Heinricher Racing will enter the 2020 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
The team will change its character from being an all-female team, to act as the second part of Meyer Shank Racing with all-male drivers, just like #86 was it 2019. Meyer Shank Racing will continue to run the effort in 2020.
There will be some well known faces in #57.
Alvaro Parente has previously raced in #86 together with Katherine Legge, and will now return to the IMSA series, where he will be joined by Misha Goikhberg. This will be the first time for Goikhberg to tackle an Acura NSX GT3 Evo. He has previous raced prototypes, with the JDC-Miller Motorsports and their Cadillac DPi #85 being the most recent.
Photo: JJ Media
Parente and Goikhberg will do the full GTD season together, while they will be joined by Trent Hindman as the third driver at the four endurance rounds. AJ Almendinger will be an addition to the line-up at Daytona 24 Hours. It will be the third season for Hindman at MSR, having won the GTD Championship together with Mario Farnbacher in 2019. This will be the 13th time for AJ Almendinger at the Daytona 24 Hours, so let’s hope that people within the team aren’t too superstitious… AJ has raced for Michael Shank in past years too, in both Daytona Prototypes and more recently in the GTD cars.
We have to wait for the design of #57 to be revealed, but one thing is for certain – there won’t be any Caterpillar branding on the car, since they didn’t extend the deal with Heinricher Racing. Jackie Heinricher has found some new partners to sponsor the car in 2020, but she didn’t manage to do so before Katherine Legge and Christina Nielsen had signed for the Grasser Racing Team, after racing the CAT car throughout 2019.
Mario Farnbacher will share #86 with Matt McMurry, who gets his GTD debut too. Their third and potential fourth driver at the Daytona 24 Hours race hasn’t been announced yet.
The testing will start 3-5 January 2020, before the opening round of the season will be run three weeks later.
