DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Michael Shank spent Friday at his mother’s house in Ohio bitterly watching a timing and scoring feed from the first IMSA practice of the sports car season.
It was agonizing for the owner of the team that is the two-time defending winner of the Rolex 24 at Daytona, but was shut down at the end of 2023 in large part because of a cheating scandal that tarnished last year’s Rolex win.
“I’m just down, just bummed,” Shank told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “When it’s time for us not to be sports car racing, I’d like to be able to choose that, not have it chosen for us. That’s the biggest disappointment. We had a lot of success at a high level, and unfortunately we lost a partner and were not able to continue.”
Some six weeks after the 2023 victory — the third overall for the Shank organization and second consecutive in the most prestigious endurance race in the United States — IMSA ruled that Meyer Shank Racing had manipulated tire pressure data during the win and that Honda Performance Development self-reported the cheating. IMSA allowed the No. 60 ARX-06 to keep the victory, the Rolex watches and the trophy, but levied six substantial penalties against the team that ultimately led to the firing of an MSR engineer and the shuttering of the team.
MSR was the reigning IMSA champion at the time and jostling with fellow Acura team Wayne Taylor Racing for Honda’s dedicated support. Although Shank thought the team could repair its relationship with Honda and Acura, he could not. Honda moved its factory support to the Taylor team for a second entry.
Without the backing of a manufacturer, Shank had to close the IMSA program despite three 2023 wins, including the season finale, and a third-place finish in the final season standings.
“We were in a bad spot and we understood where we stood after that,” Shank said. “We got fixed what we needed to get fixed, we focused on the best possible finishes we could achieve,…
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