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International Motor Sports Association Lamborghini Super Trofeo series

International Motor Sports Association

super trofeo series

www.imsa.com

photos courtesy Imsa

About the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA)

International Motor Sports Association, LLC (IMSA) was originally founded in 1969 and owns a long and rich history in sports car racing. Today, IMSA is the sanctioning body of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, the premier sports car racing series in North America. IMSA also sanctions the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge and IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge, as well as four one-make series: Ferrari Challenge North America, Idemitsu Mazda MX-5 Cup presented by BFGoodrich Tires, Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America and Porsche Carrera Cup North America. IMSA – a company within the NASCAR family – is the exclusive strategic partner in North America with the Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO) which operates the 24 Hours of Le Mans as a part of the FIA World Endurance Championship. The partnership enables selected IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship competitors to earn automatic entries into the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Hanley Motorsports Incorporated Launches with Multi-Car BMW

IMSA Program

Split Effort Spans GTD PRO, GTD and GS; Unites Championship-Winning Personnel

November 4, 2026

By Tony DiZinno

IMSA Wire Service

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The quartet of Robert Hanley, David Askew, Bryan Sellers and Mitchell Simmons have all won championships in sports car racing in various guises and under different team names. In 2027, they’ll seek to do so all together in a new unified multi-car, multi-series IMSA program.

Hanley Motorsports Incorporated (HMI) launches and will join forces with DXDT Racing. It will run two IMSA championships in three different classes, fielding BMW race cars.

The team is set to run BMW M4 GT3 EVO cars in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship in Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) and Grand Touring Daytona (GTD). Additionally, it’ll field the BMW M4 GT4 EVO in IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge Grand Sport (GS) class. Drivers for all cars will be named at a later date.

HMI has brought on Simmons as Team Principal and Sellers as Competition Director. Askew founded DXDT Racing, a championship-winning sports car outfit where Sellers served as Team Manager for the last two years.

The new HMI team will operate out of the former Paul Miller Racing shop in Buford, Georgia for the 2027 season while their new facility located in Flowery Branch, Georgia is being completed. The team intends to test for the first time before January’s Roar Before the Rolex 24.

Melding of Successful Minds

For Hanley, the full stamp of this team name brings to full fruition a 30-plus year journey across multiple motorsports segments, with an increased presence in the IMSA paddock the last couple years.

A dirt racer first, Hanley has been a greater part of the sports car environment in the 2020s and expanded fully into IMSA with a pair of different involvements in WeatherTech Championship programs in 2026. He was announced as a partner within the Bryan Herta Autosport with PR1/Mathiasen Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) program and also connected with DXDT Racing, where he worked with Askew and Sellers.

Hanley has a lengthy history across the motorsports spectrum and is keen to expand and elaborate on his story with the founding of this program.

“This is a natural evolution,” Hanley explained. “Motorsports has been a passion mine since I was a young kid, but I also love business. So, this is really an opportunity for me. I'd like to build another business before I'm done, before I'm in a rocking chair somewhere. It’s an opportunity to build another business and I’m so very excited to do it in motorsports with this group of people.”

Askew added, “Rob and I have developed a friendship, and I respect him and his drive with what he wants to achieve. I’m at a point where I’d rather be working with a person like Rob rather than an entire race team and being responsible for the day-to-day. Passing the torch a bit! In that sense I’ll be a partner with Rob. It’ll be fun to see everyone grow with this thing and it’s been my dream to be associated with a team like this.”

For Simmons and Sellers, working together under the Hanley Motorsports umbrella will reunite a pair that achieved a wealth of success for nearly a decade at Paul Miller Racing, winning multiple marquee IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup races and championships. Sellers the moved to DXDT Racing in a team manager role there.

“This started really, many years ago when Bryan and I discussed what we’d do when our current program ended or when he stopped driving,” Simmons noted. “We’ve worked together closely for many years. It’s a natural progression. To be able to lead a team with him is a dream come true, and for Rob to give us the confidence to do this at this level is incredible. We’ve had successes and we’ll stay together.”

Sellers added, “We can really start with Robert and myself in our relationship. It’s pretty telling the type of person Rob is from our very first conversation. Mason Filippi was in the market for a ride and had support from someone who really believed in him, and we were trying to finish putting together our program at DXDT.

"Rob and I had a 25-minute conversation mostly focused around family, our children, why we love motorsports, and about three minutes was what’s it gonna take and how do we get there? He knew what he wanted, made the decision quickly about where to place his support. It was an immediate feeling that this is someone who knows people, where to place his faith, and will have trust in you. And talking to Dave Askew, we were like, 'Holy cow, we may have gotten super lucky here.'”

Putting the Pieces Together

Most of this year has seen the Hanley Motorsports group come together in the background building towards today’s announcement.

“I would say by Sebring I was pretty committed to figuring how to make something happen,” Hanley said. “We’ve been very proactive in positioning the business to be ready to go and do what we intend. I never really questioned our ability to be there in ’27, to be honest. When I decided to pursue this and have more in-depth conversations with Dave and Bryan, they’ve been incredibly supportive in a lot of respects. Then when we had the opportunity to engage Mitchell, I was pretty comfortable."

For Askew, capping off DXDT Racing’s season on the podium at Motul Petit Le Mans was a perfect end before entering into this new relationship.

“Earlier in the season I think we were heading to this combination of people,” he explained. “When we were on the podium at Petit, it felt like we won the race. It’s that hard. The competition is so good and you have to be so good to be able to win. And for me, this is just an evolution and I want to keep moving forward.”

Having a key manufacturer support means a lot too, with BMW joining.

“It’s a critical part of what we’re doing,” Hanley noted. “Manufacturer alignment was probably the single most important question we had to answer once we got the key people in place.”

“I’ve won championships with BMW and those guys have been fantastic,” Simmons added. “For them to put their faith in us again really means something.”

Sellers added, “BMW is a marquee manufacturer, and I think we’re all aware of that when you talk about the heavy hitters in motorsports. Any time you can leave any sort of mark on a manufacturer of this level is a massive honor.”

Building an Internal Ladder

With entries in GTD PRO, GTD and GS, Hanley Motorsports is set to be a rare outfit with entries across all three classes. A handful of IMSA teams have direct GS to GTD pipelines, but not across all three. That unique aspect can build opportunities for drivers, crews and other motorsport personnel, as Hanley explained.

“People bet on me to show on a line of sight for career growth,” Hanley said. “I have a responsibility to provide opportunity as well. It’s important we develop a ladder system throughout the company, not just for drivers, not just for engineers, but for all the administrative requirements of moving this thing around America.

“You bring in enthused people, and they have an ability to challenge you. Tenure is a great thing, but it can also be harmful because you stop looking outside of the resources. New people can make the organization better. I think it’s important we embrace it and take advantage of that.

“The GT4 program is a large part of that. Our ultimate goal is people ending up on the pro car, whether it’s drivers that get a BMW contract, race for BMW around the globe to mechanics, engineers, PR, administrative and more.

Sellers added, “This is a team where the more we walked through it, the more all these things aligned. We wanted to be able to start a GS program to provide a feeder for drivers, engineers, crews, interns. It’s something Dave has discussed. It’s probably not something done at this size and this capacity with this vision, often.”

Lone Star Racing Expands to Full-Time IMSA GTD Program

Hodenius, Roe to Share No. 80 Mercedes-AMG GT3

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Nov. 3, 2026) – Lone Star Racing, one of the longer standing IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup entries, is expanding and growing to a full-time program in Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) for the 2027 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season.

The pairing of young Dutch rising star Lin Hodenius and experienced sports car and open-wheel Irish driver James Roe will share the team’s No. 80 Mercedes-AMG GT3 in the full 2027 season.

The Dan Knox-founded and A.J. Petersen-led Texas-based operation has been part of the sports car fabric since 2014, with full Michelin Endurance Cup programs completed in the last three years as part of its 29 total WeatherTech Championship starts.

“We’re super excited to jump off our first full season in the WeatherTech Championship,” Petersen said. “We started in 2016 doing GTD sprint rounds in IMSA and continued in ’17 and ‘19. We came back in ’24 with endurance in ’24, ’25 and ’26. To put it together for a full season effort is what we’ve been working towards for years. Working to do with proper partners, and we’re looking forward for years to come. It’s a solid foundation we’ve assembled.”

Its 2024 campaign included a debut at the Rolex 24 At Daytona with a solid eighth-place finish in GTD, followed by the team’s first and thus far only Motul Pole Award achieved by Scott Andrews at the season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans. A ninth place marked its best 2025 result.

But in 2026, the team started to achieve results on a more regular basis with the trio of Andrews, Hodenius and Roe. In all five Michelin Endurance Cup races, Lone Star finished in the top 10 as they went sixth, fourth, 10th, sixth and fourth at the Rolex 24, the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen, Motul SportsCar Endurance Grand Prix at Road America and Motul Petit Le Mans. The trio ended with a revised lineup at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta this year, with longtime Mercedes-AMG GT ace Luca Stolz alongside Hodenius and Roe.

“I think it came about because of good finishes in ’26,” Petersen said. “It’s all the credit to the team, top to bottom. Been good to have the season we’ve had. Mercedes-AMG manufactures a great car, and it’s another good opportunity with a proven platform.”

Lone Star’s results at Sebring and Watkins Glen, in particular, helped contribute to Mercedes-AMG winning the GTD manufacturer championship on rare off days for three-time GTD champs Winward Racing.

“Winward kicked into high gear at end of the season and came out with the championships,” Petersen noted. “But we had great days at Sebring and Road Atlanta. Petit (Le Mans) was bad luck with P2 traffic that kept us off the podium. We’re happy to keep pushing.”

Hodenius is one of Mercedes-AMG’s junior drivers in its factory program. He has an F4 open-wheel background before he shifted to sports cars and has been deployed by Mercedes-AMG across both IMSA and the FIA World Endurance Championship with regularity.

"I am very excited of course to continue with Lone Star Racing after our first full year together and kind of a half season in 2025,” Hodenius said. “We showed really good progress this year and we definitely hope to achieve more in 2027 in the full season. I think it is a good opportunity for me to grow and the team as well as one unit really. I am really excited for all of that. I really love working with the team, A.J. Petersen really goes the extra mile for the team, with the car and with the team members themselves. It really creates this nice atmosphere where everybody wants to win.”

Roe, a single seater veteran, has amassed two years of IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup experience in two classes. He’s spread his wings and found success in several sports car series. In IMSA, he raced with Pratt Miller Motorsports in LMP2 in most 2025 endurance rounds and shifted to GTD this year where he found success with Lone Star Racing and the Mercedes-AMG Motorsport family.

“This is a huge opportunity, and I couldn’t be more excited to contest the full IMSA season with Lone Star Racing and Mercedes-AMG,” Roe said. “We ended last year knowing there was a lot more we could accomplish together, so having the opportunity to return, build consistency and compete at every round is incredibly motivating for me as a driver. We proved we could fight at the front in 2026, and our goal for 2027 is to turn that pace and potential into podium finishes throughout the season. I’m very thankful to Topcon, Topcon Solutions Store and Ring Power CAT for their continued support and belief in my career. We’re ready to get to work!”

Roe added of his fuller switch into sports car racing, “Obviously, a full season commitment is great. We had the five races spread over the season and having this core group together will build momentum. It’s all thanks to a great group of partners and a great brand in Mercedes-AMG to make all this happen.”

Also of note, Knox, Petersen and Roe will be at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas, at the Red Line Oil booth #22933, this week on Wednesday.

International Motor Sports Association Lamborghini Super Trofeo series

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