RTN, which took the Pro/Am LMP2 crown in the 2021 WEC Championship, will once again compete in the four endurance races that make up the Michelin-sponsored Endurance Cup with an ORECA-Gibson 07 P2 car run by France’s TDS Racing team.
Team boss Frits van Erd, whose Jumbo Supermarket chain is Max Verstappen’s personal sponsor, will team up with fellow regulars Guido van der Garde and Dylan Morey, son of David Sports Cars, at Daytona, Sebring, Watkins Glen and Atlanta Road Enduros.
They will be joined at the Daytona 24 Hours in January by Dutch IndyCar driver Rinus Vichai, this year’s race winner with Ed Carpenter Racing and also sponsored by Van Eerd.
Van Erdt, who single-handedly won the WEC title after teammates Van der Garde and Job van Uetert missed the Monza Tour due to positive COVID tests, has been open about looking forward to racing at IMSA and took the team to Daytona earlier this year.
“Since we won the world title in 2021, the timing of this new challenge has been perfect,” he said.
“I loved racing in the great WEC, but I always said at some point I would like to bring RTN to IMSA as well.
“I studied in the States and attended IMSA races at the time, so doing these four famous IMSA races is really a dream come true for me.”
Van Erdt has made it clear that he wants an American driver on a team that has traditionally been entirely Dutch.
“Now we’re racing in America, so as our silver driver I would have liked to have some young American talent on the team,” he said.
“Dylan is fast and he already knows all the episodes we’ll be racing next year.”
Morey, 20, races off the IMSA LMP3 class, in which he finished third this year aboard the Riley Motorsport-driven Ligier.
VeeKay explained, “It has always been my dream to one day race a ferret, which has been my loyal patron for many years.”
The 21-year-old made his IMSA debut in Daytona last year as captain of the DragonSpeed LMP2 team.
RTN is leaving WEC after three seasons.
I started with the Dallara P217 from Dutch team DayVtec in the great 2018/19 season before switching to ORECA and TDS for 2019/20.
She took a LMP2 class win at Fuji in 2019 with van Eerd, van der Garde and Nyck de Vries before making her Pro/Am class debut in the lineup with a Bronze-rated driver.
