Renger van der Zande and Nick Yelloly have joined Acura for its 2025 IMSA SportsCar Championship GTP marketing campaign with Meyer Shank Racing after leaving Cadillac and BMW.
Two-time Daytona 24 Hours winner van der Zande has switched to the Honda model after seven seasons with Cadillac, first with the Wayne Taylor Racing staff with which he gained the IMSA blue riband enduro in 2019 and ’20 after which Chip Ganassi Racing.
Yelloly has made the transfer from BMW, which introduced his departure on Monday, after six years as a manufacturing facility driver, wherein time he gained the Nurburgring and Spa GT3 24-hour enduros and took a primary IMSA win for the German marque’s M Hybrid V8 LMDh in IMSA final 12 months.
He and Van der Zande would be the full-season drivers in one of many pair of Acura ARX-06 LMDhs fielded within the GTP class by MSR, which is returning to IMSA after a one-year break.
The opposite automobile might be shared by former MSR Indycar driver Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun, who will reprise their partnership of 2023 that yielded a controversial victory at Daytona.
MSR was subsequently discovered to have manipulated info from its tyre strain sensors, and was fined and given a factors deduction however retained the win.
The staff, which was out of contract with Acura on the finish of the season, was not retained as Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti undertook a deliberate enlargement to 2 vehicles.
#60 Meyer Shank Racing w/ Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06: Tom Blomqvist, Colin Braun, Helio Castroneves
Photograph by: Artwork Fleischmann
WTR has now returned to Cadillac for 2025, which precipitated the return of MSR at the side of the Honda Racing Company USA organisation (previously generally known as Honda Efficiency Improvement) that runs the Acura LMDh programme.
HRC US will take a deeper position within the working of the vehicles on the tracks and might be liable for engineering one of many entries in 2025.
Van der Zande thanked Cadillac for “all the pieces they’ve accomplished for me over the previous seven seasons”.
“Though it is onerous for me to go away, it is time for a brand new chapter that I’m actually trying ahead to,” he mentioned.
“I’ve been racing in opposition to Acura for the previous seven years they usually’ve at all times been a fierce competitor, however I’m excited to now be on their facet and faucet into their sources and see what we are able to do.”
Yelloly additionally thanked his former employer for which he drove within the GTP ranks in 2023 and ’24 with the Rahal staff.
“They have been the primary to present me an opportunity as a works driver again in 2019, and collectively we celebrated many nice successes,” he mentioned.
Yelloly ends a prolonged stint as a BMW works driver to hitch MSR/Acura
Photograph by: SRO
“I’m actually excited to be becoming a member of the Acura MSR/HRC undertaking. Clearly the staff could be very hungry and prepared to push flat out, which sits effectively with me as I’ve the identical sort of mentality.”
Staff boss Mike Shank mentioned: “Placing Tom and Colin again within the driver’s seat simply made sense. The 2 of them had an unbelievable season in ’23 and I believe that is simply cracking the floor on what they’ll accomplish collectively.
“After which with the addition of Renger and Nick, they each have intensive prototype expertise and have proven loads of power the previous few seasons, so I believe they are going to be an enormous asset to the staff.”
