Nobody else has won a sports car race on Detroit’s downtown street circuit. Not once. Since IMSA moved off Belle Isle and onto the 1.7-mile layout in 2024, Acura owns every checkered flag thrown there, and the Japanese luxury brand is coming back May 30 to make it three straight.
The #93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing entry of Renger van der Zande and Nick Yelloly took last year’s Detroit Sports Car Classic from pole position. In 2024, it was Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque doing the honors in their electrified ARX-06 prototype. Two races, two wins, zero drama from the competition.
Acura’s grip on Detroit racing stretches back further than the current circuit. On Belle Isle, the brand collected four more victories: the 2019 race won by Dane Cameron and Juan Pablo Montoya in the ARX-05, back-to-back GTD class wins for the NSX GT3 in 2017 and 2018, and an overall triumph for the ARX-01b prototype in 2008. Six wins across two different Detroit layouts over nearly two decades. That’s not a streak. That’s territorial dominance.
This year’s assault comes with a two-car effort. The defending #93 retains van der Zande and Yelloly, while the #60 ARX-06 puts Colin Braun and Tom Blomqvist on the grid. Two electrified prototypes from the same stable, both running a hybrid powertrain that has proven devastatingly effective on tight street courses.
The Detroit race is tied with the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach as the shortest event on the 2026 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship calendar at just 100 minutes. That detail matters more than it might seem. Short races reward aggression, qualifying pace, and clean pit stops.
They punish hesitation. There is no time to recover from a slow start or a botched strategy call on a 1.7-mile circuit where traffic is constant and walls are unforgiving.
Acura and the #93 already won at Long Beach this season. Going two-for-two in 100-minute sprint races would be a statement about the ARX-06’s versatility. This is a car built to win the Rolex 24 at Daytona that can also knife through concrete canyons without breaking a sweat.
The broadcast window tells its own story about IMSA’s ambitions for the event. NBC has the live telecast starting at 4 PM ET on Saturday, May 30, with flag-to-flag streaming on Peacock domestically and IMSA’s YouTube channel for international audiences. Putting a sports car race on network television on a holiday weekend is a bet that Detroit’s downtown circuit delivers the kind of spectacle casual fans will actually watch.
For Acura’s rivals in the GTP class, the question heading into Detroit is blunt: who breaks the monopoly? Porsche, Cadillac, BMW, and Lamborghini all have faster straight-line speed on certain tracks. None of them have figured out how to beat an Acura when the walls close in and the race clock is short.
Street circuits are Acura’s killing ground. The ARX-06 thrives where precision matters more than raw power, where a driver who trusts the car through blind corners gains tenths that compound into seconds over 100 minutes.
Van der Zande and Yelloly know every bump, every braking zone, every apex on this circuit. They won from pole last year. They’ll arrive as favorites again.
In a race this short, on a track this narrow, being the hunter is a miserable job. Being the hunted suits Acura just fine.
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