The No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac battling with the No. 6 Porsche during the Rolex 24 at Daytona. (Photo: Tyson Gifford | The Podium Finish)
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – We sit a mere two months away from IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship teams unloading into Daytona International Speedway for the Roar Before the Rolex 24. With IMSA’s final testing session of the year concluding this past weekend, all eyes are now on teams releasing their 2026 driver lineups for not only the full campaign but also the 63rd annual running of North America’s most prestigious sportscar race.
IMSA has already released the list of teams that will be competing in both the full IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship calendar as well as teams limiting their programs to contending in the five Michelin Endurance Cup rounds throughout the season at Daytona, Sebring, Watkins Glen, Road America and Petit Le Mans. 45 teams will compete across four classes for the full season as the grid will consist of 11 GPT entries, 12 LMP2 cars, nine GTD Pro teams and 14 GTD competitors.
Those along with the additional four GTD Pro and five GTD entries competing in the Michelin Endurance Cup bring the Rolex 24 grid to 55 cars so far, leaving room for six Rolex 24-specific entries on the 61-car starting grid at Daytona.
GTP, the top class in IMSA, sees their grid size currently down a car compared to the 2025 iteration of the Rolex 24, which is something we have yet to see since the class and specification of car has brought us into a golden era for sportscar racing. Three Cadillacs, three Porsches, two BMWs, two Acuras and the highly anticipated Aston Martin Valkyrie currently comprise the manufacturer split, which is down a Porsche compared to last year’s event.
For Cadillac, they are eyeing a bounce-back following what could be described as a frustrating Rolex 24 in 2025. The American manufacturer will deploy the same two-team strategy across three cars with Wayne Taylor Racing returning with the Nos. 10 and 40 Cadillac. The full season lineups for both cars remain unchanged to last year as Filipe Albuquerque and Ricky Taylor will pilot the No. 10 and Louis Deletraz and Jordan Taylor will compete in the No. 40 Cadillac V-Series.R.
They will be joined by Michelin Endurance Cup drivers Will Stevens in the No. 10 and new to the team, Cadillac F1 test and reserve driver and 2026 F2 rookie Colton Herta, who departed INDYCAR at the conclusion of the 2025 season to make the push to Formula 1.
Cadillac’s other outfit is the No. 31 Whelen Engineering car for Action Express Racing, which will have the pairing of Jack Aitken and Earl Bamber behind the wheel for the full season. They will be joined by Frederik Vesti for the Michelin Endurance Cup, with the major remaining question mark for the team being – will former LMP2 class winner-turned-NASCAR star Connor Zilisch join the team for the Rolex 24 at Daytona?
Connor Zilisch signing autographs on the grid before the Rolex 24 at Daytona. (Photo: Jared Bokanoski | The Podium Finish)
The 19-year-old NASCAR Xfinity Series championship runner-up partook in the 2025 IMSA-sanctioned Daytona test with the team in hopes of securing his spot on the grid for the real deal come January.
Back-to-back Rolex 24 champion Porsche Penske Motorsports does not have their driver lineups officially announced for either of their Porsche 963s as of the writing of this article. With the departure of Mathieu Jaminet following the manufacturer’s decision to leave the World Endurance Championship, a lineup change is certainly imminent. The team brought five drivers to the test at Daytona this past weekend with Julien Andlauer, Matt Campbell and Felipe Nasr being joined by INDYCAR stars Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin, who much like the aforementioned Connor Zilisch, will be aiming to find themselves on the grid in January.
The privateer No. 85 Porsche 963 for JDC-Miller Motorsports also sits with their driver lineup unannounced at this time, but it should be noted that Bryce Aron and Tijmen van der Helm were both in attendance for the sanction test.
In the BMW camp, there has been a fundamental shakeup as Rahal Letterman Lannigan and the German manufacturer parted ways, ending a 17-year pairing that was a staple of the IMSA grid. In their place enters the WEC outfit WRT taking on the mantle across both major sportscar series. Much like the aforementioned Porsche teams, the team has not made any official driver announcements as of yet but brought back several drivers from this past season for the test at Daytona, including Philipp Eng, Robin Frijns, Rene Rast, Kevin Magnussen, Marco Wittmann and 2025 Rolex 24 winner Dries Vanthoor.
The No. 60 Meyer-Shank Racing Acura battles past the No. 66 Gradient Mustang at Daytona. (Photo: Jared Bokanoski | The Podium Finish)
The final of the returning four manufacturers that have been around since the dawn of the GTP era is of course Acura, who will once again see their two cars campaigned by Meyer-Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian with an unchanged full season driver lineup of Colin Braun and Tom Blomqvist in the No. 60 and Nick Yelloly and Renger van der Zande in the No. 93 Acura ARX-06.
The pairings will be joined by six-time INDYCAR champion Scott Dixon and NASCAR road course ace AJ Allmendinger, who makes his return to the team for the first time since 2021. He partners with Braun and Blomqvist whilst Kakunoshin Ohta and the ever-dominant INDYCAR star Alex Palou will join forces with Yelloly and van der Zande.
The final piece of the GTP puzzle stands to be the No. 23 Aston Martin Valkyrie powered by The Heart of Racing who will be making their highly anticipated Rolex 24 debut after their impressive debut campaign that began with the 2025 Twelve Hours of Sebring. With no announced driver lineup so far, the pair of Ross Gunn and Romain De Angelis were on hand to test the car ahead of one of the most daunting tests the team has faced so far.
With two months to go in the offseason, there is still ample time as the pieces fall into place to complete the puzzle that will be IMSA’s full top class for the 63rd annual Rolex 24 at Daytona.
