Former IndyCar and Indy NXT (Lights) driver Jacob Abel is set to make his IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship debut for Era Motorsport, as reported by RACER’s Marshall Pruett yesterday evening.
Abel, 24, will round out the lineup in the #18 Era Motorsport ORECA 07-Gibson for the five Michelin Endurance Cup races at Daytona, Sebring, Watkins Glen, Road America, and Road Atlanta. For his IMSA LMP2 debut in the Rolex 24 At Daytona, Abel will share the car with Naveen Rao, Ferdinand Habsburg, and Logan Sargeant.
The 2024 Indy NXT championship runner-up endured a difficult 2025 IndyCar season with Dale Coyne Racing, punctuated by a failure to qualify for the Indianapolis 500, but was able to land a ride with Vector Sport RLR in the 2025/26 Asian Le Mans Series, and made his competitive LMP2 debut last month in Sepang.
“This is something I’m really excited about,” Abel told Pruett. “We worked hard to continue in IndyCar, but that didn’t work out for this season. We already have the Asian Le Mans program going and that made making my first real move into IMSA in LMP2 an easy decision with Era.”
Before his LMP2 debut in Sepang, Abel accrued sports car racing experience in GT3s, as part of the former HPD Academy in North America: In 2019, he ran six races in GT World Challenge America for Racers Edge Motorsports and scored a Pro-Am class win at Watkins Glen in their Acura NSX GT3 Evo. In 2021, Abel made a one-off IMSA WeatherTech series debut at Laguna Seca, getting back behind the wheel of an NSX GT3 for Compass Racing.
According to Pruett, Abel had been in talks with a GTD PRO team before deciding to join Era Motorsport for the Endurance Cup rounds.
Abel will join fellow IndyCar drivers Kyffin Simpson (Tower Motorsports), Nolan Siegel (Inter Europol Competition), and Christian Rasmussen (AO Racing) who will all be in action at Daytona.
Feature image © Asian Le Mans Series
