Will Doubling the GTP Effort Double WTRAndretti’s Fun?

Prior to the conclusion of the 2023 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, Wayne Taylor joked that Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport’s ongoing expansion to a two-car Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class effort for the ’24 season was a handy distraction from the championship battle its drivers Filipe Albuquerque and Ricky Taylor were embroiled in.

Now that the season is complete, WTRAndretti is fully consumed with building out the two-car program for the 2024 campaign just two months away.

After joining forces with Michael Andretti’s growing motorsports empire as the calendar turned from 2022 to ’23, WTRAndretti announced plans in May to double its GTP effort in ’24, fielding two hybrid-powered Acura ARX-06 prototypes.

From that moment, WTRAndretti was flat out on two fronts – planning and hiring staff for the next year while contesting the balance of the ‘23 WeatherTech Championship schedule. Despite not winning a race, the No. 10 Acura took the title tilt to the final hour of the season, until Albuquerque came out second best from a clash at Turn 1 of the Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta with eventual champion Pipo Derani and the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac Racing V-Series.R.

While WTRAndretti left that race disappointed in the outcome of the 2023 campaign, it also departed feeling extremely positive about its future prospects. The team’s 2023 endurance driver, Louis Deletraz, who will partner with Jordan Taylor in the new full-time No. 40 Acura in 2024, earned the Motul Pole Award at Michelin Raceway in the No. 10, and the car was in contention for the race win until the accident with an hour remaining.

Deletraz is one of the hottest young prospects in worldwide sports car racing, winning three consecutive Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) titles in the European Le Mans Series and FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) competition. It’s a golden opportunity for the highly rated Deletraz to step into a full-time factory prototype ride at the age of 26.

“Having four races this year was the perfect way to get ready for it, and this winter we will be testing and preparing to work with Jordan in the new season,” said Deletraz. “The team is growing each day. We have new people joining from HPD (Honda Performance Development), from WTR as well, and there are new things to learn every day with these cars.

“You can see the challenges of having two cars,” he continued. “You have to have twice as many people. It’s a lot bigger organization, and we also have to work together. There’s no point to having two cars if you can’t get along together and work together to win together. That’s all part of teamwork. We will work all four (full-season drivers) together as one to put one car on the top.”

A Homecoming for Jordan Taylor

Opportunity is also the watchword for Jordan Taylor, who could have easily maintained his lengthy relationship with General Motors and Pratt Miller Motorsports coming out of the reorganization of the Corvette Racing program. Instead, Wayne Taylor’s younger son is returning to the family fold.

Jordan Taylor will be familiar with many faces within the team, but he’ll be readapting to prototype racing in a GTP platform that is much more technically sophisticated than the Daytona Prototype (DP) and Daytona Prototype international (DPi) cars he raced from 2013-19. It’s also the first time that Jordan and brother Ricky will not share the same car while under the WTR umbrella.

“I just know there’s a lot to learn,” Jordan Taylor said. “It’s jumping into another competitive class, a class that’s kind of known for all the new electronic bits that are complicated to learn. But that’s the exciting part because I like that new challenge. It’s new tools that a driver can use to hopefully your advantage.”