Shank keen on full-time IndyCar expansion

Days away from his first taste of running a car for the 101st Indy 500, Michael Shank says he is keen to add a full-time Verizon IndyCar Series program to his existing IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship effort.

Shank (pictured above), whose Ohio-based Michael Shank Racing team will campaign Jack Harvey's No. 50 Honda as an extension of Andretti Autosport, is looking to take a page from his Indy 500 partner and other team owners who compete in multiple series.

"I am absolutely working to see that happening," Shank told RACER. "Here's what's most important, and it's one of the reasons I am doing this: I want to show the world that we can run and win the Rolex 24, we can run the Le Mans 24 and do well, which we did, and we can run the Indy 500 as a group and do well, which we will. And we can run a GT car like with do with Acura and Honda Performance Development with the NSX GT3 (pictured below, Marshall Pruett photo).

"We can do prototypes, we can do GTs, and we can do IndyCar at a high, high level. And this partnership with Michael Andretti for the 500 is the final link to showing people we are capable of being strong in at least two series at once."

The first step for Shank will be to complete this year's Indy 500 followed by an assessment of his experience as a satellite member of the Andretti team. The concept of working together in a similar capacity in the future has already been broached.

"We have already talked about that," Shank said. "The Andretti team has already talked to me about it and I think that is very possibly happening. From my side, I'm very open to it. I suggested that let's just all work together, let's put a race in the books and then we will sit down in in June and we can really start putting something down. So far in our interaction with Andretti, it has been just perfect."

Among the interesting possibilities on the horizon, Colton Herta – son of Andretti-Herta Autosport co-owner Bryan Herta – could be on the move up from Indy Lights with George Steinbrenner IV. Would Herta's son replace an older driver like Takuma Sato to keep the team at its current size of four full-time cars? Four cars fit nicely beneath the awnings of two transporters, but not five; what if the team expanded to five with Colton as an addition to the program? Farming one of the entries to run from under MSR's tent could make sense.

Whether it's as a regular resource every May at Indy, part of a season-long arrangement to run an extra car, or as an independent MSR IndyCar program, Shank is determined to make open-wheel racing part of his future.

"Doing the Indy 500 every year in a relationship that Andretti, if it took the burden off of them and they see value, then I'm really open to that because I love the race," he said. "And maybe there's something that makes a lot of sense there going forward that we handle a fourth, fifth or sixth car for them or something like that. So that's a possibility. I'm leaving everything wide open here in that regard and we know we want to be in IndyCar one way or the other."

One thing Shank won't do is leave IMSA for IndyCar.

"We are absolutely going to stay in sports cars; I'm not leaving as long as I'm racing," he said. "It is our backbone and it will always be that. IndyCar, if the right deal comes along and we can work it out, we'd be all over it as a separate program, but it wouldn't replace a sports car deal."