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Pre-Race Notes
Chevrolet Grand Prix at CTMP – Canadian Tire Motorsports Park
Round 6 of 10 in the 2026 WeatherTech Sports Car Championship — GTD PRO Class
DATE: Friday – Sunday, July 10-12, 2026
PRACTICE / QUALIFYING BROADCASTS: Practice: Live on IMSA.com on Friday from 1:55 – 3:25 p.m. ET and on Saturday from 10:35 a.m. – 12:05 p.m. ET / Live on Peacock, IMSA.com and YouTube on Saturday from 4:25 – 4:40 p.m. ET
RACE BROADCAST: All races can be streamed live in their entirety on NBCSports.com, the NBC Sports App with authentication or Peacock Premium. Coverage of the race begins at 2 p.m. ET on Sunday. International viewers can watch the full race live on the IMSA YouTube channel.
TRACK LAYOUT: 2.459-mile, 10-turn permanent road course
RACE LENGTH: 2 hours, 40 minutes
2025 GTD PRO WINNER: Costa and Altoe in a Dragon Speed Ferrari 296 GT3 EVO2
2025 GTD PRO POLESITTER: Neil Verhagen in a BMW M4 GT3 (1:15.046)
RLL’S TOP START / FINISH AT CTMP: 3 POLES – 2009 and 2011 by Dirk Mueller and 2019 by Jesse Krohn – GTLM class / 1 WIN – 2017 by Auberlen/Sims (all as BMW M Team RLL)
RLL TEAM McLAREN’S TOP START / FINISH: 2nd at Daytona in debut / 7th at Laguna Seca
NOTES & QUOTES:
RLL TEAM MCLAREN AT CTMP
The Chevrolet Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park (CTMP) will be the sixth event in program history for RLL Team McLaren. Like most races on the schedule, full season rookie drivers Max Esterson and Nikita Johnson will experience the track for the first time on Friday.
The RLL Team McLaren program is a multi-year collaboration with McLaren Automotive that saw the team’s return to IMSA’s GTD PRO class in 2026 with the McLaren GT3 EVO. The team qualified a promising second fastest at their debut at Daytona but finished 12th in the GTD PRO class after an electronics issue hindered the outcome. Qualifier Macdonald ran a double stint to open the race but once he turned the car over to Vips approaching the three-hour mark of the race, the team was forced to go to the garage due to a tire pressure monitoring system failure they had been unable to correct in the pits. The team gathered important experience in the race and took the checkered flag in 12th place. Since then, the team’s top finish is seventh at Laguna Seca.
MAX ESTERSON ON HIS PREPARATION FOR HIS CTMP DEBUT
“This weekend will be my first time racing at CTMP. It seems like a really old school track with super-fast corners and little margin for error. With only two practice sessions to get up to speed on a track I’ve never been to, I’ve put a lot of time into learning as much as possible on iRacing. I think it’ll be very difficult to overtake others due to the nature of the track, so I think qualifying and working the strategy to stay towards the front will be crucial. At this point in my first season, everything is feeling a bit more natural each time I jump into the car, so hopefully we can capitalize on the opportunities given to us this weekend.”
NIKITA JOHNSON ON HIS CTMP DEBUT
“I have prepped for CTMP with a lot of onboard and sim racing. It’s going to be a tricky one, but I feel prepared for the challenge. It will be my first time there, so I’ll have to be on it in FP1. I expect the biggest challenges to be committing in the high-speed areas and qualifying. Some positives this season so far include the car getting faster every weekend we race it. Everyone in the team is getting more familiar with the car. If we put a good weekend together, I know we can be on the podium. We just have to keep pushing.”
MCLAREN’S SPORTS CAR HISTORY
McLaren made its mark in sports car racing in 1995 with the F1 GTR, writing history by winning that year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. Returning to sports car racing in 2012 with the championship-winning 12C GT3, McLaren continues to be a force on the international GT scene. The current GT3 EVO has proven to be very successful, winning races in FIA World Endurance Championship, GT World Challenge Europe series and other regional and domestic series.
RLL’S SPORTS CAR HISTORY
RLL, founded in 1992 and known for its success across both open-wheel and sports car racing, has a rich history in sports car competition. The team first entered sports car racing in 2007, fielding a Porsche 997 GT3 RSR in the American Le Mans Series GT2 class with drivers Tommy Milner and Ralf Kelleners and finished fourth in the 12-race championship, highlighted by multiple podiums. The following year, the team campaigned an Aston Martin DB9 in select SCCA World Challenge events, earning a pole and runner-up finish at Road Atlanta.
From 2009 to 2025, RLL partnered with BMW Motorsport in a successful 17-year collaboration that delivered numerous race wins and championships across multiple GT platforms and culminated with a race and pole-winning program in the GTP class from 2023-2025. The team previously competed in IMSA’s GTD PRO class under the BMW M Team RLL banner in 2022 while simultaneously preparing for their two-car factory GTP program debut in 2023. During that period, RLL secured pole position at Watkins Glen and GTD PRO podium finishes at Laguna Seca and Petit Le Mans.
