Renger van der Zande and Nick Yelloly have joined Acura for its 2025 IMSA SportsCar Championship GTP campaign with Meyer Shank Racing after leaving Cadillac and BMW.
Two-time Daytona 24 Hours winner van der Zande has switched to the Honda brand after seven seasons with Cadillac, first with the Wayne Taylor Racing team with which he won the IMSA blue riband enduro in 2019 and ’20 and then Chip Ganassi Racing.
Yelloly has made the move from BMW, which announced his departure on Monday, after six years as a factory driver, in which time he won the Nurburgring and Spa GT3 24-hour enduros and took a first IMSA win for the German marque’s M Hybrid V8 LMDh in IMSA last year.
He and Van der Zande will be the full-season drivers in one of the pair of Acura ARX-06 LMDhs fielded in the GTP class by MSR, which is returning to IMSA after a one-year break.
The other car will 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 found to have manipulated information from its tyre pressure sensors, and was fined and given a points deduction but retained the win.
The team, which was out of contract with Acura at the end of the season, was not retained as Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti undertook a planned expansion to two cars.
WTR has now returned to Cadillac for 2025, which precipitated the return of MSR in conjunction with the Honda Racing Corporation USA organisation (formerly known as Honda Performance Development) that runs the Acura LMDh programme.
HRC US will take a deeper role in the running of the cars at the tracks and will be responsible for engineering one of the entries in 2025.
Van der Zande thanked Cadillac for “everything they have done for me over the past seven seasons”.
“Although it's hard for me to leave, it's time for a new chapter that I am really looking forward to,” he said.
“I’ve been racing against Acura for the past seven years and they've always been a fierce competitor, but I’m excited to now be on their side and tap into their resources and see what we can do."
Yelloly also thanked his former employer for which he drove in the GTP ranks in 2023 and ’24 with the Rahal team.
“They were the first to give me a chance as a works driver back in 2019, and together we celebrated many great successes,” he said.
“I’m really excited to be joining the Acura MSR/HRC project. Clearly the team is very hungry and willing to push flat out, which sits well with me as I have the same type of mentality.”
Team boss Mike Shank said: “Putting Tom and Colin back in the driver's seat just made sense. The two of them had an incredible season in '23 and I think that's just cracking the surface on what they can accomplish together.
“And then with the addition of Renger and Nick, they both have extensive prototype experience and have shown a lot of strength the past few seasons, so I think they will be a big asset to the team.”
