DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Adam Adelson earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Southern California and comes from a successful family. He knew he wanted to somehow be involved in the car industry, so he started racing in 2020 to test himself personally and learn more about vehicle dynamics.
The past six years were a rapid journey for the 29-year-old, culminating in his acquisition of the successful Wright Motorsports racing team, finalized in December 2024 and formally announced in April 2025.
Since then, Adelson has worked hard to get up to speed in his new role as team owner while continuing to maintain a busy calendar as a developing Silver-rated driver, piloting Wright’s No. 120 Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) that competes in the Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) class of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. He also won last year’s Grand Touring Daytona X (GTDX) title in the single-driver IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge.
Adelson and co-driver Callum Ilott will be in action this weekend at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, a 100-minute sprint race for the WeatherTech Championship’s GTD and headline Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) classes.
They’re coming off a morale-boosting third place finish with IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup driver Tom Sargent at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, putting them seventh in the GTD standings – effectively fifth when you consider two competitors ahead of them are Michelin Endurance Cup-only.
The Wright IMSA effort headed to Sebring in a regrouping mode after dropping out of the season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona in just the third hour when a Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) car spun in heavy traffic in front of Adelson and he couldn’t avoid hitting it. The crash caused significant damage to the No. 120 Porsche and briefly sent Adelson to a nearby hospital for precautionary checks.
The competitive run to a podium finish at Sebring is what Adelson hopes is a blueprint for the rest of his first season with his good friend Ilott as his full-time co-driver. Adam’s teammate the last two years was his longtime coach, Elliott Skeer; the duo scored a victory in the 2024 TireRack.com Battle On The Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and four additional podium finishes.
“Oh, it was it was absolutely everything,” Adelson told reporters on a conference call organized by IMSA. “It’s been a tumultuous start to the season. I think circumstances really played into our hand at Sebring, but we were really on the back foot from Daytona and having a DNF there.
“I know it’s often said that in a wildly competitive series, where you know you’ll have different winners and different podium finishers in several other races, that fifth-place finishes on average will get you a championship – unless obviously there’s just some clearly dominant teams and cars. So, to be able to finish third and just score all those points is absolutely massive.
“But we’re going to be fighting from the back foot maybe for the whole season, unless we just have a magic Long Beach and (WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, the fourth round of the championship May 1-3).”
For Adelson, the biggest challenge of the last 12 months was how to learn on the job functioning as the team owner, while still maintaining the focus and dedication required for driving. It’s a diverse set of responsibilities, because as one of the leading customer Porsche teams in North America, Wright Motorsports fields entries in several series outside of IMSA’s flagship WeatherTech Championship.
He called it “a massive learning experience.”
“Now there’s a dichotomy of needing to be a leader and a figurehead for the team – finding the balance between the two when to put my team owner hat on and when to take that off and put my driver hat back on,” Adelson observed. “I feel like I’ve gotten in a really good rhythm, and my team are super supportive in cultivating the environment I need to do that.”
Adelson takes pride in Wright’s increased overall workload in 2026 as he plots a future path of growth for the organization.
“I’m absolutely thrilled,” he said. “Historically, Wright Motorsports has been considered one of the highest-caliber GTD teams in IMSA and GT3 teams in North American racing. At Wright Motorsports, we have championships in every series that a Porsche can race in. It was my prerogative to bring Wright Motorsports back up to the level of involvement in motorsport that it had several years ago, before John Wright decided to downsize and focus a little more on his home and family life.
“To see all of the employees and contractors who wanted to jump at the opportunity to come back and work for us, now that we have programs for them, I couldn’t be prouder,” he added. “Likewise, to see the enthusiasm of potential customers and eventually the customers that are now part of our team, and how happy and excited they are to be able to race with us. The goal is to always just keep pushing to improve in every aspect of how we operate.”
While Adelson was born in Las Vegas, he has called Southern California home for most of his life. Like the start of his 2026 WeatherTech Championship campaign, he called his experience in his first two Long Beach starts “tumultuous.”
“It’s a really important race for me and for the team specifically,” Adelson said. “It’s the first of the sprint rounds of the year. We had a good car and good speed last year, but we had a mistake in the pit stop that cost us several positions. My first year, we got collected in a crash, entirely not our fault.
“I think it’s just important for us to try and carry the momentum from Sebring and continue to try and get good results,” he added. “I think the track at Long Beach favors a car like the Porsche – a lot of low-speed corners and hard acceleration zones. Maybe fighting from the back foot means we have to take a little more risk. The drivers may have to go for it a little harder and, you know, go for more passes rather than the ‘protecting the car’ mindset. From strategy, just take those gambles and do what we can to be bold and end up at the front.”
