 2023, will look a lot different for 2025, starting with the season-opening Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona.
The changes arguably began last March, when Chip Ganassi Racing and Cadillac Racing announced the dissolution of their partnership at the end of 2024. Ganassi fielded two cars, the Nos. 01 and 02, for 2023’s Rolex 24, joining Cadillac’s other entry, the Action Express No. 31. Ganassi ran one Cadillac for the rest of the 2023 IMSA season, as well as one car in the European WEC series. The Nos. 01 and 31 continued into 2024 with IMSA.
Ganassi has not yet announced any sports car racing plans. One potential door for Ganassi to return seems to have closed today when Acura and Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti announced that their partnership will end with the final race of 2024. Simultaneously Acura and Meyer Shank Racing announced that the Ohio-based Meyer Shank, which ran an Acura GTP in 2023 before that partnership ended, was getting back Acura’s company support to field two cars in 2025.
“We have had a successful run with HRC [Honda Racing Corporation] and Acura these past four years,” Wayne Taylor said. “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.”
It has not been a particularly well-kept secret that Taylor has been courting Cadillac, and is expected to move to that manufacturer for 2025. WTR with Andretti is running two cars this season for Acura, Nos. 10 and 40.
None of the new teams have named a driver lineup for 2025, but the announcement last week by Pipo Derani, the top driver at Action Express’ Cadillac No. 31 team, that he would be leaving at the end of this season suggests he’ll be working for Meyer Shank or WTR with Andretti next year.
Or maybe there’s one more possible outlet for Derani’s talents: The website Sportscar365.com said today that Hyundai/Genesis may well join IMSA’s GTP class for 2026, and that Ganassi is the leading candidate to field that team. If a deal happens, Ganassi would likely spend the 2025 season developing and testing the car.
“Multiple industry sources have revealed to Sportscar365 that the manufacturer, which would likely run under the luxury Genesis brand in North America, could debut as early as the 2026 WEC and WeatherTech Championship seasons with a LMDh car,” the story said. LMDh was the original name for what is now known as GTP in IMSA, and Hypercar in the WEC.
Genesis would join the current IMSA participants in the GTP class—Acura, BMW, Cadillac, Lamborghini and Porsche.
Stay tuned: Big-league sports car racing just keeps evolving, doesn’t it?
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I’ve never really Jonesed for a Caddy, but if one of these teams finds themselves wanting to shed an extra GTP car similar to the #1 in the opening photo, have them give me a jingle…
Don’t forget Aston Martin is coming next year too.
I have been expecting Cadillac and Andretti. Since they have to wait for F1 this would be a good way to build an international team and prove themselves in Europe.
While it’s fun to speculate it is called the silly season for a reason. Sometimes it seems a bit too much like a bunch of little old ladies in the knitting circle gossiping about so and so – ‘ I heard they’re taking the train to Reno’ – If you look at this past Le Mans Hypercar battle all you really heard was, Can the Ferrari ? … will the Cadillac ? …or will Porsche…? Meanwhile Toyota / Gazoo only got an occasional, they’ll be back too, even with five straight wins under their belt. Silly that somehow they managed to stay in the hunt the whole 24 and finished second and third.