After originally planning to contest just in the Tequila Patron North American Endurance Cup (TPNAEC), a strong start to the 2018 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season saw the No. 86 Meyer Shank Racing Acura NSX GT3 make additional race starts as team partners stepped up to keep the campaign on track..
After opening the season with a TPNAEC win at Daytona, scoring a class win at the Detroit Grand Prix for the second year running with a demonstrative 1-2 team finish, and then racing to another TPNAEC round win at Watkins Glen, the No. 86 Acura NSX GT3 currently holds second in the IMSA GTD class championship.
MSR has held a strong driver line up for the No. 86 machine this season with Katherine Legge, Alvaro Parente, Trent Hindman, AJ Allmendinger, and Mario Farnbacher all contributing their talent towards the success of the GTD entry.
Meyer Shank Racing will now compete with two full season entries for the remainder of the season as the No. 86 Acura NSX GT3 joins the No. 93 Acura NSX GT3 entry at Lime Rock Park, Road America, VIR, Laguna Seca, and Road Atlanta.
Lawson Aschenbach and Justin Marks share driving duties of the No. 93 Meyer Shank Racing Acura NSX GT3. The pair drove to their best finish to date of second place at the Detroit Grand Prix earning the team its first ever 1-2 finish.
Mike Shank, who recently concluded an agreement that saw the team take on a new name and co-owner with Jim Meyer, has made the commitment to race all the way to the end of the season.
The team, has grown its competition program in 2018 to include a select schedule of Verizon IndyCar events with driver Jack Harvey, has benefitted from a range of team partners growing their participation in the IMSA effort.
“We’ve been so fortunate to have our partners stepping up and keep us going forward this year, and we are at the point of the season that we needed to make a full commitment one way or another,” said Shank. “We are in a strong position right now in this championship so we want to keep our foot in it and go for it. It was critical to be able to manage this second entry without compromising anything else that we are doing as an organization. So I’m happy to have some of our long-time sponsors as well as some new ones help us keep pushing all the way to the end. Now that we have this confirmed we can just put our heads down and focus on the championship.”
The Meyer Shank Racing squad will be competing the next three weekends starting with the IMSA Northeast Grand Prix at Lime Rock set for July 20th-21st followed by the Verizon IndyCar Series, Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio on July 27th-29th with the next round of IMSA competition heading to Road America on August 3rd-5th.
Source. Sunday Group
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