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 crew with which he received 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 unit driver, by which time he received 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 yr.
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 automotive will probably 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 data from its tyre stress sensors, and was fined and given a factors deduction however retained the win.
The crew, 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
Picture by: Artwork Fleischmann
WTR has now returned to Cadillac for 2025, which precipitated the return of MSR along with the Honda Racing Company USA organisation (previously often known as Honda Efficiency Improvement) that runs the Acura LMDh programme.
HRC US will take a deeper position within the operating of the vehicles on the tracks and will probably be liable for engineering one of many entries in 2025.
Van der Zande thanked Cadillac for “all the things they’ve executed for me over the previous seven seasons”.
“Though it is exhausting for me to depart, it is time for a brand new chapter that I’m actually wanting ahead to,” he mentioned.
“I’ve been racing in opposition to Acura for the previous seven years and so they’ve at all times been a fierce competitor, however I’m excited to now be on their aspect 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 crew.
“They have been the primary to provide 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 affix MSR/Acura
Picture by: SRO
“I’m actually excited to be becoming a member of the Acura MSR/HRC mission. Clearly the crew may be very hungry and prepared to push flat out, which sits properly with me as I’ve the identical kind of mentality.”
Workforce 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 feel that is simply cracking the floor on what they’ll accomplish collectively.
“After which with the addition of Renger and Nick, they each have in depth prototype expertise and have proven a variety of power the previous few seasons, so I feel they are going to be an enormous asset to the crew.”
