Shank team ‘home’ for Mid- Ohio sports-car race
Imagine the Ohio State football team playing all of its games on the road.
That’s the feeling Mike Shank has had with his Pataskalabased race team the past several years with the WeatherTech SportsCar series not visiting the Mid- Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington.
But Sunday marks the return of the series for the Acura Sports Car Challenge, a 2-hour, 40-minute sprint edition for the prototypes and sports cars built for endurance racing.
Shank, with two Several racing series will compete at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course near Lexington as the part of the IMSA WeatherTech series’ Acura Sports Car Challenge. Some key times leading toward the main event: Friday: 9:45 a.m. and 3 p.m., WeatherTech practice, all three classes (GTD, GTLM, prototypes) Acura NSX entries in the GTD division, was busy Wednesday helping his team prepare for the move to its “home” track.
“Imagine you haven’t had a home game for Saturday: 8:35 a.m., WeatherTech practice, all classes; 12:05 p.m., GTD qualifying; 12:30 p.m., GTLM qualifying, 12:55 p.m., prototypes qualifying; 2:20 p.m., Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge Sunday: 8 a.m., WeatherTech series warmup, all classes; 1:05 p.m., Acura Sports Car Challenge, a 2-hour, 40-minute event five years; that’s what it has been like for us,” said Shank, founding partner of the newly renamed Meyer Shank Racing.
“We have Acura NSX cars, the whole event is sponsored by Acura,” the luxury-car arm of Honda that has 12 facilities and 10,000 employees within 90 minutes of the track. “Our own team, our group, is so much bigger than it was in 2013, the last time we raced there. We’ve got thousands of fans that follow us now, and we love the idea of being able to race right in our backyard.”
For Craig Rust, president of Mid- Ohio, hooking up again with the International Motor Sports Association, which sponsors the WeatherTech series, was like returning to the roots of the road course, which has had just two main events the past several years, an IndyCar race and a NASCAR Xfinity Series race.
“Mid-Ohio was born out of a love for sports car racing” by its founder, the late Al Griebling, in 1961, Rust said. “To add IMSA, the tier- one sports cars series in North America, allows us to deliver another great weekend of races to our fans.
“As a race promoter, you always want to deliver best- in- class events, and the Acura Sports Car Challenge gives us the opportunity to do that this weekend.”
Taking part in the prototype class of the race will be Roger Penske’s Acura team that includes threetime Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves and twotime Indy winner Juan Pablo Montoya sharing rides with former sports car champs Ricky Taylor and Dane Cameron.
The Hilliard- based Rahal Letterman Lanigan team’s two BMW M3 entries in the GTLM category will merit watching, too. Co-drivers Alexander Sims and Bill Auberlen teamed up to finish second in the 12 Hours of Sebring behind a class- winning Porsche 911 RSR on March 16.