In the third hour of Saturday’s Petit Le Mans, Tom Blomqvist was fighting for the lead through traffic when he had to slow up for an unsettled LMP2 prototype. He got tagged from behind by another car and rushed to the pits with a broken left-rear toe link.
Meyer Shank Racing’s crew of mechanics rushed to get the engine cover off the white and pink #60 Acura ARX-06 and repair the suspension before sending four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves into the car and back into the race, nearly two laps down. It seemed as if any hope of the team winning its last race in the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship, after 19 consecutive years at the highest levels of American sportscar racing, was over.
Fast forward to the finish and there stood the Meyer Shank Racing team of Blomqvist, Castroneves, and Colin Braun – jubilant and emotional after winning a wild and eventful race before the people within the team go their separate ways.
“It’s incredible. I think good things happen to good guys, and I think this couldn’t be more true,” Blomqvist said after his co-drivers fought back from the broken suspension and avoided any other carnage to win the 26th annual ten-hour endurance classic at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
“We’ve won three races this year. We don’t have a championship, but I mean, I couldn’t be more proud – and at the same time, grateful to have spent these last two seasons with this team. We’ve done a lot together and won some good races. It’s just such a good team atmosphere. It’s like a family, and they work hard. They never give up.
We don’t have a championship, but I mean, I couldn’t be more proud
“Obviously, we had our issue. If you take that issue into account, hey, maybe we’d be a bit up the road there. But, you know, that was our bad,” Blomqvist added, in reference to the 200-point deduction and heavy monetary fine that Meyer Shank Racing ingested when manufacturer partner Honda reported the team’s tyre pressure data manipulation at the Daytona 24 Hours to IMSA.
There are still those with a strong sense of justice, whether they are sportscar racing outsiders or hardcore fanatics, who felt that MSR escaped real consequences. But as the year went on – through victories and podiums, the unfortunate head injuries that have left Simon Pagenaud indefinitely sidelined from racing, and then MSR’s announcement that its IMSA operations would be going on hiatus, it left only a few loud and angry hardline holdouts still holding that grudge from seven months ago.
And even they’d have to admit that Meyer Shank Racing put together a gutsy and classy effort to win the race.
“We just kept our heads down,” said Braun, who notched his 25th career win in all classes of IMSA competition. “We just focused on trying to play what we could. I mean, I knew we had a fast Acura. I think we knew we’d have yellows, we knew we’d have a chance to get our laps back. We didn’t panic. The guys did a great job on strategy. Obviously, Tom and Helio did a great job on the driving side to kind of stay in the hunt. And when we got our laps back, we had to be fast at times, had to be smart and to save the car, and I think we did all those things really well today.”
“I mean, at one point it looked like our race was done with about two hours to go. When I jumped out of the car, we were dying out there on some pretty old tyres,” Blomqvist explained.
“But the guys never gave up. Some things came our way, but we capitalised on that.”
After getting back on the lead lap with savvy driving and the assistance of wave-around courtesy of Safety Car carnage, the defining moment of the race came with an hour to go, when the controversial collision between Pipo Derani and Filipe Albuquerque resulted in a lengthy full-course yellow. Instead of pitting in to replenish the tank of fuel and electrical power, Braun stayed out on track to gain track position, placing him second behind longtime friend and rival Renger van der Zande in the #01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R which had dominated more than half the race.
“I knew it was gonna be hard. We’ve raced each other for a long time – back in the ALMS (American Le Mans Series) days in LMPC (Prototype Challenge), and you know, it’s always fun. For me, Renger’s always raced super hard but super fair and clean. I knew it was gonna be kind of all to play for, and I thought if we could get clean air, we were going to be in good shape.”
On cold tyres, Braun got a great run out of turn 11 as the Safety Car retreated to the pits, and he cut and thrust his way past and into the lead with 30 minutes left. “I just kind of put it all on the line. We didn’t have a whole lot to lose. And I think they were kind of in the same boat with the championship, so I knew it was going to be a big commitment.
“And that was awesome. It was nice to make it happen. And then, just kind of put my head down and tried to hold on.”
“I mean, those restarts… He’s been phenomenal this year on those cold tyres,” Blomqvist said of Braun. “I think no one likes those cold tyre restarts, but he does. I mean, he was the right guy in the car there at the right time.
“So hats off to him, hats off to Helio. It’s been an absolutely fantastic day.
“To see the emotion on everyone’s face within the team when we get a result like this when everyone knows it’s basically the last race and they’re not coming back next year…that was really special and cool to see,” recalled the Anglo-Swedish driver.
Braun, a “people’s champion” who’s paid his dues in endurance racing from his debut as a teenager to being a versatile champion in GT cars and pro-am prototypes, with a venture into stock car racing weaving between them, has now come of age and proven he can run with the best and brightest that race in IMSA’s top category.
I don’t know if it’s redemption. But we’re certainly a ‘fight to the end’ kind of team
“I don’t know if it’s redemption,” Braun said of the victory. “But I mean, we’re certainly a ‘fight to the end’ kind of team, and we just put our heads down and kept doing the job that we’ve been doing all year. I think it’s just a testament to the sort of group that Mike’s built, and the tenacity – we’re just really, really hungry to go in and win races. We can be aggressive, and we can take some chances.
“I think as Tom said, good things happen to good people. Just a super good group of people that are all just diehard, trying to win every race we can.
“Nothing really got in our way. We just kept fighting all the way.”
There’s not much mystery as to what happens next for MSR. Shank declared upon pausing the IMSA programme for 2024, “we are not going anywhere, we’ll be gone for now, but definitely not forever.”
Blomqvist will be one of two new additions to the IndyCar Series team which will be MSR’s sole focus next year. It’s a tough task, but if anyone can do it, it’s this son of a World Rally Champion, a versatile driver who’s tackled everything from DTM and prototypes to EV racing of multiple flavours, and much more – and one of the few men who can legitimately say he’s beaten the three-time Formula One World Champion Max Verstappen on generally equal terms, back in the 2014 European Formula Three Championship.
The ever-energetic Castroneves, who not only won his record-equalling fourth Indy 500 with MSR, but also became a series champion in IMSA with Acura, became a minority stakeholder at the team with at least one more try at a fifth Indy 500 win before he hangs up the helmet.
And as for Braun? Surely, if good things happen to good people, this likeable, talented driver won’t be left out of the picture in GTP next year…right?
“I don’t know exactly,” he said of his future.
“I’m not sure – I’m still trying to put it all together. I’ve taken it race by race, trying to do as well as I can. And I think this year has been great for me personally.
“Obviously, I spent a long time at CORE Autosport before this. And I feel like I did a lot of the same kind of things, just in the lower categories, and so it didn’t maybe get the recognition that it has now.
“But yeah, it’s been really good for me. It’s been a great year, and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next, for sure.”
Images © Michael L. Levitt / IMSA; Martin W. Spetz / Dailysportscar
