Shank determined to keep team in sports car racing despite rising IndyCar stock

Meyer Shank Racing’s second Indianapolis 500 victory on Sunday has solidified it as one of IndyCar’s emerging powers.

But co-owner and team founder Michael Shank is keen to point out that before Hélio Castroneves and Felix Rosenqvist drove into victory lane at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2021 and 2026, the cornerstone of the team for over two decades has been its successful sports car racing programs in Grand-Am and IMSA.

“We’ve been in IMSA, Grand-Am, for 23 seasons. This is the backbone of what has done everything in our life for us, right? So we don’t necessarily want to be done with it if the right situation came along,” Shank told RACER before the upcoming IMSA round at the Detroit Grand Prix.

It’s been more than a month since Acura and Honda Racing Corporation USA (HRC US) announced that the ARX-06 LMDh program would go on hiatus after the 2026 season, and having already experienced the discomfort of sitting out the 2024 IMSA season, Shank is determined to do what he can to keep his team on the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship grid.

“[IMSA] is the basis of everything we’ve done. It’s actually how we were able to do IndyCar, because we had this, and had a solid business plan. We’re not looking to be out of IMSA, that’s for sure,” declares Shank. “And we’re gonna work for a while here to see if we can make that happen.”

“We’re still working on it. There’s nothing really to report yet, it’s still early days,” he stated when it comes to the future. “We have a wonderful relationship with Acura, still strong on the IndyCar side, so we’ll kind of see where it takes us.”

Most of the people and resources working towards the outgoing two-car factory Acura GTP program, will be redirected into a new Meyer Shank Racing IndyCar team with a manufacturer charter granted to Honda for 2028.

Staying in GTP is the priority for Shank, but by no means the only option available to stick around in IMSA. Before racing the ARX-05 and ARX-06 in DPi and GTP respectively, MSR has experience racing in the GTD class – when it was the flagship team for the Acura NSX GT3 in IMSA from 2017-20 – and had raced a previous-generation Ligier LMP2 car from 2015-16.

“I would prefer to stay in GTP, because we’ve worked hard to get to this level,” Shank declared. “I think we deserve to be at this level, and have the right equipment and people to be at this level. I wouldn’t say no to everything, but we’re trying to stay in GTP.”

Complicating those ambitions in the short term is that while Ford, Genesis, and McLaren have debuted or will debut new LMDh prototypes in the FIA World Endurance Championship either this season (as was the case for Genesis) or in 2027, none of the trio are set to add any IMSA programs until 2028 at the earliest.

“We’ve been very fortunate to be able to ride through a lot of ups and downs,” Shank recalls, “from a financial crisis in 2008, 2009 in the US, and survived that in DP (Daytona Prototype) with Grand-Am – proud of that, actually – to our first real big win, which was the 2012 Rolex 24 (At Daytona).”

MSR’s only absence from the IMSA grid to date, in 2024, was a consequence of the infamous tire pressure data manipulation scandal of 2023. Acura instead opted to have Wayne Taylor Racing run its two ARX-06es.

But WTR’s defection to Cadillac allowed MSR to get a second chance with Acura in 2025, now running two GTP cars, including one engineered by staff from HRC US. “It was a real proud moment to be able to put that back together after a problematic 2023,” Shank admitted. “Even at the end of ’23, we were super strong. I was more proud of how we rebounded and finished than anything else.

“It’s been everything we’ve done. So we’re going to do everything in our power to try to stay in.”