Redemption for Meyer Shank Racing and Acura at the 2025 Rolex 24
The No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura took second place overall at the 2025 Rolex 24 — but it also kicked off its redemption arc.
When the checkered flag fell on the 2023 Rolex 24, the No. 60 Acura of Meyer Shank Racing crossed the finish line first. There was just one problem: They’d won illegally.
Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) spotted inconsistencies in tire pressure data, which it reported to IMSA. The series penalized the team, which stepped back from full-time endurance racing competition in 2024. The 2025 Rolex 24 was the first chapter Meyer Shank Racing’s redemption arc.
Meyer Shank Racing takes second at the Rolex 24 with Acura
Team owner Mike Shank got his start in racing back in 1989 before realizing a decade later that he was much better suited for for life as a car owner. His team, Michael Shank Racing, fielded exceptional drivers like Sam Hornish Jr. and Johnny Rutherford in the Toyota Atlantic Championship, and Shank himself won Team Owner of the Year for two of the four years he ran cars in that series.
But Shank’s ambitions had grown, and in 2004, he entered sports car racing.
In the two decades since, Shank’s ownership has been accompanied by a partnership with Jim Meyer, CEO of SiriusXM. Four-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves now owns a stake in the team, as does Liberty Media — the owner of Formula One Management.
MSR has started over 350 sports car races and expanded his operations into the open-wheel world by joining IndyCar on a part-time basis in 2019. Two years later, he was the team owner to bring Castroneves his record-matching fourth Indy 500 victory.
The Ohio-based team, though, faced its first significant hurdle in 2023 when his No. 60 team was caught cheating and faced a slew of penalties. MSR had until that point nurtured a comfortable relationship with HRC, the company that oversees the racing activities of both Honda and Acura; at the end of 2023, MSR and HRC parted ways.
Shank spent the 2024 IMSA season on the sidelines. Even though he still worked with Honda in IndyCar, it was clear it would take work for the outfit to regain the trust and rebuild the relationships necessary to compete in endurance racing.
And much to the shock of race fans across the world, when Shank announced his team’s IMSA return for 2025, he announced he’d once again be joining Acura.
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The 2025 season was a good time to get back into the game. The previous year, Acura had consolidated its racing program to just one car fielded by Wayne Taylor Racing — but with WTR’s ties to Andretti, and Andretti’s ties to Cadillac, it was no surprise that the former Acura team announced it would move to Cadillac power for 2025 and beyond.
As such, there was room for the MSR/Acura relationship to find its second wind.
“Mike’s team is super motivated, and Mike is a very open owner,” Kelvin Fu, Vice President at HRC, told PlanetF1.com during a roundtable at the Rolex 24.
“I think that attitude permeates the team. It’s been a good integration.”
There were plenty of opportunities for MSR and HRC to mend the relationship — primarily because Shank still fielded Honda power in IndyCar during the 2024 season. The open line of communication on that front made MSR a clear choice moving forward.
This year, HRC is fielding two Acura ARX-06 prototypes in the top level of IMSA competition. The No. 60 car is run by Shank and his crew, while the No. 93 is overseen by HRC US associates looking to gain greater insight into the act of running its own outfit.
According to Kelvin Fu, the two-car operation has provided both entries with a chance to shine.
“You have some options when it comes to overall strategy between the two, you can always alternate if that’s what you want to do,” he explained to media, including PlanetF1.com, when asked about the benefits of doubling the operation.
“HRC brings our knowledge to the table, but we’re very analytical. We know what the simulation says.
“Mike’s crew also has their own tools. They also know how to run a car.
“Mike’s been really open abut what he’s willing to share with us, and to talk about it, it just makes the engineers communicate that much better. In the end, it’s the team that’s going to win, right?
“The driver is super important, but the good strategy, the good car management, good overall efficiency in running the car over 24 hours — that’s what’s going to get you to the line.”
And at this year’s running of the Rolex 24, it was the MSR-affiliated Acura that crossed the line for a podium finish. The unstoppable combination of Tom Blomqvist, Colin Braun, Scott Dixon, and Felix Rosenqvist chased down the dominant Porsche Penskes in the final hour of the event, managing to split the German marque for a second-place finish in the season opener.
Things weren’t quite as fruitful with the No. 93 car, which saw a lineup of Kakunoshin Ohta, Alex Palou, Nick Yelloly, and Renger van der Zande share the machine. A rear suspension fault forced the No. 93 back to the garage for repairs. It did return to the track tto finish the race, albeit 40 laps in arrears of the three lead-lap cars.
Speaking to media after the event, No. 60 driver Blomqvist admitted that the Porsche Penske teams were strong, and that the ARX-06 was needled by issues from the drop of the green.
“We struggled so much for traction, and they would just carve through it much better than us,” he said of a race punctuated by unseasonably cold temperatures.
Colin Braun observed, “I think considering all the other GTP teams have been together for a few years here and we’ve reassembled and added people, I think we have a lot of blue sky, a lot of potential to tidy up a few things here and there and continue to be stronger and stronger. So it was a heck of a first race.
“When we all went to the first test in November when we got the cars, I think if you would have said we’d come here and finish second, we’d all have been signing up for that.”
For an outfit that spent 2024 on the outside looking in, the No. 60 MSR crew has a lot to be proud of. Its second place at the Rolex 24 is just the first chapter of what will be a 2025 redemption arc — one that will continue in March with the 73rd running of the 12 Hours of Sebring.
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