IMSA Watch: IndyCar at the 2026 12 Hours of Sebring

Today’s theme music: “Why’s this dealer?” by Niko B

The IndyCar Series may have taken an off weekend, but for a handful of its best and brightest, it was time for a whole new challenge. Stars, alums, and prospects mixed it up with drivers from all sorts of other disciplines at the 74th annual IMSA 12 Hours of Sebring, the most prestigious race of its length in the world.

We start in GTD with Indy NXT’s man that won’t leave, Irish driver James Roe. His team, the Lone Star #80 Mercedes, struggled early on, with Roe personally picking up a penalty, but he cut down on the mistakes as time progressed, his teammates picked up the slack, and the #80 came home 4th in class and 35th overall.

Meanwhile, in GTD Pro, Kyle Kirkwood entered with a full head of steam after his win in Arlington the previous weekend catapulted him to the first National Championship lead of his career. He joined up with the Vasser Sullivan #14 Lexus in search of his second red-sticker win at Sebring in three years, and thanks to teammate Jack Hawksworth, he enjoyed the benefits of a class pole position. Throughout the first half of the race, Kirkwood and company were nearly impossible to keep out of the top 5, and they looked like strong contenders for the podium. However, with about four hours and 20 minutes to go, one of Kirkwood’s rear tires shredded up and flew off, ruining the team’s race instantly. Kirkwood did manage to limp it back to the pits for repairs, and the Lexus did finish the race, but it came home 11th in class, 41st overall, and five laps down compared to the class winners.

Meanwhile, Nikita Johnson, not far removed from his win at the St. Petersburg Indy NXT race, took his second spin of what will be a full season in the Rahal Letterman Lanigan #59 McLaren. With degrees of connection to three different teams on the IndyCar grid, Johnson has an inside track to a seat if he performs well, but this probably won’t be the race he someday stakes that claim on. He ran decently high in the early going, but the longer the race went, the more growing pains the team as a whole showed. RLL’s lone McLaren ultimately got lapped and came home 9th in class and 30th overall.

LMP2 is usually flooded with ex-Dale Coyne drivers, but the only one we’ll be looking at today is Jacob Abel, the Silver driver of the Era #18 crew. With rumors swirling around him that he might try and get the 33rd spot on the grid if Prema can’t make the Indianapolis 500, Abel put in some decent shifts and even ran in the podium places at points during the daytime. That helped the team take a respectable 4th in class and 13th overall, far and away his best result in IMSA so far.

Next, we turn to the most populated class for our purposes, the flagship hypercars of GTP. Colton Herta, who personally took the checkered flag to win Sebring in 2024, hopped in the Wayne Taylor #40 Cadillac for the second of three IMSA appearances this year. However, Herta ran fairly anonymously in his stints, had to watch while Louis Deletraz took up the ace role in the final hours, and ultimately finished 8th overall.

Meanwhile, past podium achievers Scott Dixon and Álex Palou sought to match, if not exceed, their previous respective highs of 2nd in 2024 and 3rd last year, and they each ran well in their stints in the two Meyer Shank Acuras. However, with Porsche Penske once again leaving everyone in the dust, the realistic target for both men was 3rd, and that got slapped away with an hour and a half to go when their teammates both committed pit lane infractions and suffered penalties. Palou’s #93 wound up finishing 7th, while Dixon’s #60 benefitted from a great recovery run by Tom Blomqvist that salvaged 5th from the wreckage.

That leaves our surprise big winner, the man in limbo, Prema driver Callum Ilott. His backup gig in the Wright #120 Porsche may turn out to be his main one for 2026 if the Italians don’t get to the IndyCar grid soon, and combined with the DNF his IMSA team suffered in Daytona, the pressure was on to make something good happen. While never in the mix for the lead, the #120 was the strongest Porsche in class all day long, and as the final sprint approached, Ilott found himself in 5th with the wheel in his hands. While Tom Gamble and Antonio Fuoco had the most thrilling fight of the event for the GTD win, Ilott made a big run of his own to move up two places in the last 12 minutes and join them on the podium in 3rd.

This gives Ilott his first IMSA podium, as well as his first GT racing podium anywhere since he came 3rd in class at the 2021 24 Hours of Le Mans, and to say he needed this is an understatement. He’s proved repeatedly he has the talent to warrant an IndyCar career, but time after time, circumstances force him to re-audition with sports car seasons. With Ilott potentially about to miss the Indianapolis 500 for the first time since before he signed his original deal at Juncos Hollinger, a big showing with a blazing finish to take a trophy home from a Triple Crown endurance race could be exactly what he needs to force his way back on the radar for the all-important 33rd seat.