Wright Motorsports’ 2027 GTD lineup graphic pairs Adam Adelson and Tom Sargent in the No. 120 Porsche 911 GT3 R (992). Image credit: IMSA
Wright Motorsports has confirmed its 2027 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship plans, and on paper the change is one line long. Tom Sargent, the Australian Porsche Motorsport North America selected driver who has spent two seasons as the team’s Endurance Cup third driver, will share the No. 120 Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) with owner Adam Adelson for the full schedule. It will be Wright’s fourth consecutive GTD season.
Read that as housekeeping and you miss the point. My take: Wright has promoted the driver who was in the car for both of its 2026 podiums, and the release doubles as a quiet verdict on a full-season pairing that finished seventh in the class.
What the podiums say, and what they don’t
The two podiums IMSA cites for the No. 120 this year, third at the Twelve Hours of Sebring and second at Watkins Glen, both came with Sargent aboard. Treat that with care. In 2026 he drove the five longest races as the third man in the car, and podiums are team results. Wright’s own Sebring report credits Callum Ilott with taking third on the last lap after a late restart; Sargent started the race and shared the night stints that kept the car in the top five.
Still, there’s a pattern. At Watkins Glen, Porsche’s newsroom described Wright as nailing its strategy, reaching the front of GTD with 15 minutes left as rivals stopped for fuel, with the No. 120 finishing just behind the Manthey Porsche. IMSA counts three runner-up finishes for Sargent in total, including the 2025 Rolex 24, and says he and Adelson also scored two podiums together last year. That is the kind of résumé a team owner can point to when he explains why this seat is going to the guy he knows.
The seventh-place problem
The other half of this story is the partner who isn’t named. IMSA’s release doesn’t mention Ilott, who ran the full season with Adelson in 2026 while also racing in IndyCar, according to Wright’s own announcement last December. Whether he is leaving, staying or slotting into the endurance lineup, the release doesn’t say, so neither will I.
What it does say is that Adelson and Ilott were seventh in the 2026 GTD standings. Adelson and Elliott Skeer were sixth in 2025 and 11th in 2024. The headline signing finished a place behind the previous year’s pairing. Against that backdrop, promoting a driver with two years of team history looks less like a reshuffle and more like Wright choosing continuity over star power. Adelson makes that case himself, pointing to a relationship with Sargent that works both on and off the track.
That choice is also where the risk sits. In a class this deep, the owner-driver’s seat is the one every other decision is built around, and Adelson’s single WeatherTech Championship win, at Indianapolis in 2024, is the benchmark he’ll be measured against. Pairing him with a teammate who has grown inside the program is sensible. It is not the same thing as fixing the pace.
Where the bet can go wrong
Sargent’s 2026 IMSA seat time came in the longest races, where three drivers share the load and strategy can cover for a bad stint. Full-time means the rest of the calendar too, with two drivers and fewer places to hide. The release points to his sprint credentials elsewhere, a one-off sweep of Porsche Carrera Cup North America wins at Long Beach this year in the new 992.2, which is encouraging but a different series with different cars and fields. Whether his endurance form survives a full GTD schedule is the open question for 2027.
What to watch
First, the third seat. With Sargent promoted, the release names no Endurance Cup third driver, so on paper Wright has a vacancy for Daytona and the other long races. Cadillac recently showed how a third-driver seat can become a full-time pipeline, as we noted on its 2027 GTP lineup; the GTD version of that question is now Wright’s to answer.
Second, the early rounds. Adelson said Wright’s goal is to “fight for wins and a championship,” from a team with 112 WeatherTech Championship starts, five wins and seven poles, plus a 2021 GTD Endurance Cup title. That is a big ask from a seventh-place baseline, particularly in a field as crowded as the one we examined when Ferrari won the GTD Endurance Cup. And with Porsche customer teams winning plenty of races, as in our look at Porsche’s BoP complaint and JDC-Miller, there is no shortage of Porsches to beat.
If Sargent’s results carry over, Wright will have found its answer cheaply. If they don’t, it will have spent a year learning that the podiums belonged to the format, not the driver.
Lead image credit: IMSA
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