Gurney, Panoz, Dyson among 2025 IMSA Hall of Fame inductees

At Sunday's WeatherTech Night of Champions event in Atlanta, IMSA officially welcomed nine new members into the IMSA Hall of Fame.

The inductees were revealed on March 15th before the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, another combination of legendary cars, drivers, and architects of North American sports car racing.

One of the six people inducted was Dan Gurney, whose All American Racers team took IMSA by storm with its Toyota Eagle Mk. III in the original GTP (Grand Touring Prototype) class. With its innovative carbon-fiber monocoque developed by AAR, the Eagle Mk. III won a combined 21 IMSA races from 1991 to 1993, including the 1993 Rolex 24 at Daytona and the ’92 and ’93 Twelve Hours of Sebring.

Gurney’s success as an IMSA team owner also included a successful stint fielding Toyota Celicas in the IMSA GTO and GTU classes, winning the GTO Drivers’ and Teams’ Championship in 1987. As a driver, Gurney won the 1959 Twelve Hours of Sebring for Ferrari, and the 1967 Le Mans 24 Hours for Ford alongside A.J. Foyt. Gurney also won the inaugural edition of the Daytona Continental three-hour race in 1962, an event which would later become the Rolex 24 At Daytona.

Appropriately, after the 28th edition of the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta, it was only correct that the race’s founder, Dr. Don Panoz, was also inducted into the IMSA Hall of Fame. Panoz’s eponymous car company built several memorable cars, including the Le Mans and Sebring-winning Panoz GT-LM.

As an architect, Panoz established the American Le Mans Series starting in 1999, through the purchase of IMSA successor Professional SportsCar Racing (PSCR) and an alliance with the Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO). The ALMS merged with GRAND-AM in 2013 to form the present-day IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, and Panoz served as Vice Chairman of the current iteration of IMSA until his death in 2018.

Two-time Sebring 12H winner Bob Akin, the namesake of the Bob Akin Award which is presented annually to the top Bronze-rated driver in the IMSA WeatherTech GTD class, was another of the drivers inducted. Akin was a classic ‘gentleman racer’, a mentor and team owner who helped advance several drivers’ careers.

Another successful owner/driver, Rob Dyson, began competing in IMSA in 1983. His Dyson Racing teams won races in four straight seasons of IMSA GTP competition from 1985-88, including three wins for Dyson as a driver. Dyson Racing also won 36 races from 1995 to 2002, including two overall victories at the Rolex 24 in ’97 (as an owner and driver) and ’99.

Elliott Forbes-Robinson was one of Dyson Racing’s drivers for those two Daytona wins in the late ‘90s, two of his 18 career IMSA wins in a career that spanned more than 40 years and multiple disciplines of racing – including NASCAR, Can-Am, and Formula 5000. Forbes-Robinson also had successful stints as driving Nissan GTPs, Mazda GTOs, and the Howard-Boss Motorsports Daytona Prototype.

Group 44 owner Bob Tullius was a ten-time IMSA race-winning driver and was best known for bringing the memorable Jaguar XJR-5 and XJR-7 prototypes to IMSA GTP in the 1980s.

The 6.5-liter, V12-powered XJR-5 and XJR-7 were also inducted collectively into the IMSA Hall of Fame’s wing of cars. Regarded for their beauty and engine note, the Group 44 Jaguars won races over five years in the ‘80s and were the forerunners to the Le Mans-winning XJR-9.

The BMW 3.0 CSL is inducted as BMW of North America celebrated its 50th anniversary, and 50 years since it won the 1975 Twelve Hours of Sebring. The “Batmobile,” as it was affectionately known, began racing in IMSA a year earlier. The ’75 win at Sebring for Hans-Joachim Stuck, Brian Redman, Sam Posey, and Allan Moffat was the first of four wins in ’75 for the CSL. In ’76, Redman, Peter Gregg, and John Fitzpatrick won the Rolex 24 At Daytona in a CSL.

Also inducted was the innovative Lola T600, the first prototype sports car to incorporate ground effect tunnels for downforce. Redman and the Cooke-Woods Racing team debuted the T600 midway through the 1981 IMSA GT season, won five races, and won the GTP championship. 1982 champion John Paul Jr. won one of his seven races that year in the Lola, and Interscope Racing added another four victories for the T600.

The IMSA Hall of Fame exists digitally at https://www.imsahalloffame.com/.