Acura's Final IMSA GTP Race: Petit Le Mans 2026 Preview

Acura is ending its IMSA GTP program the same way it plans to spend its racing money next year: with IndyCar drivers. When the two Meyer Shank Racing ARX-06s take the green at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta on Saturday, the No. 60 will have six-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon in its driver rotation and the No. 93 will have Alex Palou, who locked up his fifth IndyCar title — his fourth in a row — at Milwaukee on Aug. 30.

Petit Le Mans closes the 2026 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, and Acura confirms it is also the ARX-06’s last event before the program pauses. Ten hours, two cars, no championship on the line for either of them. That combination makes Acura one of the more interesting teams to watch in a race it can’t use to win a title.

The Lineup Is the Business Plan

Put the two driver lists next to Acura’s April announcement and they tell the same story. On April 22, Acura and Honda Racing Corporation USA said they would pause the GTP program after 2026 while growing the brand’s IndyCar presence, starting with Acura colors on Marcus Armstrong’s Meyer Shank car at this year’s Indianapolis 500. The release didn’t give a reason for stepping back from GTP. It did include Acura brand marketing manager Hundy Liu calling IndyCar “a powerful opportunity to build awareness for our Acura brand.”

So the sports car program’s final 10 hours are built around the two biggest names in the series Acura is moving into. Whether anyone in marketing drew it up that way or not, it works as a handoff: the outgoing program runs a trailer for the incoming one.

No. 60 Acura ARX-06: Tom Blomqvist, Colin Braun, Scott Dixon
No. 93 Acura ARX-06: Renger van der Zande, Nick Yelloly, Alex Palou — in the “Thank You” livery

The stars are the headline, but the full-timers carry the weight. IMSA’s pre-race notes show Blomqvist with two Road Atlanta wins (2022 and 2023) and two poles (2022 and 2025). Braun shared the 2023 win. Acura lists Dixon as a two-time Petit winner. For the third driver in each car, the job at Petit is simple and unforgiving: bank your laps, get through the GTD traffic cleanly, and hand the car back in one piece. The grid is 54 cars, and only 11 of them are GTP. That leaves 43 slower cars to lap for 10 hours, and the last few of those hours come after sunset.

The No. 93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing ARX-06 GTP car in its special Thank You livery on track at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. — The No. 93 Acura ARX-06 in the “Thank You” livery it will carry again at Petit Le Mans. Photo: © 2026 American Honda Motor Co., Inc.

Nothing Left to Protect

Two weeks ago, the No. 93 still had an outside title shot going into Indianapolis, 185 points back. That’s over. Van der Zande and Yelloly finished seventh at the Brickyard and arrive in Georgia third in the GTP drivers’ standings, 271 points behind Jack Aitken. No amount of Petit strategy realistically closes that. Aitken’s No. 31 Whelen Cadillac leads Porsche’s Laurin Heinrich by 147 points, and Cadillac leads Porsche by 136 in the manufacturers’ table.

That’s a real strategic advantage for Acura. A team defending a points position runs the percentages: pit with the pack under full-course yellows, skip the tire gamble, and never make the move at 9 p.m. that could put the car in a gravel trap. Meyer Shank has none of those constraints. It can split its two cars onto different fuel and tire plans, stretch stints to set up a caution, or chase track position when the contenders are playing it safe.

There’s evidence this team will take that kind of swing. The No. 93’s win at Long Beach in April came from staying out longer in the first stint after traffic cost it a spot to Aitken’s Cadillac. That call put the car in the right place through the pit cycle and a full-course caution, and van der Zande then held off Frederik Vesti by 0.818 seconds on tires he said were completely finished. The raw pace is there too: Blomqvist put the No. 60 on pole at Indianapolis with a 1:14.674, his second straight Indy pole. “Coming toward the last couple of races of the program, so to get small little wins is obviously nice for everyone,” he said afterward. Turning qualifying speed into results has been the harder part. A 10-hour race gives the team a lot more time to fix that than a sprint does.

An Acura with nothing to lose also affects everyone else. If a Meyer Shank car is up front taking points away from both Cadillac and Porsche, the lead Cadillac’s ideal Saturday of cruising to the title gets harder, with Porsche already in the middle of its own Balance of Performance argument.

Road Atlanta Is Home Turf

If Acura has to leave from somewhere, this is the right place. Counting Acura and HRC US together (the latter was Honda Performance Development until the rename), the company has 11 wins at Road Atlanta. Its first came in 1991, the start of three straight. The HPD-era ARX-01g and ARX-03b added another three-peat in LMP2 from 2011 through 2013.

Meyer Shank’s Petit record with Honda’s racing arm reads like a timeline of the modern prototype rules:

2016: Won in a Ligier JS P2 Honda, leading a Honda 1-2.
2022: Won the last DPi race with Blomqvist, Oliver Jarvis and Helio Castroneves in the ARX-05, sweeping the drivers’, teams’ and manufacturers’ titles for Acura and MSR.
2023: Won again in the hybrid ARX-06’s first season, with Blomqvist, Braun and Castroneves.

A win Saturday would be the partnership’s fourth Petit victory, and it would bookend the ARX-06’s IMSA career with wins at the same track. When Acura announced the pause, its prototype effort since 2018 (DPi first, then GTP) had 25 wins, 34 poles and 10 championships. That’s the context behind the No. 93’s “Thank You” livery. It’s a tribute to a real record, not just decoration.

“Pause” Is Carrying a Lot of Weight

Acura has used “pause” every time, and it has never put a date on it. The April release gave no timeline for a return and said nothing about what happens to the ARX-06 hardware. Until Acura says otherwise, “pause” should be read as “no factory GTP entry in 2027,” and nothing more specific than that.

For IMSA, the practical effect is simple. This weekend’s GTP entry has five manufacturers: Acura, Cadillac, Porsche, BMW and Aston Martin. Next season starts with one fewer, and the Meyer Shank crew that has won Petit three times will be focused on IndyCar, where Honda already clinched the 2026 manufacturers’ title. Watching Palou and Dixon take turns in the ARX-06 on Saturday, it’s easy to see which of those two programs Acura now considers the priority.

What to Watch, and How

Split strategies: If the No. 60 and No. 93 end up on different fuel windows early, Meyer Shank is covering both outcomes of a caution rather than running both cars the same way.
The IndyCar stints: Watch the gap to the leader before and after Dixon’s and Palou’s stints. The number to judge them on is net time gained or lost through GTD traffic, not their fastest lap.
The Cadillac clinch: Aitken’s 147-point cushion is big, not bulletproof. If an Acura is running near the front, it can make the champion’s day harder.
Broadcast: The green flag is set for 12:10 p.m. ET on Saturday, Oct. 3. NBC carries 12–3 p.m. ET, NBCSN takes over from 3–10:30 p.m., and Peacock streams it flag to flag. International viewers can watch on IMSA’s YouTube channel, and Radio Le Mans has live audio via IMSA.com.