GT World Challenge America: Maximizing potential

Defending champ vs. rookie... Those respective positions may create different approaches to a season of racing, even if the goal is the same – to win a championship.

Thus GT World Challenge America rookies Blake McDonald and Matt Bell, sharing DXDT Racing’s No. 64 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R, are likely to have a different outlook on the season than Turner Motorsport’s Justin Rothberg and Robby Foley, the defending Pro-Am champions. And while a rookie like McDonald winning the title might seem like a long shot, it’s worth noting that 2024 was Rothberg’s first season as well. With a little good fortune, it’s possible.

Justin Rothberg and Robby Foley head into 2025 as defending Pro-Am class champions.

DXDT and Turner Motorsport each experienced success in 2024. So despite the different set of circumstances, preparation for the coming season is more refinement than a complete reset for both teams.

“There’s good continuity. It’s just a copy/paste of last year – which doesn’t mean the result will be the same,” notes Foley. “I think we have a new, exciting car with the [BMW] M4 GT3 Evo – a car we know well, but there’s some new stuff to figure out and maximize.”

Maximizing is also a process that continues with his teammate, whom he says improved his racing IQ greatly in his rookie year.

“Last year at Sonoma was the first driver change for Justin,” recalls Foley. “It was his first hard out lap out of the pits, the first time he had to manage a GT3 car after a full-course yellow with pickup on the cold tires. There are so many little nuances to all those things, and you don’t know what you don’t know until you experience it. Now we can build on that and not leave a couple seconds on the table.”

On the team side, nothing really changes aside from crew and drivers adjusting to the updated M4, which in mid-January the team had yet to put on track.

“As far as attention to prep and our strategies, we’re going to do just what we did in ’24 again in ’25,” says owner Will Turner. “I have my same guys working on the cars, so it’s basically a redo of the previous year.”

The same is true of DXDT as it enters its second – but first full – season as a Corvette customer racing team. Its Pro-Am effort in 2024 netted a couple of victories, and the Pro class campaign nearly ran the table in the races it entered with Alec Udell and Tom Milner.

For DXDT owner David Askew, sticking with the established game plan is key.

“On the car side and the team side, we’re going to stick with the same game plan we had last year,” explains DXDT owner David Askew. “We’re going to work with Chevrolet and with Pratt Miller. We’re going to use some of their personnel again in the engineering role. We continue to work with them very closely, taking everything we learn and sharing it so that we can just keep making this racecar better.”

DXDT is vastly experienced in GT World Challenge America; McDonald, though, has run only a single event in the series – the 2024 Indy 8 Hour – after a Porsche Sprint Challenge West title and a few Lamborghini Super Trofeo races. Looking at his first full season of GT3 racing, he believes he’s preparing accordingly.

DXDT’s Corvette Z06 GT3.R entered the Pro class fray at the third event in 2024, COTA, then proceeded to run riot, earning seven wins from its first eight starts. For 2025, it’s targeting Pro-Am success with Matt Bell and Blake McDonald.

“You leave no stone unturned,” McDonald declares. “You attack it from every angle. The physical preparation in the last year has been crazy, and that will continue. Seat time is the most crucial thing, but also understanding the data and the tools in the car that I can use.” Rookie or champion, teams continue with what works... and hope it works better than what the other teams are doing.