AllRacing

Additional full-time, Endurance Cup entries possible for 2026 IMSA field

IMSA President John Doonan hinted at the possibility of additional full-season and Michelin Endurance Cup entries for the 2026 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, beyond the 54 entries that were announced earlier on Thursday.

Following the State of the Series press conference, Doonan said: “There’s a couple – only because folks are finishing up putting their programs together. But everybody you saw on the screen today or in the news release is fully committed to the seas on, and couldn’t be prouder.”

RACER understands that Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL), whose 17-year affiliation with BMW will conclude after this weekend’s Motul Petit Le Mans, is the most prominent outfit whose place is being held on the 2026 grid. With no places open in GTP, it will most likely in the form of a GTD PRO or LMP2 entry.

Random Vandals Racing also look close to confirming a 2026 full-season plan. As early as May, team principal Paul Sparta had told RACER about his intentions to take the GT World Challenge America team to the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

“We have some unforeseen complications that don’t relate to BMW and don’t relate to us that have delayed things a little bit in terms of being able to confirm the exact nature of our WeatherTech participation,” Sparta said, referring to why his team didn’t appear on today’s announced entry list.

“Everybody’s working at it, but it has nothing to do with BMW or Random Vandals. We’re committed partners, we’re extremely happy with them, and I think they’re happy with us.

“I think with everybody here at Road Atlanta for Petit, I think we’ll hopefully be able to get it all cleared up within a day or two, and have some good things to say.

“Our hope would be to have a full-time entry, and then maybe a one-off on a couple of other fronts, but we’ll just have to see how it goes.”

Random Vandals has already confirmed a full-season IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge GS (GT4) effort anchored around the 2026-27 Diverse Driver Development Scholarship winner Nicky Hays, who will step up from the Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America series.

As it pertains to the 2026 Rolex 24 At Daytona, Doonan also revealed plans for another capacity grid, right at the 61-car limit – and likely a 2027 schedule reveal in March, in line with recent years.

“Based on interest, I think we’ll at least get there,” he said. “Because at one point in the entry process, based on people that expressed interest, we were north of 80, in the mid-80s, in fact. And when you start looking at those kinds of numbers, you start worrying about paddock space and pit lane space, parking and things like that.

“So that’s probably what you’ll see. We’ll announce the Rolex entry list down the road here, but to be able to get the full-season entry list out today… The fact that we’re doing it here, it used to be that this event was the State of the Sport, the schedule announcement, and you didn’t even know which teams were coming.

“And now we’ve done the schedule in March, which we hope to do again in March of ’26 for ’27 – and then to announce the entry list is pretty unique.”