- After winning the prestigious 24 Hours of Daytona in January, Meyer Shank Racing is being penalized for manipulating tire-pressure data sent to IMSA during the race.
- The team is losing 200 points in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, owner Mike Shank has been put on probation, and one engineer has been suspended indefinitely.
- However, the team remains the official winner of the race and will be allowed to keep the trophy, with the drivers holding onto the Rolex prize watches.
When the green flag flew for the final restart with 27 minutes left in the 2023 24 Hours of Daytona, the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06 streaked ahead, cruising to victory by just over four seconds. But now the team is coming under fire, with IMSA dishing out substantial penalties after Meyer Shank Racing was found to have manipulated tire-pressure data during the race.
After the race, Honda Performance Development (HPD)—which works closely with teams that run the top-class Acura GTP race cars—noticed discrepancies in the No. 60’s data and launched an investigation. They discovered that Meyer Shank Racing had made “intentional software offsets” in the tire pressures that were reported by the monitoring system—basically, the team was artificially inflating the tire pressure data, so the numbers sent to IMSA were higher than the pressures they were actually running.
This allowed Meyer Shank Racing to run its pressures below the prescribed minimums set by Michelin, which provides the tires for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, which could help improve traction under acceleration or in corners.
As a result of HPD’s discovery, the team and the drivers of the No. 60—Tom Blomqvist, Colin Braun, Helio Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud—were stripped of 200 of the 350 points earned in the race towards the full-season WeatherTech Championship. They also lost all points that go towards the Michelin Endurance Cup, which includes all races that are at least six hours long.
The team and drivers are also being fined $50,000 and will have to return the prize money from winning the 24 Hours of Daytona. Team owner Mike Shank is now on probation through June 30, while engineer Ryan McCarthy is on indefinite suspension and has lost his IMSA credential.
However, the official race results stand, meaning the No. 60 is still the winner, with the team getting to keep the trophy and the four drivers retaining the Rolex watches that are given out as prizes.
In a statement, Meyer Shank Racing said “We accept the series’ decision and have taken responsibility.” The team also stated that “the team member that was responsible is no longer with the organization” and that they “do not want this error to overshadow the tremendous effort that our team, drivers and all of our partners have put for to develop this new LMDh car.” This suggests that McCarthy acted alone in manipulating the data, and that it was not a concerted effort from the team as a whole to break the rules in an attempt to win the race.
HPD said in a statement from president David Salters, “We are extremely disappointed in the misconduct of the Meyer Shank Racing (MSR) team” and to have the two-year development of the ARX-06 “put into question is unacceptable.”
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Associate News Editor
Caleb Miller began blogging about cars at 13 years old, and he realized his dream of writing for a car magazine after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and joining the Car and Driver team. He loves quirky and obscure autos, aiming to one day own something bizarre like a Nissan S-Cargo, and is an avid motorsports fan.