Upon Michael Shank’s graduation from high school, his parents made him a deal concerning the money they’d been saving for his future.
He could either use it to go to college, or he could use it to further his racing career.
He chose the latter, bought a transporter and concentrated on racing.
His decision has paid off, although not the way he thought it would. Rather than making headlines as a driver, the 54-year-old Shank is earning championships as a team owner.
Shank’s willingness to learn to crawl before running and being open- minded enough to join forces with some of his competitors to share expertise and resources, and with his talent to attract both sponsors and investors, his team has blossomed into a factory-backed powerhouse competing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and the NTT IndyCar Series.
Michael Shank Racing, now known as Meyer Shank Racing after the 2018 addition of co-owner Jim Meyer, has come a long way. Meyer is the chief executive officer of SiriusXM.
The team has new digs to reflect its accomplishments, too. Last September, it broke ground on a $5 million, 40,000-square-foot headquarters in Pataskala, Ohio, which is about 20 miles east of Columbus. The facility houses both the sports car and Indy car programs.
Chosen by Acura as the factory GTD team to debut the new Acura NSX GT3 in 2017, last November the team secured its second consecutive IMSA WeatherTech Championship with that car.
The 2019 title came with drivers Trent Hindman and Mario Farnbacher. Running with Curb-Agajanian Performance Group, in 2020 the team not only won the team and drivers’ championships with Farnbacher and Matt McMurry, but also gave Acura its first GTD manufacturers’ championship.
The championships came after working hand in hand with Honda Performance Development and a team of engineers to develop an “Evo” update for the Acura NSX in 2019 with an upgraded aero package.
Changes were made to the splitter, the rear bumper and the diffuser, which increased cooling but limited drag, resulting in more speed.
Beginning with the Rolex 24 At Daytona, the team moved to the IMSA Prototype class with the Acura ARX-05 DPi. Dane Cameron and Olivier Pla are the full-season drivers, while A.J. Allmendinger and Juan Pablo Montoya joined them for Daytona.
Last October, MSR announced Liberty Media Corp.’s Formula One Group had made a minority equity investment in the team, which allowed MSR to expand its IndyCar Series program to a two-car operation with drivers Jack Harvey and three-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves.
Harvey returns and will do the full season, as he did for the first time last year.
Castroneves is scheduled to compete in six races, including the Indianapolis 500.
It’s not the first time Castroneves has driven for Michael Shank; he raced a prototype for MSR in the 2007 Rolex 24 at Daytona. He should be an ideal teammate for Harvey, who had six top-10 finishes in 2020 and seems poised for a breakout season.
The team has three Dallara IndyCar chassis heading into the season, which opens April 18 at Alabama’s Barber Motorsports Park, including one purchased last fall from DragonSpeed.
Michael Shank Racing was born in 1989 when Shank was still a driver; he won the SCCA Ohio Valley Region’s Novice Driver of the Year award that season. He also earned the 1996 Player’s/Toyota Atlantic C2 Championship.
Shank ran one Indy car race, the Las Vegas 500 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway during the 1996-’97 season, finishing 13th with Neinhouse Motorsports. He has one start in the Rolex 24 At Daytona as a driver, which came in 1999 before he decided to concentrate on team ownership.
Shank was the car owner for Kenny Wilden when he finished second in the 1999 Toyota Atlantic championship and for Sam Hornish Jr., who won that series’ rookie-of-the-year award the same season.
Shank was named Formula Atlantic team owner of the year twice before he decided to concentrate on endurance sports car racing as a team owner in 2004 with drivers Oswaldo Negri Jr. and Burt Frisselle in the Daytona Prototype class.
The team led the first race it entered and finished on the podium in the second.
In 2006, Shank’s team won at Miller Motorsports Park in Utah and finished second both overall and in the Daytona Prototype class in the Rolex 24 At Daytona with drivers Justin Wilson, Allmendinger, Negri and Mark Patterson.
The team finished eighth in points in both 2006 and ’07 with John Pew becoming Negri’s co-driver. It was a consistent top-10 team and improved even more when it won the 2012 Rolex 24 At Daytona with Allmendinger, Wilson, Pew and Negri as co-drivers.
In December 2013, Michael Shank Racing set a speed record when Colin Braun turned the fastest lap ever recorded on the Daytona Int’l Speedway oval in the team’s Ford EcoBoost-powered Daytona Prototype. The 222.971 mph, 40.364-second lap was enough to secure a spot in the record books.
The effort also set records for both 10 kilometers and 10 miles from a standing start.
Michael Shank Racing opened a new era in 2015 when the squad transitioned to a P2 car after 10 years of Daytona Prototype competition. The 2015 Rolex 24 At Daytona marked the team’s debut with its new Ligier JS P2 car as well as its new engine platform with Honda.
Longtime Michael Shank Racing driver Negri put the new Honda-powered Ligier JS P2 package on the pole for the Rolex 24 to start the year off well.
In 2016, the team made its debut in the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Pew, Negri and Belgian racer Laurens Vanthoor leading two laps and finishing ninth.
The 2016 Petit Le Mans marked Michael Shank Racing’s 250th Prototype start and was also Pew’s final race with the team before retiring from IMSA racing. After starting from the pole, the team dominated the race and won, placing fourth in the championship.
The factory-backed program for the GTD class followed in 2017 with one car driven by Negri and Jeff Segal and another driven by Andy Lally and Katherine Legge. Lally and Legge gave the all-new Acura NSX GT3 its first victory globally in 2017 at the Detroit Grand Prix. It was the first of two victories that year and two more followed in 2018.
The team finished second in the standings in 2018 before Hindman and Farnbacher won the championship in 2019 and Farnbacher and McMurry did the same in 2020.
Shank was awarded the Rolex Bob Snodgrass Award of Excellence presented by the Gorsline Company in 2017 in recognition of his integrity, passion for the sport and love of cars.
While continuing his sports car program, Shank put many feelers out in an effort to begin an IndyCar program. Several attempts didn’t pan out, but in 2017 the team partnered with Andretti Autosport to field an entry for Harvey in the Indy 500. Although Sirius sponsored the car that year, Meyer didn’t come on board as a co-owner until 2018.
With his addition in 2018, the Meyer Shank Racing IndyCar program grew to six events run in partnership with Schmidt Peterson Motorsports, including the 2018 Indy 500. Harvey’s best finish that year was 12th during the Grand Prix of Long Beach. Despite starting in the last row, he was impressive in the Indy 500, running with the leaders late in the race before having to pit with a few laps to go.
In 2019, Harvey competed in 10 IndyCar races for Meyer Shank Racing with Schmidt Peterson, with a best finish of third at the Indianapolis Grand Prix. He had one top-five finish and four top-10 results that season.
Last year, Harvey ran the full IndyCar Series schedule for Meyer Shank Racing in a COVID-19 season, placing 15th in the championship in the team’s first year working with Andretti Autosport through a technical alliance.
The Andretti association will continue this season with both cars. Harvey’s average starting position in the No. 60 AutoNation/SiriusXM Honda was 8.8, fifth highest in the series — higher than even series champion Scott Dixon.
Shank zeros in on three things he feels have been the reasons for his team’s success.
“The first thing is my employees; I’ve always made sure I’ve done right by my personnel,” he said. “The second thing is I always try to overdeliver on what I promise to our partners and sponsors. And the third thing is I think we’ve made the right critical decisions at key times.”
What are some examples of the latter?
“I think one was getting out of open-wheel racing to go sports car racing,” he said. “I think another was when we expanded our IndyCar program, which came in conjunction with having Jim Meyer come on board as a co-owner. We wouldn’t have been able to do that without him. And another critical decision was beginning our relationship with Honda in 2015,” he said.
MSR’s growth bodes well for the sport and it will be interesting to see what lies ahead for the team in 2021 and beyond.