I will say it again: Motorsports is pro-peace and anti-war!

I hope Lance has a great time. I am so here for stressed out F1 drivers teaching the world about the joys of sports car racing.

Anyway, the car will make its racing debut at the FIA WEC season opener, the 6 Hours of Imola, from April 17–19.

Lime Rock rules, but it’s quite short at 1.53 miles, so it’s hard to fit the grids of well-heeled championships there. I think it’s a fantastic sign for the health of U.S. racing that Lime Rock is finding a niche as a place where awesome mid-tier series like MPC and the NASCAR Truck Series can become headliners.

It’s based on the Mk3B that won the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1969, but instead of being made of fiberglass, the bodywork is a demonstration of a new process Lola is calling the Lola Natural Composite System (LNCS). It has been granted an FIA passport making it eligible for historic racing (despite having a contemporary Chevrolet V8 inside), and there will be 16 road-legal versions sold to the fabulously wealthy as well.

This weekend’s Phillip Island SRO opener had all the usual SRO sports car classes driven by a mix of extremely eager aspirants and Supercars drivers, but to me what stole the show was the debut of Mustang Cup Australia (which also featured several Supercars drivers). I challenge anyone to come up with a more dramatic first-ever race of a new championship than this one:

This is Cameron passing Golding for the win, +0.006

[imageor embed]

— Jon 🛞 (@jon.turningfortune.com) Mar27, 2026 at 9:42 PM

Seeing that ending does not spoil it, of course, because it was a coin flip. Watch the whole thing.

The three-hour opener of the top-class GT World Challenge America was won by the JMF Motorsports #34, a Mercedes-AMG GT3 customer team fielding Michai Stephens and a Mercedes driver with whom you may be familiar named Mikael Grenier. This team and car has been dominant at Sonoma the past couple years, but this was the beginning of the three-hour GTWC America race format, and the #34 proved they can keep going all day if they have to.

The other big story to my eye is that Westin Workman and Tyler Gonzalez are absolutely unstoppable in their #68 GR Supra in Pirelli GT4 America. It’s worth watching those races just to see if anybody’s got anything for them.

Posavac posted on social media that he would enter a Z4 in the N24 this year if the post got 5,000 likes, and I salute the internet for making it happen.

Man, I am going to miss looking at this thing. I guess I should see if any diecasts are available.

Can I have it when you’re done

[imageor embed]

— Jon 🛞 (@jon.turningfortune.com) March27, 2026 at 10:24 AM

I don’t want to give Max Verstappen credit for everything, but there sure are a lot of teams bringing cars to the N24 this year to try and beat him.

This event made Max very happy, of course, because instead of losing like he is in Formula 1, he got to win a race by over a minute with no competition, which is apparently very fun for him.

Unfortunately, the team won’t get to book the result because they used an extra set of tires in qualifying and exceeded their weekend limit, so the win goes to the Rowe Racing BMW of Dan Harper and Jordan Pepper. By blaming qualifying procedures, I guess Mercedes means to convey that they miscounted at that point, so they didn’t know they were short in the race. That, of course, would be publicly indistinguishable from knowing they were short and going, “Who cares? This is a test.”

Max proved his point, though: Everyone else racing in this year’s N24 should be scared of him.

Yes, it was another Porsche Penske Motorsport 1–2 with the 7 ahead of the 6, and the GTP pecking order was more or less unchanged from Daytona, but it was a bit more of a dogfight this time. Both cars had their incidents — including the 6 breaking its nose on the back of the 31 Cadillac under safety car, which would have amused me if I didn't always want the 31 to win — but they recovered through typically flawless Penske execution. Intriguingly, what decided the finishing order was actually a rather brazen on-track pass.

With just over an hour remaining in the race, the team called in a position swap because the 6 car, with Kevin Estre driving, was on fresher tires. Seven minutes later, Felipe Nasr in the 7 pounced on him in the G-loaded last corner and took the lead back, which Estre said happened because he was dutifully following team orders and Nasr was not. That is amusing to me. Good on you, Felipe. Way to get Porsche its 20th overall win at Sebring.

Porsche’s only serious challenge in GTP was again from Cadillac, with the 31 starting on pole and having the pace (and the Jack Aitken) to stay a threat, but in a heartening development for Caddy fans, the Wayne Taylor cars were finally in contention this time as well. There was a Cadillac three-ship running together late in the race that looked pretty dangerous. In fact, the 10 finished on the podium, but it was taken away in post-race tech for excess camber, which gave P3 to the 31. It is great to see WTR up there, though. They hadn’t really been pulling their weight.

There are no Porsches in LMP2, of course, but the equivalents last weekend were the United Autosports cars, who also finished 1-2. They did get a race from Spike, who was back in purple, but the AO Racing dragon-car got caught out by the timing of a full-course yellow. Tower had a pretty good race, too — which isn’t the greatest of looks for Sébastien Bourdais, who recently quit the team — but they got outdone by United on a restart. There was also some spectacularly bad driving in LMP2, most of it well within LMP2 stupidity norms, but Parker Thompson, driving the #52 in his second-ever LMP2 race, brutally murdered the DragonSpeed Corvette for absolutely no reason.

In GTD Pro, it was more Porsche, but not at all in a boring way. The winner was the Manthey #911, a truly remarkable showing even for Manthey. To swoop down upon U.S. racing like they did and then win their first Sebring is an incredible display of execution, but to do it with Nick Tandy hounding you all day in the AO Racing #77 — the People’s Porsche in this country — is all the more unlikely. So that was the other class with a Porsche 1–2. The GTD Porsches were not as dominant — particularly the Manthey #912 — but the Wright Motorsports #120 did make the podium with two overtakes in the last two laps. All that plus a superb debut of the new Carrera Cup car? Pretty good weekend for Porsche.

As for the other debutante, the Lamborghini Temerario GT3, it didn’t instantly turn around Pfaff’s fortunes, but it did finish the race! I can’t wait to see how they go on a less turbulent track.

But. The legendary GT3 drive of the weekend was that of the #21 AF Corse Ferrari. That Tony Fire cannot be stopped. After taking their lumps in drive-through penalties for racing… you know, hard, Antonio Fuoco absolutely tore the field apart to win the #21’s second IMSA race of the last three. Lilou Wadoux drove in both of those races, of course, and she was unstoppable as well. I have a new favorite Ferrari 296.

Even so, there is another GTD car upon which I urge readers not to sleep. The #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage of Zacharie Robichon, Tom Gamble, and pole winner and Formula 1 offspring Eduardo Barrichello just went back-to-back on the podium, taking P2 in class at Sebring. “Dudu,” as Barrichello insists on being called, now leads the drivers’ championship.

In summary, IMSA racing rules.

Drivers

• Bill Auberlen
• Butch Leitzinger
• Roger Mandeville
• Brian Redman
• Lyn St. James
• Hans-Joachim Stuck

Cars

• Audi 90 Quattro GTO
• Riley Daytona Prototype
• Greenwood Corvettes
• Mazda RX-3

Good examples to look out for this year: Pfaff Motorsports will introduce the Lamborghini Temerario GT3 to the world after having one last crack in the Huracán in Daytona, and yes, it will be dressed in plaid. AO Racing will bring Roxy — the pink one — to her first endurance race. And Porsche Penske Motorsport has bedecked its Porsche 963s in Mobil 1 liveries harkening back to the swirly livery of the Porsche 911 GT1 in 1996 — not the most attractive livery to my eye, but a pretty famous one nonetheless.

One other, less heralded debut at Sebring this week is the new Porsche 911 Cup car. Porsche Carrera Cup North America will run its first two 40-minute races with the Type 992.2 car, which also has a brand new Pirelli tire. There are 27 entries for Sebring. I know a lot of people don’t watch single-make series, but this is a pretty big upgrade for the Cup car, and c’mon, you gotta watch a new race car at least once.

Well, Ferraris are no longer enough for Tony Fire. Last year he needed to go demonstrate that he can also win in ORECA LMP2s, which he did in the Asian Le Mans Series twice, finishing P2 in the drivers’ championship. Now the Ferrari-affiliated AF Corse team, who ran the Cetilar Racing-entered LMP2 Fuoco drove last year, is putting him in the ELMS car. You see, AF Corse won the ELMS LMP2 Pro/Am titles in 2023 and 2024, but last year they slipped to a lowly fourth (though they did win the season opener). I guess they just need a little more Tony Fire to get back to the top.

What makes up for it is that Mustang Sampling is back with JDC-Miller MotorSports, who ran the Mustang Sampling Cadillac DPi-V.R that won the 12 Hours of Sebring in 2021. This will be the livery for the rest of the season (bye bye, banana boat), and they have switched the number from 85 to 5, the classic Mustang Sampling IMSA number.

Reporters asked BMW M CEO Frank van Meel if he’s thought about going back to Formula 1 now that Audi and Cadillac are in and Mercedes is wiping the floor with everybody. He said, “The answer is no,” arguing that, despite the obvious marketing benefits, there wouldn’t be enough relevant technology transfer to their consumer vehicles.

That’s quite a take considering that BMW M is still working very hard on its hybrid LMDh car in top-level endurance racing. Van Meel says that one is plenty road-relevant. He also, though, “think[s] this year is going to be the first one in Formula One that there’s a hybrid system,” though, so don’t assume the guy knows what he’s talking about. (Formula 1’s first year with a hybrid power unit was 2014.)

Bring it on. I hope they crank up the competition in motorsports as much as they are in making good road cars that people actually want and can afford.

It would be fun to see some solid results for the Huracan in the year when the Temerario is rolling out. Pfaff Motorsports — Mapelli’s team for his IMSA endurance outings — will be debuting its Temerario at the 12 Hours of Sebring March 18–21, their goal being simply to finish the famously bumpy race.

*every hand on Earth goes up*

Max is not participating in the NLS until round 2, but his car and co-drivers will be there. I can’t wait to see how they stack up against this monster Grello duo. To be very clear, Manthey has not yet said they are sending this car to the N24… but they totally are, right?

Look, I understand why rich racing enthusiasts want to do that. If they want to race them against each other, go ahead. What I don’t want is for this GT2 spec to start creeping into multi-class sport car racing. They would be hazardous. Even if these people are rich enough to bring a pro driver along with them for a long race, the am time in a car as fast as the outright leaders — but only in a straight line — is going to be a mess.

Today just happens to be the day these lineups are coming out, but it does taste a little more delicious coming on the heels of the opening round of a Formula 1 rule set that Max viscerally hates. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to see Max race in Formula 1 for a long time to come, but I also hope that sports car racing is increasingly where he has his fun in life.

Iron Dames is reorienting itself as a more open-ended support system for getting more women into motorsports, rather than a race team with cars for women to drive, and some may see this as a defeat, but I think it’s a good call. That program was too rigid to get solid, lasting results. It was a box into which everything had to fit, rather than an adaptable team that could draw together the right drivers, the right car, and the right program. The drivers were top-notch; that wasn’t the problem. The problem is that the best women in racing should be seeking the best seats in racing, and the movement supporting them should be helping them do that rather than spending all its resources trying to go racing all by itself.

This year, we’ll see their LMDh hypercar on track ahead of its racing debut next year, and McLaren execs are doing some press about how they’re justifying this effort. They’re calling it Project Endurance. They’re going to make and sell track-only consumer versions and host driving events with them, that sort of thing. Obviously this is for the mega-elite — McLaren’s GT cars were already very high-end, and this is going up-market — but maybe it’s also the kind of thing that convinces the mega-elite to stay invested in motorsports.

What I want to know about Westin’s path is, is he going to Connor Zilisch his way into NASCAR, or is he going to drive Toyota hypercars in the WEC?

Their boss (trackside engineering manager) will be Grant Clarke, who was chief engineer of the NEOM McLaren Formula E team in 2024 and at TF Sport in WEC for four years before that.

Of course, as a motorsports writer, Racer is also, in concept, something I really like. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite motorsports publication across all categories, but it’s the go-to for IndyCar, and it is comprehensive, so it’s always worth sticking around. When that group acquired MAVTV last year and created the Racer Network, I thought, “That’s a good idea. Give us some racing to watch with our subscription, and hell, I’ll gladly also take your magazine.” Unfortunately, the first year of the service did not fill me with optimism about the second, and there is currently no form of racing I follow that requires me to subscribe to it, so I no longer do.

Now more pieces are starting to fall into place. An umbrella organization has been created called F=ma. It’s no DXDT, but it is at least an engineering reference that applies to motorsports, and that is the signal they would like to send. It is led by Chris Dyson, son of Rob, so, racers. Racer is now part of F=ma’s portfolio, along with PR firm The ID Agency, which represents the likes of Porsche, Bridgestone, and Hot Wheels. F=ma has now also acquired Gridlife.

This all makes sense. You can see a coherent portfolio here. But so far to me it sounds like a closed loop that will live or die on its own, rather than part of the broader racing world.

Motor racing is one of those things. Yes, I know that fascist dictators throughout modern history have loved motor racing, too, but you know what? They lost. The periods of world war that canceled international motor racing sucked, and when they were over, societies rushed to turn their airfields into race tracks and turn the race car factories that turned into bomber factories back into race car factories. And nowadays, racing is so big, high tech, and inextricably international that I am not exaggerating when I say that I believe it could hold the world together as it tries to fall apart.

I honestly do.

So. One thing we know about Formula 1 racing is that it has lately and not-subtly become a plaything of the oil barons of the Middle East. All of the political neutrality touted by windbags at regulatory bodies can’t change the fact that the entities controlling Formula 1 — including the American company that owns it — are most definitely on A Side. I see people complain about this every day, and I get it.

But now look what’s happening.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the governments of the United States and Israel are prioritizing things other than motorsports in their decision to decapitate the Iranian regime and kick off a whole conflagration that exceeds their most troubled nightmares. And their actions are now beginning to interrupt the activities of an American-owned publicly traded company that operates a sport with hundreds of millions of fans worldwide — including millions of Americans who are just getting to the party — that puts on three massive events in America, that has an exclusive broadcast deal with an American technology company that is one of the most profitable and powerful entities in the entire world (that being Apple), and whose Gulf State owners and financiers (and fuel providers) are getting actively bombed as payback for these strikes.

Which side of that do you think Formula 1 is on? Even if there are people in Formula 1 who are consciously on the other side ideologically, it is indisputable that the interest of the massive planetary industrial enterprise that is motor racing is for big international wars not to happen.

So I stand on the side of motor racing. It’s a much better use of international industry, technology, real estate, commerce, and oil refineries than warfare.

UPDATE Mar 3, 2026, 2:16 PM: The FIA World Endurance Championship has postponed its opening round, the Qatar 1812km, due to the violence in the region. The first WEC round will now be at Imola from April 17–19, and the plan is to run Qatar later in the year.

So far, the Peugeot 9X8 has been the only hypercar about which moves are being made, and don’t get me wrong, that’s a badass race car. But the Ferrari wears the crown.

MX-5 Cup also raced, and they were fun as always, but nothing remarkable happened. The conditions were pretty wet for the first race, but it mostly just resulted in crashing rather than standout performances. Bobby Gossett stuck it out and won his first MX-5 Cup race, so congratulations to him. Justin Adakonis also got his first win in race 2, congrats to him as well. Earl Bamber did fine. Sébastien Bourdais did not do fine.

The highlight of the St. Petersburg race weekend was the first ever street race of the NASCAR Truck Series. The star studs in the star-studded lineup did make their appearances. Colin Braun finished best of the guests in P9, but he was the one with meaningful NASCAR experience. James “Jimmy Hinch” Hinchcliffe finished right behind him in P10, which was actually the most impressive drive any guest had because he was turned around by Dario Franchitti early on, then turned himself around a couple times, and he still drove through the pack. But — against what probably anybody in the entire world expected — the star of the first ever NASCAR Truck Series street race was the NASCAR Truck Series.

Yes, the regulars came prepared, and they fought it out lap after lap. It was an honest-to-god street race, and it was won in marvelous fashion by Layne Riggs, whom I used to not like, but that is now completely wiped away. He trained in the Ford Racing simulator with Joey Hand for months for this race, and it showed.

I am so, so happy to see how much the increased emphasis on road and street courses has up-skilled all three NASCAR fields.

As for Cadillac, not spreading the 31 too thin is obviously a great call. Wayne Taylor is obviously behind AXR in IMSA, Wayne wants to win Le Mans with his boys, that’s fine, but more importantly, JOTA is clearly ready to do it. Concentrating all the 31’s firepower on IMSA gives them the best possible chance of toppling Penske and Porsche.

He was many other things, of course, including a racing driver and a successful businessman, but the aptly described “motorsports park” named for him represents something essential about the soul of racing. Motor racing has the kind of effect on people that they pour themselves into it with everything they have, building on its future to benefit not just themselves but everyone who loves it for generations to come. Barber was that kind of guy who built that kind of place.

Mount Panorama is one of those tracks that is said to supernaturally choose its champion, and in this year’s 12 Hour, the Mountain was intensely discerning, eliminating one contender after another until one of the most diamond-hard, razor-sharp entries — Mercedes-AMG Team GMR’s #888, driven by Maro Engel, Maxime Martin, and Mikaël Grenier — was permitted to win, smashing a record for how far back a 12 Hour winner had started, having come from 29th on the grid.

The Mountain is a formidable place. This is known and expected and part of racing there. It is central to the circuit’s allure. But despite having delivered the kind of brutal challenge its audience and competitors expect, the 2026 race was marred by some incidents that were — fortunately — merely horrible and not tragic.

This race is beloved for its pre-dawn start, with GT cars hauling the mail up Mountain Straight three-wide, only their headlights visible. The first hour is crowned by sunrise atop the mountain, heralding a glorious beginning to the race, unlike other day-long endurance races where sunrise provides relief from a long, dark night.

Unfortunately, at the 12 Hour this year, sunrise was more of a relief than usual. The dark beginning had been shattered by multiple wildlife strikes, most notably a collision with a massive kangaroo by the factory Mustang GT3 driven by Christopher Mies, ending the car’s debut at Bathurst after not even half an hour. The Mustang was obliterated, and the driver was traumatized and lucky to be alive, to say nothing of what happened to the tough, graceful animal.

This was an ominous beginning, and it was echoed by a later collision that could have been even more catastrophic in terms of human life.

In the ninth hour, at the end of a safety car period, the lapped cars were given a wave-around. Following this race’s procedures, that small group of back-markers dropped the hammer. They are not permitted to change position, but nor is the field held until the wave-bys reach the back of the pack; they are given the green flag when they reach the line. The wave-by cars are only given the chance to recover a lap, and in order to do that, they have to stay ahead of the leaders under full-blast racing conditions.

So the cars at the back of the field — some driven by inexperienced drivers, some in classes incapable of keeping up with GT3 cars, some slowed by damage or other issues, some as fast as the cars at the front — hurtled up the mountain as fast as they could while still driving hesitantly enough to avoid passing one another and incurring penalties. Entering the narrow and blind sections for which Mount Panorama is renowned, cars made contact, spun, slowed, and stopped.

The Tsunami RT Porsche 911, driven by Bathurst 12 Hour debutant Johannes Zelger, was turned around and stopped in a blind corner as the leaders raced towards him. It was obvious what was going to happen. Yellow flags were shown in the area, but it isn’t clear if the flag stand best positioned to warn drivers in time was doing its job. Hopefully, an investigation will clear that up. The race leader was Ralf Aron in the Craft-Bamboo Racing Mercedes-AMG, which was having intermittent radio issues, which could happen to anyone on the brutal and wild circuit. He had no idea what was around the corner.

The Mercedes and the Porsche became twisted, smoking sculptures of destruction. Both drivers crawled out of the wreckage, but Aron only made it just clear of the track before lying on his back in agony. He was taken to the hospital, and he turns out to have broken his back. Thank God, he retains full sensation and mobility, and he even wants to come back to the Mountain. The motor racing world is lucky he could have the chance.

Every racing series is an experiment with the balance between what you might call the “American style” of keeping lapped cars in the race with wave-bys and the “European style” of preserving the sanctity of race positions through incidents and restarts. The former is more spectacular. The latter is safer. Australian racing — with Bathurst as its epitome — tends toward the former. Its drivers and fans want to see a cracking motor race. International GT drivers may have American-style racing experience from IMSA, but generally they are used to the latter. This is a recipe for confusion.

At a long and treacherous track like Mount Panorama, field spread is guaranteed. It makes sense to give lapped cars a chance. But I cannot understand a rule that releases the fastest cars behind the slowest cars — who are going as fast as they can while still having to worry about staying in position — on a track with massive elevation changes, close walls, and blind curves. We may find that there were other procedural failures that contributed to this incident, but surely it would have been avoided if the wave-bys were simply allowed to catch the field before it went green. It’s a long race. There’s time.

These dangerous incidents contributed to the tension in a race that is always tense. There were many more racing incidents, questionable blocks, race-ending mistakes, and other heartbreaks. Those things are always part of racing on the Mountain. Last year, over the top at Skyline, Kenny Habul and Stephen Grove got into each other so hard that Grove’s AMG went airborne and looked for one chilling instant like it might go right over the side. Terror is a familiar companion racing at Bathurst. But both of this year’s serious incidents had an absurdity about them that suggests there should have been ways to mitigate them. I hope to see some proactive efforts to prevent the next one.

Don’t let this take away from the greatness of this race, though. The Bathurst 12 Hour still welcomes independent challengers, and they rise to the occasion and go toe to toe with the hardened pros. Such a car — the High Class Racing #86 Porsche of Kerong Li, Anders Fjordbach, and Dorian Boccolacci — started 30th, right behind the eventual winners, and finished second to them overall by merely a second. This is a glorious result. As the Bathurst 12 Hour grows into its status as a global crown jewel of endurance sports car racing, we can hope for the 2026 podium to go down as an aspirational example, even as the race’s most brutal incidents should go down as a warning.

Waters/Mostert/Randle is an unfair Bathurst car

— Jon 🛞 (@jon.turningfortune.com) Feb 13, 2026 at 7:08 PM

Sure enough, they’re on pole, and there are two more AMGs behind them. That car is as much a part of the Mountain as any other at this point.

This was a blindingly fast qualifying session. Expect an amazing race.

Watch on YouTube

(And they’re quick, too)

Livery of the year contest gets an exceptionally strong early contender

[image or embed]

— Luke (@luke.turningfortune.com) Feb 11, 2026 at 6:05 PM

I would be sad about this, but Renault just seems to suck too much at management of motorsports programs, so I’ll get over their absence.

But have you seen who is driving at St. Pete?

• Sebastien Bourdais is doing the Mazda MX-5 Cup race (what????)
• Dario Franchitti is doing the truck race
• A lesser known but no less talented Andretti, Adam, is combining Truck Series duties with his usual (and dominant) Trans Am running this year, and he will be in a truck at St. Pete
• No less than Mayor James Hinchcliffe is also doing the truck race, returning to the site of his first IndyCar win to make his first NASCAR appearance (all while running back and forth to the booth for his IndyCar TV duties)
• UPDATE FEB 18: Earl Bamber is also doing the MX-5 Cup race
• UPDATE FEB 21: Colin Braun is driving the Ram free agent truck

This all makes me wonder: Who will the guest star crossovers be at Phoenix?

It is an awesome idea to have a World Cup-format racing event for the all-stars of the various regional one-make Porsche championships. One wonders why the idea has taken 15 years to revive since the 2011 Nürburgring event. But to plan it as a last hurrah for the old generation of Cup car in a year when the new one is already debuting in Supercup, as well as Carrera Cup Germany, North America, and Asia? You think those teams just have their out-of-service race cars lying around waiting for the chance to race again?

Clearly the Alpine Formula 1 team is also a concern, as they have fallen to worst on the grid, and Renault will no longer even make them an engine. When Hornerpalooza kicks off, I fully expect the team to change brands.

Ryan bounces back and forth between IMSA and SRO, which is a normal thing for a coaching-level pro to do as up-and-comers such as Karl Forman enlist their services in whatever series suits their program. Forman is graduating from the GR Cup series, where Eversley coaches many drivers, so they’ve worked together and have chemistry, and they’re staying in the same OEM ecosystem. And going forward, if you want to build a track record right now with any GT brand, I dare say it’s Toyota.

Given how long the Acura ARX-06 has been in service in IMSA, it is natural to wonder why it hasn’t entered the WEC yet, and I look forward to learning more about that if possible, but as friend-of-TF @putdorianedown.bsky.social points out, there are many pieces of such a project that are just now falling into place:

This has been a story repeatedly, of course, but this one seems a lot more solid: - it gives a year, 2027 - there's space, because of Porsche - it names a credible partner team, Inter Europol

So, Great Honda Bake-Off for Le Mans (and the rest of the season) suddenly very plausible.

[image or embed]

— The Pin is mightier than the sword (@putdorianedown.bsky.social) Jan 30, 2026 at 9:34 AM

Speaking of fun, Ye Yifei was definitely having it in Daytona. We spoke to him the day before the race:

Watch on YouTube

When I talked to the Vasser Sullivan Lexus drivers at the Daytona 24 last week, they all seemed rather ready to dispense with the Lexus RC F GT3, which is a platform nearly as old as the DW12 Indy car. I don’t blame them. The success of GT3 as a category is almost impossible to exaggerate, and that has led to a long reign for some of its most glorious examples, as well as compounding gains through multiple evolutions from several OEMs. But it’s time for some new race cars, and we’ll see if it’s Toyota or Lamborghini that kicks off the avalanche.

You could argue this is the same kind of slightly creepy individualized attention Mercedes gave to Kimi Antonelli as they groomed him into a Formula 1 driver, but the circumstances are pretty different, and also they don’t have a 40-year-old driver to replace anymore. But hey, there are a lot of Mercedes customers on the F1 grid. I think she’s gonna make it.

Things got much worse, of course, when Toyota revealed at an absurd launch event that it would be splitting its motorsports operations into two. Toyota Racing is now the name of the central factory-run racing operations run out of the Cologne facility where the WEC team is, where the engine programs are, and where the people working with Haas are, too. Gazoo Racing is now for more customer-ish-flavored programs, such as the rally program, which is “supported by Toyota Racing.” I guess that’s what NASCAR and Supercars cars are going to be badged as, too? Anyway, you can see why it would be confusing, then, for Toyota to announce “TGR” branding for its F1 partnership the same year.

Today Haas revealed the car — which looks very good, I might add — and it has “GR” all over it. Nary a “Toyota” in sight. What are we to make of this? Well, surely this is more of a customer relationship; Toyota is giving Haas people, expertise, and facilities, but it’s not building them a chassis (Dallara) or a power unit (Ferrari). I guess we have to think about the GR branding as a sort of essence of going racing with Toyota in spirit, and a race car can’t say “Toyota” on it unless Toyota itself is going racing.

As for drivers, I don’t find that announcement very surprising, either, but it is impressive how pitch-perfect it is. They’ve got the Return of the Rocky, they’ve got the second Priaulx, and they’ve got — and I quote — “fresh from the F1 circuit” Logan Sargeant. So I guess that explains why he quit the Genesis program.

More race car good, less race car bad. That is and will always be my position.

I encourage you to read the many obituaries below.

Pairs amusingly with the new censorship rules, though, doesn’t it?

When I first saw this news, I was worried the whole championship had been renamed, and I hated that. Nothing worse than an automotive sponsor being replaced by something irrelevant. But now that I understand that it’s actually creating a new sub-competition endurance-focused teams can target — a dynamic I find works really well in the WeatherTech championship — I have come around completely. It adorably connotes the idea of traveling to these four rounds and renting a place to stay, which is something I heartily encourage people to do.

I and many other observers find it a little strange to choose to stretch the drivers further when you’ve got two monsters raising their hand to jump in. That raises the question of whether the IndyCar guys couldn’t hack it this year, which Penske Racing President Jonathan Diuguid had to insist to press is not the case:

“The November test is difficult to glean performance stuff[,] but I think if you did glean performance [data], Josef and Scott were if not the top performing guys in those cars, they were on part with the guys we had there.”

(Newgarden, remember, was in the 2024 incarnation of this car and helped win Penske his first Rolex since 1969.)

Rather, Diuguid told Sportscar365, they decided to run three-driver squads for hand-wavey “administrative” reasons having something to do with driver seat time fairness, making fewer seat inserts, and fewer setup compromises.

To be clear, I absolutely believe this explanation to extent that I am already too bored to know the reasoning in more detail. I just always prefer the most fun driver lineup.

Scotty, we now know, does have a Rolex ride. Josef is not participating.

What bums me out is that Robert Wickens is not in the lineup, at least for Daytona. The story of his heroic return to racing in the sprint rounds with special hand controls to drive this car — and be quick about it — was one of the best IMSA storylines last year, and a full-time drive was clearly close to happening in 2026. Marshall Pruett actually said it was happening on Monday, in a post that also blew DXDT’s cover on announcing Scotty, but apparently either he was wrong or things changed. DXDT full-time driver Mason Filippi’s co-driver for the sprint rounds has not been announced yet, so hopefully that’s Wickens’ job again.

“Manufacturers, Competitors, Drivers, Constructors, and any persons or entities associated with their entries must not attempt to influence the establishment of the Balance of Performance (BoP) or make any public comments regarding the BoP process, methodology, data, or outcomes, including but not limited to statements made through traditional media, digital media, or social media platforms.”

As in all motorsports series that employ censorship and fines, WEC teams now speak entirely in innuendos.

Actually, I’ve noticed IMSA competitors tend to tiptoe around BoP conversations already, as the series can make their racing lives miserable in other ways as punishment, such as by giving their car an unfavorable BoP. But now the gag order is in writing and violations costs money.

BoP is the most political part of sports car racing, and I honestly get why the series would want to prevent competitors from using the media as a weapon. While sanctioning bodies’ constant fiddling with BoP clearly causes stupid swings in competitive order throughout a season, teams are also blatantly dishonest about how they talk about BoP publicly, basically just doing whatever advantages them, as race teams are wont to do.

I think, on balance (😏), it’s the right thing to do balance lap times between cars of different makes and let their more particular strengths and weaknesses — and teams’ and drivers’ ability to execute — determine the winners and losers. I just wish the process wasn’t so fiddly, because it introduces errors all throughout the process, and that’s what competitors rightfully complain about. I am in favor of this BoP censorship policy in the meantime, but I want to see sports car racing regulators making tangible progress on finding less controversial ways to balance performance.

Manthey is competing in IMSA for the first time in 2026 having dominated basically everywhere else Porsche 911 GT3s race. Güven is in one of two Manthey cars, most bad-assedly numbered #911 and #912; the champ is in the former alongside Thomas Preining, Ricardo Feller, and Klaus Bachler, all of whom are also fearsome drivers. After Daytona, Güven will head off for his new full-time job with Manthey’s World Endurance Championship team.

I would call Chan a “rising star” except clearly his star has already risen. Even aside from winning the toughest GT championship on Earth, his 2025 Daytona run with Wright in the #120 was fairly spectacular — they finished 2nd in GTD — so I can’t even imagine what’s coming this year.

The reason I chose this story to kick off News is that Chan is special to us from Daytona last year. Not only was the #120 the first race car to drive right past me, Güven starred in our first ever YouTube video because he was exceedingly generous with his time in the autograph line, giving Luke detailed answers to his questions. This year, I’m bringing a better microphone.

Watch on YouTube