Turner Motorsport swinging for a championship triple

Over the next two weeks, Turner Motorsport can win as many as three major North American sports car racing championships in the same year. The prospect of 2026 being Will Turner’s most successful year as a team owner is in sight, starting this weekend at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.

Turner’s comments to RACER at Indianapolis Motor Speedway two weeks ago are still evergreen. “Thinking a lot about how this year has gone, we’re just gonna keep doing what we’re doing, not changing anything up,” said the founder of BMW’s longest-tenured racing team. “We’ve been getting good points; we’ve been solid and consistent. But we want to win.”

At the time, his IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTD team hadn’t won a race all season. Hadn’t won since 2024, in fact. Then the No. 96 BMW M4 GT3 EVO of Patrick Gallagher and Robby Foley won at Indy, to break a two-year winless drought and turn the final showdown in Road Atlanta into a winner-take-all shootout. After many near misses in recent years, Turner Motorsport sits at the precipice of its first WeatherTech Championship since 2014.

Indy victory for Gallagher and Foley did a lot more than just bust a win drought. Geoff Miller/Lumen via Getty Images

“In GTD, looking back through the Turner history, we’ve been doing this a long time, and I don’t think we’ve finished out of the top three in overall points in a long time,” Turner noted. “We’re pretty consistently there at the end. So let’s just stay solid and consistent, hope other teams make mistakes and see what shakes out.”

Gallagher and Foley’s quest to win the IMSA GTD title on Saturday is the middle leg of an incredible challenge across three series. On Friday, Turner drivers Dillon Machavern and Luca Mars will be battling to win the Michelin Pilot Challenge GS class championship in the series’ final two-hour sprint race of the season. The No. 95 Turner BMW M4 GT4 EVO is second in the standings.

Should things go perfectly at Road Atlanta, Turner would then head back to IMS for the SRO's Indianapolis 8 Hour race. Foley and his GT World Challenge America co-driver Justin Rothberg have won the last two Pro-Am class championships, and could add a third title if they come back to win the Pro championship this year.

Turner has won championships in all three series before, but never in the same year – and though they have to fight uphill to win any of the three, it can’t be ruled out. “It’d be amazing,” said Foley, Turner’s top pro driver. “To win one would be amazing – but we’ll try to do all three!”

“I’m lucky to drive in all three programs, and you always start the season with those ambitions. Over the past couple of years, we’ve been fortunate enough to win a championship in one of those programs the last three years. But to be in contention in all three (at the same time) is amazing. It’s just a testament to how hard everybody works. There’s a lot of crossover between programs, so it’s great to have all that continuity within the team. And since I’ve been there, which has been a while now, there’s really not been much turnover.

“We just try to improve on little things, and I think we’ve made a major step in our performance in GTD this year with the new Evo car – and that’s crossed over to other programs as well.”

Winning the GTD championship will mean dethroning the reigning back-to-back champions, Winward Racing.

“We have a nemesis out there,” Turner said. “I think every GTD car has a nemesis – the No. 57 car. It’s obviously won championships the last two years. So we know it’s going to be a fight with the No. 57 and the No. 27 (Heart of Racing Aston Martin); again, it’s been since 2014 and we’ve been knocking at the door, but haven’t put it together.”

For as intense as the competition is between the two teams, there is still mutual respect between Winward and Turner, and its drivers. “They’ve been super-dominant the last couple of years, and we’ve always been kind of chasing them,” Foley said of Winward. “I think both them as a team, Mercedes as a manufacturer, their group’s been super strong. There’s not much more to say than that.

“I’ve had different run-ins with different cars, and some different philosophies of how races are officiated. But I’ve always had good races with the No. 57. Light contacts here and there, incidental, but never anything crazy. And I think that’s why there’s so much respect between the two. We always race each other hard but fair. I think we’ll do the same at Petit Le Mans, and the best car and team will come out ahead.”