Turner Motorsport Again Hunting GTD Titles, Can They End the Drought?

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There's no denying the amazing consistency that Turner Motorsport has shown ever since team owner Will Turner began racing back in 1998. That consistency is front and center once again in the 2026 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar season, with the No. 96 split-liveried BMW once again fighting for GTD championship honors.

The question is: will this be the season Turner finally puts it all together to end a 12-year title drought?

Following a third-place finish at the Chevrolet Grand Prix at Mosport, the veteran duo of Robby Foley and Patrick Gallagher find themselves third in both the GTD Drivers' and Teams' championship standings. Unfortunately for the car and crew, the only two teams ahead of them also happen to be two other amazingly-consistent teams - the No. 27 Heart of Racing of Dudu Barrichello and Co. and the No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus pairing of Benjamin Pederson and Aaron Telitz. 

Although Turner haven't won a race yet in 2026, consistency - there's the word again -  is what gives teams the best possible chance at delivering the Big Trophy Hardware at the end of a season. Foley and Gallagher have yet to finish outside the top 10 in the GTD class through six races, a feat only the No. 27 entry also claim.

A runner-up finish at the Long Beach Grand Prix (behind the No. 12 Vasser Sullivan, naturally), a 10th-place result at Daytona, fifth at Sebring and a pair of seventh-place finishes at both Laguna Seca and Watkins Glen has produced a total of 1,705 points for the team, just 120 points behind Barrichello and THOR and just a paltry 28 points behind the No. 12.

For Turner, an IMSA class championship has not come since 2014, the inaugural season following the merger between the American Le Mans Series and GRAND-AM, when Dane Cameron secured both the Drivers' and Teams' championships. Since then, the team has enjoyed tremendous success elsewhere. Foley and teammate Justin Rothberg captured back-to-back GT World Challenge America Pro-Am championships in 2024 and 2025, while Rothberg added the 2025 GT America Drivers' title. Foley and Vin Barletta also claimed the 2023 Michelin Pilot Challenge GS championship.

Since then, it's been a lot of close calls and near misses as that next WeatherTech title has remained elusive. Since 2014, Turner has recorded seven top-five championship finishes in the past 11 seasons, with its closest call coming in 2024 when the team finished second behind the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG.

To be fair to really everyone else in the class and not just Turner, nobody was catching Winward Racing these last two seasons as they've gone back-to-back in convincing fashion. It hasn't been as easy of a run for Winward this season as they shoot for a Threepeat, yet with wins at Daytona and at Mosport themselves, they find themselves right on the tail of Turner in P4 for both championships.

As you're surely catching on by now, the GTD class is extraordinarily tight when it comes to the winning margins on the race track. As we close out these last four races of the season things are only going to get tighter and tighter before building to an eventual showdown at Petit Le Mans in early October. The teams in the class are too good, the drivers are top-tier and as long as they keep their noses clean they'll be setting themselves up as best as possible come the season finale.

The way IMSA structures their points system, there isn't much separation between cars that finish down the line at the end of races. The largest gap is just 30 points between first and second place, while the remaining positions generally decrease in increments of 10 or 20 points. The difference between P1 and P10 is 140 points, which is certainly substantial when things get so tight. The major killers are DNFs, crash outs or failed post-race tech inspections, as well as the bonus points earned for qualifying results. The risks are amplified for a class like GTD where the entry list goes 20-deep in endurance rounds. A P20 finish yields just 110 points.

Considering just how dominant Winward Racing was in 2024 and 2025 - when both championships were effectively wrapped up well before Petit Le Mans - that almost certainly won't be the case in 2026. Instead, Heart of Racing, Vasser Sullivan, Turner, and Winward are locked in what promises to be a thrilling four-way title fight. Focusing solely on Turner for now, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone that wouldn't be rooting for the New Hampshire-based outfit as they get closer and closer to securing a championship result that is a fight 12 years in the making. 

Next up on the schedule is the return of endurance racing to Road America - a fitting venue considering it was the site of Turner's most recent IMSA victory two years ago. which Turner claimed victory back in 2024. If the team can repeat that performance in a few weeks' time, the championship dream will move one big step forward.

(The benefit of using our own photos, we can credit ourselves! Huzzah!)



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