Yahoo Autos Michael Shank stepping back from strategy role
Michael Shank has been a fixture on timing stands since the 1990s, calling the shots for his racing programs dating back to his early days running cars in the Atlantic Championship. That practice continued when his team moved into the Grand-Am Rolex Series, and IMSA, and IndyCar, but as his responsibilities have increased outside of the competition department, the Ohioan has decided it’s time for a change.
Shank is set to take a step back in that race strategy role with the Meyer Shank Racing IndyCar team and hand those duties over to MSR’s George Klotz, who will take Shank’s radio and headset and lead the strategy for rookie Tom Blomqvist on the No. 66 Honda. MSR’s founder and co-owner won’t be missing from pit lane altogether, but he says it’s the right time to transition off of the frontline and into a supporting role when his cars are on track.
“I’ll still be on the stand on Tom’s stand with George, but George will call strategy, and I’ll be there to just support him,” Shank told RACER. “I’m not going anywhere. But I would like to see if we can make an improvement over me in that that department, and George has a lot of experience there with when he was at Andretti and some more teams he’s worked for.
“And he wanted to get back to calling strategy; that was his desire. And I want to try to back off of it a little bit, so it was perfect timing for it. We’re hoping he’s better than me and I’d like to make a gain there if we could get it.”
Shank sees the potential benefits of untethering himself from leading a major competition role with one of his two entries.
“I want to really focus on our partnerships, and be a little bit more flexible on the pit lane and go between the cars or hospitality unit or whatever I need to make sure our partners are being taken care of,” he said.
“But I’m still that competitive guy who loves being a part of the racing action so I’m not going to quite jump off right away. I’m going to stay there on the stand with Tom for a while. It may not be all year, but I’ve got full confidence in George and all of our team, for that matter, to do excellent jobs whether I’m in the thick of things, or not.”
