Will Acura switch provide van der Zande’s IMSA crowning glory?

The GTP paddock will look rather different when the IMSA SportsCar Championship reconvenes for its season-opening Daytona 24 Hours later this month.

Felipe Nasr will have a new team-mate to defend his title, after Penske Porsche Motorsport parted company with Dane Cameron. Nick Tandy shuffles into the #7 roster to become Nasr’s third co-driver in as many seasons, while Matt Campbell returns from the World Endurance Championship to resume his partnership with Mathieu Jaminet that yielded the 2022 GTD Pro crown.

For the first time since 2018, Action Express Racing’s Cadillac will not be steered by Pipo Derani, as Earl Bamber teams up with Jack Aitken, while Philipp Eng is the only driver remaining in the BMW roster from 2024. Dries Vanthoor will partner Eng, replacing Jesse Krohn, while Marco Wittmann and Sheldon van der Linde have been parachuted into the sister car previously driven by Connor De Phillippi and Nick Yelloly.

Then there’s the small matter of Wayne Taylor Racing taking over from Chip Ganassi Racing as the factory Caddy squad, WTR’s place as Acura’s works outfit taken by the returning Meyer Shank Racing team – back after sitting out 2023 and with an expanded two-car roster.

That whole merry-go round explains why Renger van der Zande will be racing an Acura – and not a Cadillac, as he has done since 2018 – in 2025. The Dutchman explains that “I was not planning to make a move somewhere else”, but once it was clear that Caddy would give its partner team the final say on drivers, with WTR ultimately keeping an unchanged line-up of Ricky Taylor/Filipe Albuquerque and Jordan Taylor/Louis Deletraz, his options to remain in IMSA dimmed.

“I wanted to stay in IMSA, it’s the best championship for me to be in,” van der Zande tells Autosport. Conversations with other brands were swift in forthcoming but MSR – an outfit he describes as a “powerhouse” – won the race for his signature.

Van der Zande, who reveals his decision was made in August, will be paired with Yelloly in an ARX-06 that will be engineered by HRC USA. They’ll join returning full-season #60 pairing Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun, who won on their last start together in the 2023 Petit Le Mans, with Ganassi IndyCar champion Alex Palou and Super Formula race winner Kakunoshin Ohta completing the roster in the #93 car for Daytona. Scott Dixon’s presence alongside Blomqvist and Braun for the enduros ensures Ganassi links on the other side of the garage too.

“Acura is very competitively driven to win races,” says van der Zande. “They are putting more into a factory programme than ever before. MSR is a team that I’ve always seen as pure racers, so I think the combination between MSR and Honda in North America is a really good one to win races.”

Winning races is something he’s done plenty of during seven years at Cadillac. Van der Zande ended that chapter on a high with victory at Petit Le Mans, his third, which helped to secure him a berth in Autosport’s top 50 drivers of 2024. A back-to-back Daytona victor with WTR in 2019-20, before joining Ganassi for 2021, he has just about every accolade on his IMSA CV other than a title in the top class – and as he quickly points out, a victory in the Sebring 12 Hours, where he finished second in 2018, 2019 and 2024.

To better that, he’ll have to get acquainted quickly with a car which is a very different beast compared to his recent home. Where the Cadillac V-Series.R is powered by a 5.5l normally-aspirated V8 and based on a Dallara chassis, the ORECA-based Acura is equipped with a 2.4-litre V6 turbo. Based on his experiences of testing at Daytona and Sebring, van der Zande calls the Acura “very sophisticated”.

“MSR is a team that I’ve always seen as pure racers, so I think the combination between MSR and Honda in North America is a really good one to win races” Renger van der Zande

“The technical side of the Acura is very, very interesting,” he notes. “From a driver’s perspective, there’s a lot more to work with. I feel this could be a really good package to fight with.”

The fresh perspectives that van der Zande and Yelloly can bring to the table will only help Acura’s bid for a first title of the GTP era, after Action Express Cadillac and PPM Porsche delivered the goods in the past two years. Although the deluge of Acura talent to Cadillac will mean that gains are not unique to the Honda brand, van der Zande is confident that their knowledge “will help to make the Acura stronger”.

“It’s actually nice to go with a fresh mind,” reflects van der Zande, who has plied his trade in IMSA since the union of the American Le Mans Series and Grand-Am for 2014 when he joined Starworks in the one-make LMPC class, which he won in 2016 with Alex Popow.

“It’s also the time when all the drivers go to other brands, so the information through the paddock is going to be stronger all over the place. I don’t see a big advantage there, but it’s fun to see how every manufacturer has its own approach and also how the drivers can make a difference in a different way.

Yelloly, van der Zande, Braun and Blomqvist combine to make up the Acura Meyer Shank Racing IMSA effort

Photo by: Meyer Shank Racing

“Colin Braun, I’ve been racing a lot against in the LMPC [days]. At the time we were fierce competitors, which was a fun time to look back at, and it’s very nice to work together with him. Obviously, Tom is very experienced and also very fast; on top of that, Alex Palou and Scott Dixon I know very well from the Ganassi times, so it feels like a group of drivers together who are super-strong.”

Will this be the year that his wait for a title ends? Van der Zande knows more than most that simply winning races won’t cut it. In 2022, he and Sebastien Bourdais won three times compared to the two of MSR’s champions Blomqvist and Oliver Jarvis, and in 2023-24 they had the same win tally as champions Derani/Alexander Sims and Nasr/Cameron.

While realistic that blending “a lot of new people” across the HRC and MSR organisations may take time, a process he considers “the main target” for the year, van der Zande sees no reason why the ingredients shouldn’t fall into place. After all, it was only due to the points lost for a tyre pressure infraction at Daytona that Blomqvist and Braun missed out on the title in 2023.

“We had a lot of bad luck in the championship fights; always been very close or having the most wins in the championship but not winning the title,” van der Zande concludes. “The team is a little new, so the only thing we can do is try not to have big mistakes and blend into the season and win some races, and that’s how you win titles.”

Should the amiable 38-year-old accomplish his mission, you’d be hard-pressed to find people that would begrudge him it.

Will union with MSR and Acura lead van der Zande to the GTP crown?

Photo by: Jake Galstad / Motorsport Images