{"id":7832,"date":"2025-01-26T09:26:36","date_gmt":"2025-01-26T14:26:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/?p=7832"},"modified":"2025-01-27T09:30:10","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T14:30:10","slug":"acura-meyer-shank-captures-hard-fought-second-in-return-to-rolex-24-at-daytona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/26\/acura-meyer-shank-captures-hard-fought-second-in-return-to-rolex-24-at-daytona\/","title":{"rendered":"Acura Meyer Shank Captures Hard-Fought Second in Return to Rolex 24 At Daytona"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blomqvist stuns in final charge for the lead; sister No. 93 Acura finishes eighth after early suspension failure setback<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Daytona Beach, Fla. (26 January 2025) \u2013 Tom Blomqvist charged to a second-place finish in the 63rd\u00a0Rolex 24 At Daytona, giving Acura Meyer Shank Racing (\u201cAcura MSR\u201d) with Curb Agajanian a sensational start to the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blomqvist joined Colin Braun, Scott Dixon and Felix Rosenqvist on the second step of the podium in the No. 60 Acura ARX-06. Starting sixth, the team ran in contention for the entire event, placing in the top four for most of the final 14 hours.<\/p>\n

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While all four drivers took turns leading the race, the closing hours saw the No. 60 Acura run fourth, working hard to get into podium contention. A caution with two hours to go allowed the team to close the gap to the leaders \u2013 although still in fourth. A later caution set up a 38-minute sprint to the finish, and Blomqvist made the most of the opportunity. The Brit took third shortly after the restart, and then set his sights on the top-two competitors. Blomqvist took second with a pass with less than five minutes remaining, and wound up just 1.335-seconds shy at the checkered flag.<\/p>\n

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Looking to capture the endurance classic in its third-consecutive attempt, the 2022 and 2023 winners led 13 times for a total of 45 laps. Braun led 24-consecutive laps shortly after the midway point, leading the race four times for 30 laps. Dixon paced the field four times for eight laps, Rosenqvist three times for four laps, and Blomqvist twice for three laps.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was a frustrating day for the sister No. 93 Acura ARX-06 of Nick Yelloly, Renger van der Zande, Kaku Ohta, and Alex Palou.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yelloly qualified second on Thursday, missing the pole on the final lap by 0.291-seconds. Yelloly ran in podium contention throughout his stint, and was running second when he turned the car over to Ohta. The Japanese star led twice for 19 laps, and was leading the event at his pit stop.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Three-time IndyCar champ Palou was up next, and was running fourth when he slowed exiting the West Horseshoe early in the fifth hour. He radioed the team thinking he had a punctured tire, and brought out the second caution after stopping at the exit of Turn 6.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The car was towed to the pits and then moved to the paddock, where the damage was diagnosed as left-rear suspension failure, which caused the transmission to move and lose drive. After spending an hour in the garage, the car returned to the race, 40 laps down and out of contention.Returning to the race, the No. 93 team ran without drama for the remainder of the event, eventually finishing eighth in GTP.<\/p>\n

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The IMSA WeatherTech Championship continues with another endurance classic, the 63rd\u00a0Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring on March 15.<\/p>\n

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Meyer Shank Racing Team Quotes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Mike Shank:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cI\u2019m just incredibly proud of this group – we\u2019ve been together 10 weeks now. And to pull off this podium from a day that wasn\u2019t going our way, first with the 93 having problems early, but they hung in there and finished 8th which is awesome. And Tom (Blomqvist) just took a car that was just not happy with us and turned it into something that was just epic. I can\u2019t thank every single person from Acura MSR and HRC for staying with it, not giving up and trying to find ways to make it work and get us started on the right foot. I think we have a real shot at working for this championship and we\u2019re looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tom Blomqvist:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cFantastic result nonetheless. There were parts of this race where we thought \u2018this is going to be a long, long 24 hours.\u2019 We struggled for pace and the Porsches were extremely fast but thankfully the team did a fantastic job to get me in a good position at the end. I drove the wheels off the thing and managed to get one of the Porsches, but the other one was a little but too far ahead – just not enough time really. Who knows what could have happened with a few more laps. I\u2019m obviously extremely happy for everyone, it\u2019s a good start to the season and good points. Huge thanks to everyone at Acura MSR, Acura and HRC. It\u2019s a big joint venture this year with the team, there\u2019s a lot more people involved and there\u2019s a huge amount of effort and resources that\u2019s gone into this program and it\u2019s definitely a good way to start and let\u2019s roll on to Sebring.”<\/p>\n

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Colin Braun:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cObviously great result, what a way to start the season and start the new rebirth with HRC and Acura MSR. Second is a great result and Daytona is so important and winning is everything so in one way it\u2019s an amazing start and in another it\u2019s like \u2018aw man.\u2019 But the guys executed really well. Both Felix and Scott did a great job and Tom killed it at the end. Considering this is kind of the start of this new program, I think it\u2019s going to be a really good season. We have a lot of really good things to build on and continue to refine and improve and I think we are looking forward to keeping it going.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Scott Dixon:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cIt was a fun race, there were definitely some difficult parts throughout, not mistake free which is never great. But Acura, Honda and MSR did everything strategy-wise that we could – but we just had a bit too much tire degradation and that definitely made it a tough race, especially when we had to double stint [the tires] early. Tom did a great job at the end. I think that was the best result that we could have had, maybe if we had a little longer we would have had a better shot.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Felix Rosenqvist<\/strong>: \u201cPretty good ending for the 60 car. It\u2019s always a bit bitter sweet in these big events with a second place. But honestly, with the way things looked for a while we\u2019ll definitely take it. For these guys who are going to continue running the championship, it\u2019s good points in the bag. Tom did a demon stint in the end, that was incredible to watch, my heart was pounding. Really proud of all the guys, the teammates, the mechanics, crew and engineers that was a hell of an effort.\u201d:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nick Yelloly:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cFor the 93 car, obviously we had our technical issue with the rear suspension failure early on unfortunately. We had really good pace and qualified P2 and were able to stay there quite comfortably in the first couple of stints. Great effort from the team to get the car back out, albeit 40 laps down. From there it was just seeing what we could do to help the 60 car and get up as far to the front as we could. Great effort from Acura MSR and HRC and we have plenty more to come for the rest of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Renger van der Zande:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m super happy to see that the 60 car race all the way to P2, I think it was a team effort. It\u2019s a bitter feeling to have ended the race so early. But at the same time we\u2019re the crew that got the car out the fastest which means we got the most points from the people that had the same problem. We need to investigate what happened and why it [suspension] broke, but apart from that we learned a lot. We learned how we run this car, how we run this team. I think we can be proud of what today brought, but not the result that we wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kaku Ohta:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cIt was a huge honor to be a part of Acura Meyer Shank Racing and getting to race in the Rolex 24. I did a lot of laps, maybe six stints and now I am so tired. I felt like I drove a really clean race and I\u2019m happy about that. I even got to lead my first time out and that was really special. I know the car was fast and I wanted to win the race, of course, but this race is tough sometimes and unfortunately our car broke. But I\u2019m already looking forward to coming back and joining the team at Watkins Glen and I\u2019m so thankful to MSR and to HRC for this opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Alex Palou:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cSad day for the 93 car having a mechanical failure so early on, especially with it not being our fault. Sometimes it\u2019s a team mistake or driver mistake, so you know what you could have done differently, but this time it was just a failure and we couldn\u2019t have done anything differently. It\u2019s unfortunate, but happy at the same time we got running again. We got a lot of laps in for myself and for the team and that\u2019s going to help us be a bit stronger in Sebring. And obviously I\u2019m happy to see how Tom was fighting at the end and almost getting that win. It makes us hungry and I\u2019m looking forward to the next couple of races.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blomqvist stuns in final charge for the lead; sister No. 93 Acura finishes eighth after early suspension failure setback   Daytona Beach, Fla. (26 January 2025) [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7833,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-meyer-shank-racing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7834,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7832\/revisions\/7834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundaymanagement.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}