Michael Shank Racing and Acura Motorsports have unveiled the two NSX GT3 race liveries they’ll campaign during next month’s Rolex 24 at Daytona International Speedway.
The cars will also be front and center for MSR’s efforts in the 2017 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and, per a team media release, “will feature striking ‘mirror image’ black, grey and white graphics on the team’s pair of Acura NSX GT3 entries.”
Check them out:
* First is the No. 86 car, which pays homage to Acura’s 30th anniversary in sports car racing. Similar to the paint scheme it first carried in 1986, the nose starts out with a black front before morphing into a grey cross hatch pattern and ending with a white scheme at the rear of the car.
Piloting the No. 86 will be Verizon Indianapolis 500 winner and former IndyCar Series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay, two-time GT class champ and 2014 24 Hours of Daytona winner Jeff Segal, fellow IMSA regular Ozz Negri of Brazil and American driver Tom Dyer.
* The No. 93 team, which commemorates 1993, the year Honda Performance Development was founded, will carry a paint scheme with a look reverse to that of the No. 86, starting with a white front that eventually morphs to a black rear deck.
The No. 93 driver lineup will IndyCar star Graham Rahal, sports car specialists Andy Lally and British racer Katherine Legge, and endurance specialist Mark Wilkins.
In addition, both cars will carry splashes of orange, which dates back to Acura Motorsports’ first entry into IMSA racing in the 1990s, as well as green, which indicates the cars are GT Daytona class entries.
“The debut of the Acura NSX GT3 at the prestigious Rolex 24 will mark the return of the Acura brand to IMSA sports car competition,” said Art St. Cyr, president of Honda Performance Development and Acura Motorsports. “We’ve aimed to race the NSX in North America since the car was just a sketch on paper, and we couldn’t be more excited than to debut at Daytona.”
Both MSR teams will take part in the “Roar Before the 24” IMSA open test on January 6-8, at DIS.
The opening round of the 12-race 2017 WeatherTech championship, the Rolex 24, takes place Jan. 28-29.
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