Expanded GTD Field for Sprint Cup Season Opener at Mid-Ohio

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

Next weekend’s Acura Sports Car Challenge presented by the TLX Type S will see an expanded entry of GT Daytona cars as the opening round of the IMSA WeatherTech Sprint Cup kicks off.

IMSA released Wednesday a 26-car entry for the third round of the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season, with more than half of the entries comprising of GTD machinery.

It includes the arrival of several Sprint Cup-0nly teams including Gradient Racing and the previously-confirmed Compass Racing and CarBahn with Peregrine Racing efforts.

Marc Miller and Till Bechtolsheimer will return to Gradient’s Acura NSX GT3 Evo for the Sprint Cup season alongside another Acura entered by Compass for Mario Farnbacher and Jeff Kingsley.

Richard Heistand and Jeff Westphal, meanwhile will pilot CarBahn’s Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo.

Only a single Team Hardpoint EBM Porsche 911 GT3 R is entered for Mid-Ohio, with Rob Ferriol moving over to the No. 88 entry alongside Katherine Legge.

The team expanded and had planned to contest a full season with two cars including an-female lineup of Legge and Christina Nielsen, with Earl Bamber alongside Ferriol in the No. 99 Porsche.

Bamber nor Nielsen are now not due to take part in the Mid-Ohio round.

The 14-car GTD field is still one more car that took part in the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in March.

Other driver changes since Sebring include the planned returns of Ryan Hardwick and Misha Goikhberg to Wright Motorsports and Grasser Racing Team, respectively. 

Six DPi cars are set for the first two-hour and 40-minute race of the season while a half-dozen LMP3 cars are currently entered but expected to jump to seven with Wednesday’s announcement of Andretti Autosport stepping up to WeatherTech Championship competition.

Felipe Fraga is slated to make his first start of the season in the No. 74 Riley Motorsports Ligier JS P320 Nissan while Austin McCusker’s co-driver in the No. 7 Forty7 Motorsports Duqueine D08 Nissan has yet to be determined.

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