Meyer Shank Racing – Syndication Server

Acura MSR adds Ohta to Rolex 24 line-up

Acura Meyer Shank Racing has announced that Kakunoshin Ohta will join full-season drivers Renger van der Zande and Nick Yelloly, as well as Alex Palou, for next month’s Rolex 24 At Daytona in the No. 93 Acura ARX-06. The news marks the final piece of the Rolex 24 puzzle for Acura MSR, with the full line-up in the No. 60 already announced as Tom Blomqvist, Colin Braun, Felix Rosenqvist and Scott Dixon.

Ohta, a graduate of the Honda Formula Dream Project, will also join van der Zande and Yelloly in the No. 93 Acura ARX-06 for the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen and the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, after impressing the team with his first run in an LMDh car during November’s IMSA test at Daytona.

“We’re really excited to have Ohta with us for three races this year,” said Acura MSR co-owner Mike Shank. “He did a really nice job at the test last month at Daytona and he fit in with the team very well. Now that we have both cars locked in, we’ll put our heads down and get to work at the Roar next month.”

Ohta prepared for his test debut by making two trips Indianapolis to use Honda Racing Corporation’s simulator.

“I am very happy that my challenge to race in IMSA has been officially decided,” Ohta said. “I will make sure that I live up to everyone’s expectations and continue to grow, not only in terms of results, but also for further advancement. I am looking forward to teaming up with the world’s top drivers and competing in the top category.”

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The 25-year-old Honda factory driver started racing in Japanese F4 in 2018, where he spent three full seasons. For the last three years, Ohta has been doing triple duty in Japan by competing in Super Formula, Super GT and Super Taikyu, racking up 11 wins and 13 poles.

“We are delighted that HRS graduate Ohta is taking on the challenge of IMSA, as North American races such as IMSA and IndyCar are truly a global challenge, attracting top-class competitors from all over the world,” noted HRC executive advisor Takuma Sato. “Ohta’s success in Super Formula and Super GT proves that he has the ability to compete on a global level. We sincerely hope that he will take advantage of this opportunity to make further progress. We also hope that his challenge will give hope to many young drivers and help pave the way for them to reach the world stage, and we would like to contribute to the creating such an environment.”

The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship kicks off its 2025 season with the Roar Before the 24 on Jan. 19-21, followed by the Rolex 24 At Daytona on Jan. 23-26.

Bunnell heads to MSR as Ganassi finalizes engineers for new alliance

Chip Ganassi Racing and Meyer Shank Racing have finalized the technical staffing for the Jim Meyer- and Mike Shank-owned NTT IndyCar Series team. In a surprise, former Dale Coyne Racing engineer Ross Bunnell, who joined CGR in 2023 as race engineer …

Chip Ganassi Racing and Meyer Shank Racing have finalized the technical staffing for the Jim Meyer- and Mike Shank-owned NTT IndyCar Series team.

In a surprise, former Dale Coyne Racing engineer Ross Bunnell, who joined CGR in 2023 as race engineer for six-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon on the No. 9 Honda and is rated by many as one of the brightest engineering talents in the series, has been assigned to MSR with Felix Rosenqvist on the No. 60 Honda.

Dixon and Bunnell earned three wins and placed second in the championship in their first season together, and in 2024, they produced two more wins but slid to sixth in the standings after a rough close to the season.

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Bunnell’s debut with MSR came last Tuesday at The Thermal Club engineering ex-Williams Formula 1 driver Logan Sargeant in the No. 06 MSR Honda. Completing the MSR race engineering group is Angela Ashmore, who worked with Marcus Armstrong at CGR last season, and who signed to drive MSR’s No. 66 Honda.

“Let’s start with Marcus and Angela,” Shank told RACER. “For me, this was one of those things when we knew that we were going to take Marcus on, we worked pretty hard to make sure we kept continuity there. Marcus really likes Angela. I’m just getting to know her, but it seemed to me that it made the most sense, especially if you look at Marcus’s second half of the year, he was really starting to get some momentum. And it made sense to me that we keep as much as that in places we can. Marcus has a lot of confidence in her, and that’s what I need to know.”

Shank was encouraged by what he saw with Bunnell in action.

“Ross is a really good, good guy, and I could tell it by the end of the day at Thermal,” he added. “I could even tell it by the end of the day with Logan with just a lot of similar mentalities to what we have here. I can easily see him working very well with Felix, just the disposition of how Felix is, how Ross is, but also just listening to Ross.

“His confidence and his knowledge of the product just oozes out of him, and that was really good for me to see. Now, ultimately, we’ll see how everyone gets along here. But man, I think it bodes pretty well so far.”

MSR has also appointed Neil Fife, a veteran race engineer who joined the team from Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and worked on MSR’s IMSA GTP program in 2023, as its go-between with CGR.

“That’s an important part for us as the liaison engineer with Ganassi on our side,” Shank said. “He’s making sure everything Ganassi-related to our cars is as it should be. So Neil working with those guys is helpful and Neil will also engineer Helio (Castroneves) when we get to the Speedway.

“We kept him on for special projects after IMSA, and now he moves into this other role, and is also our development guy. Just a humongous amount of experience. Very smart, switched on guy.”

Shank is pleased with how the first outings have gone in the technical alliance with CGR.

“We’d been with Andretti for five years, and it was pretty seamless with them,” he said. “We did that test at the Speedway last month which was our first with Ganassi, and it was very smooth. We had the system down before with Andretti, and it’s headed in the exact same direction with Ganassi.

“We’ve done it a couple times now with Ganassi and they’re taking suggestions on what helps us and we’re asking what we can help on to make things easier for them, and it’s been great. They’re just so practical and easy to deal with, and they brought the full kit of people out for Logan and I couldn’t be more encouraged. They came in with dampers and engineers, we went through lots of things, had a solid pre-run plan that we had worked out, and it’s been great.”

Sargeant on first IndyCar test: ‘Clearly it’s quite a unique car to drive’

Logan Sargeant’s return to open-wheel racing came in a perfect setting on Tuesday at The Thermal Club . The private nature of the test attended by six NTT IndyCar Series teams gave the Floridian a chance to explore a new car in an expectation-free …

Strapped into an unfamiliar Dallara DW12 chassis, at a road course he’d never seen, the 23-year-old former Williams F1 driver was immediately quick, posting the second-fastest lap during the three-hour morning session. He leapt to first in the early afternoon outing, and in the third and final — and fastest — session in the cool desert air, Sargeant finished his maiden IndyCar run in third, 0.192s off of Team Penske’s Felipe Nasr.

Adapting to a heavier car with suboptimal weight distribution and center of gravity figures when compared to the last open-wheeler he drove, a new type of tire, and being tasked with providing chassis and engine feedback to MSR and Honda made for a busy day, but Sargeant was unfazed by the numerous challenges that were presented.

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“It was a good day and clearly it’s quite a unique car to drive — quite different to most of the cars I’ve ever been in in the past,” Sargeant told RACER. “I feel like it’s one of those things you’ve got to work through to understand what the car needs to work with you the best. But nonetheless, we got through a lot of good stuff for the team going into next year. All in all, it was a pretty, pretty clean and solid day, but there’s still plenty more in there.”

The last few years spent on Pirelli rubber in Formula 2 and F1 made learning the driving needs of Firestone’s primary tire one of the bigger takeaways from the test for Sargeant. Thermal’s notoriously high tire degradation rate –significant grip offered by new tires can be lost in less than five laps — only added to the complexities he faced.

“Particularly on the tire, I expected to be able to rag on it a little bit harder, but that clearly wasn’t the case,” he said. “With the amount of weight that’s on the car now, the amount of weight transfer, it’s just quite easy to slide on top of the tire. It becomes quite important to try and keep the tire temperatures under control and even throughout a lap to try and get the most out of it. It’s a tricky one — it’s actually a lot more peaky than I was anticipating going into it and a bit more finicky, but that just means those are things you’ve got to consider and work through.”

Sargeant’s approach was well-received by the MSR crew. Rather than sequester himself inside the upper lounge in MSR’s transporter, he spent Monday outside with the team as they got set up for the test, and again on Tuesday, rarely more than a few feet away from the hub of activity around the car before and after runs.

One team veteran, expecting to receive a distant and aloof F1 driver, was surprised by how normal and approachable Sargeant proved to be. And when it was time to work, it was all business as radio communications and engineering debriefs sounded and looked like any other with leading IndyCar drivers.

With only four seats left to fill, and only one that could offer to pay a professional like Sargeant, his odds of landing on the IndyCar grid next season are remote, but he’d welcome the chance to break into the series in a race seat or as a stand-in if needed.

“If there was an opportunity there to jump into a car, I would definitely do it,” he said. “I had a good time working with the MSR guys; it’s just such a good atmosphere, such a different atmosphere. This was much more enjoyable than the things that I’ve experienced in the past — just easier and a bit more fun to connect with all the people in the team. I had a good time meeting them, working with them and I think that was also felt on the other side. No doubt it was an enjoyable experience.”

Acura MSR team taps IndyCar aces for enduro line-up

Acura Meyer Shank Racing has confirmed that NTT IndyCar Series regulars Scott Dixon, Alex Palou and Felix Rosenqvist will join the GTP team’s roster for the 2025 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona. Four-time …

Four-time Rolex 24 winner Dixon and MSR IndyCar driver Rosenqvist will complete the roster for the No. 60 Acura MSR Acura ARX-06. The pair will join full-season Acura MSR drivers Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun. Rosenqvist will take on Rolex 24 duties in the Acura while Dixon will join Acura MSR for the full endurance schedule.

Coming off back-to-back IndyCar championships, Palou will serve as endurance driver of the No. 93 Acura MSR Acura ARX-06 and pair up with full-season drivers Renger van der Zande and Nick Yelloly.

Dixon has been competing in sportscar endurance competition for 25 years and rounded out the 2024 season and his 50th sports car race with an overall win last month at the Motul Petit Le Mans, co-driving with Acura MSR’s van der Zande.

A familiar face to the MSR family, Rosenqvist will join Acura MSR at Daytona, marking his fourth entry into the historic twice-round-the-clock event as he targets a first Rolex 24 victory.

“It’s really great to see how our IMSA line-up has come together and I think we have some really talented drivers with us this year,” said team co-owner Mike Shank. “Of course it just made sense for Felix to join us at the 24. He’s really proved himself on the IndyCar side of things and I think he can be a big asset to us in IMSA. It’s a no-brainer that Scott knows what he’s doing in the IMSA endurance events and it’s really cool to finally have him come onboard after all these years. Alex is another one who knows what it takes in the GTP category and of course he’s coming off of a big high in IndyCar. I’m excited to see where we shake out in the test this weekend; I think we’re all ready to get going.”

The Acura Meyer Shank Racing squad will head to its first official test at Daytona International Speedway this weekend to prepare for the Rolex 24. Acura MSR will announce its final addition to the No. 93 Acura MSR lineup for the Rolex 24 in the coming weeks.

Shank pleased with first Acura GTP outing

Mike Shank sounded whole for the first time in just over a year. On Monday and Tuesday at Sebring International Raceway, 12 months and 21 days after its last IMSA action, Meyer Shank Racing made its return to IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, a series it never wanted to leave, in a private test that held great significance for Shank and co-owner Jim Meyer.

MSR won on its last time out, taking victory at Motul Petit Le Mans on Oct. 14, 2023. After the checkered flag waved, MSR handed off its factory Acura ARX-06 hybrid GTPs to Wayne Taylor Racing, ending 20 years of continuous participation in Grand Am Rolex Series and IMSA competition. But with WTR’s recent departure from Acura at the end of the most recent running of Petit Le Mans and a reversal of fortune — WTR handing Acuras back to MSR after the race — as Honda Racing Corporation US re-signed MSR brand’s lone manufacturer team in 2025, a sense of normalcy and order was restored.

“It was really, really great,” Shank told RACER. “We purposely left it low key; we didn’t invite anybody to come see it because we just wanted to get our stuff back together. It’s the first outing for the whole group, working together, 90 people there between HRC and MSR, and we ran through so much stuff.”

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The test was the first of its kind for MSR and HRC. In previous factory Acura IMSA DPi and GTP programs, HRC relied on its partner teams to run its cars with full and dedicated engineering staffs supplied by the WTRs and MSRs. But under the new arrangement with MSR, the Ohio-based team will supply crew and engineers for its No. 60 ARX-06, and with the No. 93 ARX-06, MSR is responsible for the mechanical side — the crew looking after all aspects of preparing and fielding the car — while HRC brings its own engineers to handle the performance side of operating the No. 93.

At Sebring, the blended team took its first steps in running cars together — including the shaking down of a new ARX-06 chassis — in preparation for next week’s visit to Daytona International Speedway for a three-day Balance of Performance test led by IMSA to set the technical specification for each WeatherTech Championship model for January’s Rolex 24 At Daytona.

“One car was new, and we have three running cars currently,” Shank said. “It was just a good day for everyone to get to know each other and get the communication channels going, which is really good. I was just really, really pleased with it. You know, we’re only a few weeks after Petit, just got the cars, and it was a Herculean effort to get ready for Sebring, which went really well. So the idea was that we get this together now to be ready for Daytona test, and hopefully, get back there in January with guns blazing and being able to hit that pretty hard.”

The MSR team was a big part of helping HRC and Acura to prepare the ARX-06 for its debut in 2023 and was the manufacturer’s most competitive team. Having missed the second season of GTP action, where all of the cars took major steps forward, Shank was concerned about having a large learning curve to overcome when the factory deal came back to MSR, but after two days at Sebring, those fears have been allayed.

“Actually, it felt very familiar,” he said. “We engaged my top five or six technical people who started working on the project five or six months ago, and we were kind of brought into the loop of where Acura was at, currently. So when we hit the ground running, we had a bunch of systems in place. It wasn’t as big of a shock to the system as I suspected it might be. All due credit to the new head of engineering for me, Vincent Forges — a guy that’s been with me for nine years. He really is just taking this program on our side of it and making sure that we were ready to roll, technically.

“The integration with HRC, with both cars, it’s been really interesting. It’s a new kind of model and we’re learning as we go. But it doesn’t feel like we missed a whole year. I know that sounds arrogant, but we hit the ground running. We had a lot of on-track time, the cars ran fine, virtually no issues. And, man, I was super proud of what everybody did.”

Acura Meyer Shank Racing returns to IMSA

If the fact that Honda Racing Corporation reunited with Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian to run its two-car Acura ARX-06 program wasn’t enough of a surprise, here comes the driver announcement. Presented by RACER’s Trackside Report is …

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Sargeant to get IndyCar test with Meyer Shank

Meyer Shank Racing will give former Williams Racing Formula 1 driver Logan Sargeant his first NTT IndyCar Series test. The two-car squad owned by Mike Shank and Jim Meyer has confirmed to RACER that it will make use of their final evaluation test …

Meyer Shank Racing will give former Williams Racing Formula 1 driver Logan Sargeant his first NTT IndyCar Series test.

The two-car squad owned by Mike Shank and Jim Meyer has confirmed to RACER that it will make use of their final evaluation test day to run Sargeant at The Thermal Club in Thermal, California, the private facility that transitions into a full championship event next season.

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The 23-year-old American will sample the 17-turn, 3.067-mile road course on November 19 in one of the team’s Honda-powered Dallara DW12s.

Starting in 2023, Sargeant contested 37 F1 races for Williams before being replaced by Argentina’s Franco Colapinto in August, which came after months of speculation the Floridian would not be retained by Williams for 2025.

Anticipating the change of circumstances at the storied grand prix team, Sargeant’s manager contacted an array of IndyCar teams in recent months to inquire about paying opportunities for his client.

Despite the limited number of teams left with the ability to hire drivers at this stage of the year, Sargeant traveled to Nashville Speedway for the September 14-15 season finale to take meeting with multiple teams. The time spent with Meyer and Shank proved beneficial as they were impressed with Sargeant’s character; the offer of a test was presented at Nashville and duly accepted.

The single-day trip to the outskirts of Palm Springs will mark MSR’s road course testing debut for its new technical alliance forged with defending series champions Chip Ganassi Racing, which will provide dampers, chassis setups, and engineering personnel.

The MSR-Ganassi relationship takes its first steps on an oval in October when Helio Castroneves, winner of the 2021 Indianapolis 500, will test, and then moves to Thermal where both sides of the alliance will get an in-depth look at Sargeant’s skills.

Although MSR and Ganassi have no vacancies across their five combined entries for 2025, the test will give Sargeant a chance to showcase his abilities for any teams that have been wanting to see how he fares in an IndyCar.

Armstrong joins Meyer Shank Racing for 2025

Meyer Shank Racing has completed its driver lineup for the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series with the addition of former Chip Ganassi Racing driver Marcus Armstrong. The New Zealander will partner with fellow CGR graduate Felix Rosenqvist and pilot the No. 66 …

“I’m very proud to be joining Meyer Shank Racing in 2025,” Armstrong said. “I had a great feeling when I met both Mike Shank and Jim Meyer, their passion for performance and meticulous work ethic was obvious from our first conversation and I want to thank them both for this opportunity. I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone at MSR over the off-season with the goal of hitting the ground running at the first race of the season in St Pete.”

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Armstrong, in his first full NTT IndyCar Series season, placed 14th in the championship and earned five top-five fionishes and a podium at Detroit.

“This year I got closer to where I want to be performance wise, including oval racing for the first time and I’m looking forward to continuing to push up the order with MSR,” he added. “We want to be at the front, fighting for wins and I believe we have the recipe to do it.”

“We’re very excited to welcome Marcus onboard,” said Mike Shank. “He’s really shown a lot of growth and consistency in his first two years in IndyCar, which is really difficult to do. This series is probably one of the most competitive series out there and he has proven himself to be a real contender. We are going to do everything we can to give him the car and the tools to produce results next year.”

Meyer Shank confirms new multi-year Rosenqvist deal

There was never any doubt that Meyer Shank Racing and Felix Rosenqvist would continue their relationship into 2025, and thanks to a new contract extension, the Swede, who posted MSR’s most competitive season to date, has the security of knowing …

For Rosenqvist, who moved to the team from Arrow McLaren ahead of the 2024 season, the extension speaks to the faith team owners Mike Shank and Jim Meyer have in the 32-year-old.
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“We’ve extended him for a couple more years,” Shank told RACER. “He did everything we asked of him. We, as a team, made a 30 or 40 percent gain in our performance this year. Between the two cars, we were in the top six in qualifying, if you include (the non-points) Thermal race, 15 times. Last year it was zero.”

The Ohio-based team starts a new technical alliance with Chip Ganassi Racing — winners of four of the last five championships — which reunites Rosenqvist via MSR with his first IndyCar team. Rosenqvist’s teammate will be announced at a later date.

“The only thing we’re missing is the big finishes, but we’re getting there,” Shank said. “And I’m confident with Felix here and this new deal we’ve got going for us, it’s going to start happening.”

Meyer Shank closing on 2025 IndyCar lineup

Mike Shank expects to have Felix Rosenqvist’s 2025 teammate confirmed by the start of October. Meyer Shank Racing’s No. 66 Honda is the most coveted seat to fill for the next NTT IndyCar Series season, due in part to the pace shown in the car by the …

Mike Shank expects to have Felix Rosenqvist’s 2025 teammate confirmed by the start of October.

Meyer Shank Racing’s No. 66 Honda is the most coveted seat to fill for the next NTT IndyCar Series season, due in part to the pace shown in the car by the A.J. Foyt Racing-bound David Malukas, and also because of the new technical alliance MSR has formed with the defending series champions at Chip Ganassi Racing. Despite continual suggestions that Marcus Armstrong has been signed to replace Malukas, the team’s founder and co-owner along with Jim Meyer says that’s not the case.

“We haven’t chosen anyone,” Shank told RACER. “But all those people you’re hearing about like Marcus Armstrong, Linus Lundqvist, Louis Foster, they’re all in play. We talked to Alex Rossi. We’re still working on it. And some of the reason it isn’t done yet is budget-driven. We’re trying to figure that side out right now, so nothing’s decided until we have the budget sorted.

“We need to have it done no later than October 1, but in one respect, I’m not in a gigantic hurry. We’re just kind of chilling for a minute. But yes, there will be a time somewhere around the beginning of October that we make the call.”

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After taking an unsuccessful gamble on MSR’s IMSA prototype champion Tom Blomqvist which necessitated the midseason switch the Malukas, Shank says he and Meyer aren’t rushing into the No. 66’s driver solution.

“This year has been hard on us that way and I’m really trying to make sure we make the right decision overall,” he added. “But we’ve also gained 30 percent with our performance and speed, even though we’re not all the way where we need to be, but we’ve gained massively in performance working with the Andretti Global team and I’m grateful for it.

“We’re trending in the right direction, but I just need to make sure I keep that trend going in an upward fashion. So we’re not making a hasty decision, right? I put Tom in there because I thought Tom deserved it and earned it. I think the world of Tom, but it didn’t work out in IndyCar. So it’s got me a little shellshocked.”