Why Meyer Shank Racing is Sitting Out 2024 IMSA WeatherTech Season

Meyer Shank Racing will sit out the 2024 IMSA WeatherTech season. A seven-time winner in IMSA’s major endurance events, the team will focus on its NTT IndyCar Series program next year and hopes to return to IMSA in 2025.

MSR has competed in the IMSA WeatherTech Championship and previous North American sports car series since 2004, becoming one of the most successful teams in endurance racing. In this year’s debut season of GTP, MSR won the Rolex 24 at Daytona with its Acura ARX-06 and backed up that victory with a win at Mosport.

But in between, IMSA was alerted by Honda Performance Development that MSR had manipulated its tire pressure data at Daytona to gain an advantage. IMSA fined the team and drivers 200 points in the WeatherTech Championship, issued a fine of $50,000 and placed the team on probation through June of this season.

Last year’s champions of the final DPi season after a victory at the Petit Le Mans, MSR enters this year’s finale at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta out of the running for the title.

Next season, HPD will add a second ARX-06 entry at Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport, which left MSR without a factory connection. It remains to be seen what options Shank and his co-owner will have in the 2025 GTP season.

“Making the decision to take a year away from IMSA was not an easy one by any means,” said team co-owner Michael Shank. “Our guys live and breathe this team, and have committed most of their lives to working on these cars and traveling to races—and many of them have been with us for nearly 20 years. For co-owner Jim Meyer and I, our main focus was getting our guys set and making sure they were all going to be OK, which we were able to do.”

The team’s sports car operation began with a privateer effort before it became a full-fledged factory team, earning three IMSA championships with Acura in GTD and DPi. The WeatherTech round at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway last month marked MSR’s 350th start in North American sports car competition.

The team has scored three overall prototypes victories in Daytona’s 24-hour (2012, 2022 and 2023) and has posted two Petit Le Mans wins (2016 and 2022) as well as victories in the Six Hours of the Glen (2017 and 2019).

After a runner-up finish in the 2018 IMSA GTD championship, MSR brought Honda and the Acura NSX GT3 the car’s first championship in 2019. The team backed that title up in a 2020 season modified by the pandemic.

“There are a lot of projects that we have going at the shop,” said Shank, “and of course some of the guys will be helping with our growing IndyCar program. The third Indianapolis 500 entry for Helio Castroneves (next year) is a very big deal and I’m glad to have the right people in place to help us be as ready as possible for him to go get that fifth (Indy 500 victory). And then when we need to prepare for the IMSA program, we’ll still have this great group together and ready to go.”