MSR in Race to Rebuild No. 93 Acura After Heavy Accident

Photo: John Dagys

Michael Shank Racing is in a race to rebuild its No. 93 Acura NSX GT3 following Katherine Legge’s heavy crash in Saturday’s final practice for the Continental Tire Road Race Showcase at Road America.

The GT Daytona class contender sustained considerable front-end chassis damage in the impact at Canada Corner, with the Ohio-based crew electing to repair the chassis instead of reverting to a spare car, according to team owner Michael Shank.

“There’s a lot of chassis damage,” Shank told Sportscar365. “The front subframe, we’re just going to repair it the best we can and re-clip it when we get home.

“We have championship implications that we’re dealing with here so we debated how we were going to do it between the two cars.

“We’ve settled on the [93] car starting at the back and just do the best we can with it.”

Shank said Legge and Andy Lally, who currently sit third in the GTD title race, could be placed in the team’s No. 86 Acura in a worst-case scenario, should they find additional unrepairable damage to the Acura during the rebuild.

While RealTime Racing, based 30 minutes south of Road America in Saukville, Wis., has a spare chassis at its shop, Shank said it would be a “huge process” to build up the car in a 24-hour period and they would likely run out of time to make the grid.

Members of the Peter Cunningham-owned team, however, have already offered their assistance in the rebuild, which Shank is targeting to be complete in time for warmup tomorrow morning.

“We’ll double, triple team the car [in the rebuild], Ozz [Negri] will [qualify the 86 car] and then we’ll hit warmup,” Shank said.

“If we find anything really bad on that car, we’ll have the option to do some juggling if we wanted to.”

Shank praised the crash structure of the Acura, in what he said was the biggest hit by one of his Acuras so far.

“I’m happy how the car held up,” he said. “We can rebuild. It’s just too bad. It’s racing sometimes and racing happens.

“I’m sorry that we have to go through this with all of the guys, but this a track where we can definitely make up positions up, like we have all year, in the pits.

“We can still hopefully have a top-five showing if all goes well. We’ll see.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John