DXDT rises from the ashes following transporter fire

Only eight weeks after its season was derailed by a transporter fire en route to WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, DXDT Racing came back to Watkins Glen with a rebuilt No. 36 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R, but the same goals and ambitions that it did before the California disaster.

DXDT’s Competition Director Bryan Sellers said it was unlike anything he’d experienced as either a championship-winning driver, or now on the management side of the sport. “It was new for everybody. These are not things that most race programs have gone through,” Sellers admitted.

“It’s everything from assessing what you should bring home from the fire, what you should leave, what insurance is actually going to cover, what you should replace that they won’t cover…and prioritizing all of those things and trying to assess what was essential to getting back to here was difficult.

“Starting the team from ground zero on an IMSA program was easier than the rebuild process we just had to do,” he said. “Because when you start from ground zero, you know exactly what direction you want to go with everything. You pick and choose the equipment you want, all the types of things that you need to make the program successful. Whereas now, you don’t have enough time, budget, or capabilities to do that twice. You’re taking stuff that was pre-existing in the shop, you’re retrofitting it to make it work for now.

“It was a difficult task, for sure. The car was number one, and our timing stand is 100 percent what it was. If some of those types of things aren’t outfitted exactly the way we needed them to be, we wouldn’t sacrifice on that at all.

DXDT Racing arrived at Watkins Glen on Wednesday with a new transporter, new awnings in the paddock, new pitlane equipment, and an older-stock Corvette Z06 GT3.R chassis from 2024 – in fact, it’s the same mount that scored the new GT3 Corvette’s first-ever win in global competition, two years ago at Circuit of The Americas in GT World Challenge America.

That car then had to be stripped down and rebuilt with IMSA-approved harnesses and magneto-elastic torque sensors, but now it’s been rewrapped and had two mostly trouble-free practice sessions leading into qualifying for the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen.

Mason Filippi is back in a GT3 car for the first time since he and Robert Wickens raced at Long Beach, joined by Salih Yoluç and Charlie Eastwood, who came in from Le Mans two weeks ago to continue their IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup campaign.

Thanks to its partnership with Pratt Miller, DXDT will have Robert Wickens and his hand controls-equipped Corvette back for CTMP. Brandon Badraoui/IMSA

Sellers confirmed that DXDT will have a car ready for Wickens and Filippi for the upcoming Chevrolet Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, complete with Wickens’ bespoke Bosch hand control system.

“One of the biggest directives we had as a program was maintaining our commitments to our partners, to our customers, to our drivers – and he (Robert) was definitely a part of it,” he said. “That was one of the bigger undertakings that came into it, because we only had one set of hand control systems, period. They’re quite expensive, so carrying a set of spares wasn’t really a reality.

“That’s where our relationship with Pratt Miller came into play. They were great, they were on the phone with us every day, meeting at least once a week to try and help – timelines and progression of where they were at – and building a whole new system into place.

“The initial system took us about eight months to try and get from zero, and they were able to replicate the second set in under four weeks.”

Since entering IMSA for the first time in 2025, DXDT Racing has still yet to replicate the success it enjoyed during its previous tenure in the SRO America/Pirelli World Challenge system – no podiums through the first season and a half, and only one pole position, which was Wickens’ pole at Long Beach two months ago.

If the team were to somehow bounce back and get that first podium after an ordeal which could have brought the entire operation to an end, it could go down as of the great comeback stories in American sports car racing – up there with Wickens’ personal comeback after a life-changing spinal cord injury to win races and a championship in IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge.

“It would mean everything, but probably in a different way than what people would expect,” Sellers remarked. “It’s tough, from my perspective – you sit back and watch how much these guys give, and I want it so bad for them. I care about it so much, not for myself, but for all the guys that just continue to spend late nights away from their families.

“Outside of the actual fire itself, it wasn’t just one big moment where you went, ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to be tough.’ It was just moment after moment of it being tough. It feels like they didn’t ever have a break. One thing got done, and another thing came up.

“In reality, we could be recovering from this for months, years – because there are so many things in the shop now that are unusable.”

But despite these hardships that may come, never was there a thought from Sellers, from team owner David Askew or general manager Erin Gahagan, to bow out of the sport after their setback. “That was never going to come up from anybody inside the team,” Sellers said proudly. “This is what we’re here to do, and you’re never going to give up.

“Had he (David) chose not to continue, everybody would have understood. Even if that was a rebuild for the future. But it was never even an option for him. He was immediately like, ‘OK, what do we gotta do to get moving?’ As soon as he said that, it brings a smile to your face.”

And for Sellers, just being back on track won’t be enough to satisfy him, or any of the DXDT crew, even after all they’ve been through.

“We’ve showed such good potential all year long that now, just because we had something like this happen all of a sudden, accepting something less than what we had established earlier is not fair – to them, to the drivers, to our partners," he said. “When we got here, the mentality was not like, ‘Hey, we’ll take this step by step.’ It’s immediately back to, ‘We’re here, for one reason alone.’

“We’ve had bumps on the road already, things that we weren’t prepared for, but still the same thing is once we get to the race, are we ready or are we not?”