United Autosports USA enters this weekend aiming to win its second consecutive Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona in LMP2, and preferably in simpler circumstances than last year.
The history books will say that the team’s #22 ORECA 07 – Gibson triumphed 12 months ago, but the Anglo-American outfit does not have the pit box celebrations and victory lane photos from the event to show for it.
In fact, they left Daytona International Speedway believing that they had come up just short, only for a post-race penalty for excessive skid block wear to relegate original winner Tower Motorsports to the back of the field, and hand United victory.
“It was quite disappointing,” reflects United Autosports’ managing director Max Gregory.
“We ended up celebrating it at Sebring. They gave the drivers the trophies and the watches, and they had to remake the podium. But what was quite nice was that we realised the guys hadn’t celebrated it, so we took them all after Sebring to Miami.
“There’s a Soho House in Miami, and we booked a private part of the beach there and had a bit of a gathering for them with all the drivers. But absolutely, the aim this weekend is to win it on track.”
Three of last year’s winning quartet, Daniel Goldberg, Paul di Resta and Rasmus Lindh, have returned to the #22 squad for 2026, with Grégoire Saucy joining the crew in place of James Allen.
Bronze-ranked Goldberg, who is entering his third year with United, was one of the standouts of IMSA’s LMP2 class last season, winning two of the first three races and sustaining a title challenge until a suspension failure at Petit Le Mans cost United dearly.
“Dan has come on in leaps and bounds since we first started with him,” Gregory says.
“His first Daytona was a disappointment back in 2024, we ended up in the wall fairly early on in the race. But from then, he’s taken a lot of learning, and he’s getting himself in shape. He’s properly training and taking it extremely seriously.
“He’s doing plenty of testing, because he realises that’s the best way to get the best out of himself. He’s testing at every track this year for two days, I think, and preparing himself incredibly well.”
Outside of the arrival of Saucy, who raced for United in both the ELMS and FIA WEC last year, the other key change for the #22 ORECA is a new race engineer in the form of Scott Hecker.
Hecker, who used to act as the car’s performance engineer, is part of United’s permanent team stateside, and is tasked with helping to extract the last tenths out of the ORECA package.
With the all-conquering LMP2 machine entering its 10th season in competition, and the majority of tips and tricks now well known, the margin between success and failure is becoming increasingly narrow. A quick scan down the results of last weekend’s Roar Before The 24 proves this, with only 0.393 seconds covering the top 11 cars during Saturday’s morning session.
“Everybody’s looking at absolutely everything, and so are we,” Gregory explains.
“It’s good to have Scott full-time in the US. He’s with the cars every day, so can spend time setting them up, refining the bodywork, which is very important on these cars, and just making sure they come here A1.”
United again heads to Daytona with a numerical advantage over the majority of its opposition, as one of only two multi-car operations in LMP2.
The #2 ORECA will be driven by Rolex 24 debutant Phil Fayer, alongside Ben Hanley, Mikkel Jensen and Hunter McElrea.
Fayer tested with the team at Daytona last year but made his first LMP2 starts with United in last year’s sprint races at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and Road America, and is also contesting the Asian Le Mans Series with the team, as he prepares for his maiden full-season IMSA tilt.
Before his WeatherTech championship debut, the Canadian underwent an extensive test programme with United, and joined GS squad Czabok-Simpson Motorsport for multiple IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge rounds to get back up to speed following over a decade away from racing.
“Phil’s hugely competitive,” Gregory says. “He absolutely aims for the stars, and sometimes it’s just tempering his enthusiasm and getting him to focus on the little bits that add up.”
Aiming for the stars has clearly rubbed off on Gregory, who doesn’t believe a title challenge is off the cards for the #2 ORECA this season.
“Anything can happen in IMSA, so that’s the kind of interesting part of it, isn’t it? If you’re consistent, and Phil can bring it home and give it to his exceptional teammates, there’s no reason why they can’t.”
The #2 ORECA was one of only two full-season LMP2 entries which failed to finish on the podium last season, with the high points being pole position at Indianapolis and a pair of fourth-place finishes. Gregory hopes that the consistency of having Fayer in the car for the full season, instead of the Canadian rotating with Nick Boulle, will help the car return to form.
“For the guys, it’s great,” he says.
“We had a bit of a difficult time of it last year with a few driver changes. Chopping and changing is difficult, and that particular car had a tough year. Most of the crew are back together, same engineer, same number one mechanic, so I think they’re quite happy to have a bit of consistency for the year, especially with somebody as good as Phil, who has shown a lot of promise.”
Outside of the IMSA Sportscar Championship, 2026 is set to be a significant year for United Autosports, as McLaren’s LMDh challenger starts on track running ahead of its 2027 race debut.
This programme, which has seen United withdraw from the FIA WEC’s LMGT3 category, is set to have minimal impact on its IMSA effort, although the proximity of the team’s US base to the Windshear wind tunnel, where Hypercars are now homologated, is set to prove convenient.
“The US thing happens completely independently of anything else that we do, led by Billy Glavin,” Gregory explains.
“We now have 6-8 full-time people in the US, just to make sure that the preparation and everything that we do in IMSA is the same as what we do in ELMS and everywhere else. The IMSA programme is actually probably going to have a little hand in our Hypercar preparations, because the workshop is just around the corner from the wind tunnel in Windshear.”
Despite the Hypercar deal, Gregory says that United is highly unlikely to follow in the footsteps of its former LMP2 sparring partners Signatech, WRT and Jota and exit the second-tier prototype formula. As it closes in on a decade in LMP2 competition, Gregory makes it clear that the team plans to stick around for the long-term.
“We all know top-class racing goes in booms and bust,” he said. “We want to ensure that we’ve got an underpinning of a good business model, so that if it ever comes to an end, which we hope it doesn’t, we’ve got something to fall back on, and we can look after our guys and we can continue racing.
“We had a lot of conversations to try and figure that out and understand what the mainstay of our business should be. And for me, that’s LMP2.”
Images courtesy of IMSA & United Autosports
