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Team Penske took the cover off its 2018 Acura ARX-05 IMSA DPI race car today as part of the Monterey Car Week extravaganza. The team will be testing the car at Road Atlanta next as they begin preparations for the 2018 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. Juan Pablo Montoya and Dane Cameron will be paired as co-drivers in the first of what is planned as a two-car team. Montoya will be behind the wheel for testing as Cameron is still under contract with Action Express Racing until the end of the season. The drivers for the second car will be announced at a later date.
The team also confirmed today that they will enter the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta in October. The new Acura ARX-05 will not be the car they run at the race. Instead, they will be racing a Gibson V8 powered World Endurance Championship LMP2 Oreca 07, from which the Acura ARX-05 is based. The race will give the team as a whole a chance to get some experience working a race weekend together ahead of the 2018 season opener at the 24 Hours of Daytona in January.
So even though the chassis is based on the Oreca 07, Acura has supplied the engine and body kit to comply with IMSA regulations. It looks vastly different than its WEC cousins, as the body kit is unmistakably Acura, featuring the automaker’s Jewel Eye headlights. The engine is based on Acura’s 3.5 V6 that drives the Acura MDX, RDX, TLX and RLX. In IMSA-spec, the twin-turbo AR35TT engine will be limited to 600 hp. As far as race cars go, this is one sexy beast.
Team Penske is in it to win it. If anyone is going to take the fight to Cadillac and Wayne Taylor Racing, it’s going to be Team Penske. 2018 can’t come soon enough to see this car running against its competition. In the mean time, we’ll see how Petit Le Mans shakes out. Even though the team won’t be running the Acura ARX-05, Penske is going there not just as a warm-up for 2018—they’re coming to win.
