INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana (September 23, 2025) – The No. 80 Lone Star Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 team and debuting driver Lin Hodenius shined from the start of Sunday’s Battle on the Bricks IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship six-hour race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS). The convincing race-opening performance, which saw Hodenius lead the first 44 laps for more than hour, was the highlight of a weekend-long “no quit” showing at IMS by everyone on the Lone Star Racing team and its driving trio of Scott Andrews, Wyatt Brichacek and Hodenius.
Hodenius, who was making across-the-board debuts in IMSA, at Indianapolis and with Lone Star Racing, was selected to qualify the No. 80 Saturday afternoon despite running his first ever laps on the 2.439-mile IMSA road course just earlier that morning. The 19-year-old native of Holland, however, put his experience as a current FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) driver for the Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG GT3LM team to good use, clocking in third fastest in the competitive GTD field.
Then Hodenius opened up even more eyes in the IMSA paddock on Sunday when he stormed to the GTD lead from third in the run into Turn 1 at the race start. Hodenius went on to lead all 44 laps of his 70-minute race-opening stint before pitting for the first time in the race from the top of the GTD field. A second pit stop just 22 minutes later had Brichacek take the wheel of the No. 80 for the first time.
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Making his second race start with Lone Star, Brichacek mirrored his teammate’s race opening pace and was running in fourth place when the No. 80 lost its left rear wheel at full speed on one of the oval track portions of the IMS road course. Brichacek skillfully kept the now three-wheeled car off the walls but was forced to stop on course to avoid damaging the chassis and undertrays. The team lost valuable time, complicated by an accidental discharge of the car’s fire extinguisher by a safety worker, as the No. 80 was transported back to the pits and paddock. The Lone Star Racing team returned the No. 80 to the race as quickly as possible, but having fallen well down in the GTD field, the entry was retired after Brichacek turned enough laps to reach the race’s halfway mark. Veteran Lone Star Racing driver Andrews regretfully never had the opportunity to drive Sunday. “As disappointing as not finishing was, this challenging weekend at Indianapolis was one of the best top-to-bottom performances as a team Lone Star Racing has ever produced,” said Lone Star Racing Team Manager and Technical Director AJ Petersen “We had no track time on Friday at all chasing a faulty sensor back in the garage, but the team didn’t stop until we solved the issue. We were on track and ran all of Saturday and Lin gave us a P3 qualifying result that was our best since Scott was on pole last year at Petit Le Mans. And the race start, and for more than the first hour, showed how good both Lin and our No. 80 Lone Star Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 perform in the heat of competition. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to take that fight to the finish, but we will take the lessons learned in Indianapolis to next month’s Petit Le Mans and perform even better.” |
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| Hodenius more than made his mark in his IMSA, Indianapolis and Lone Star Racing debuts. “I hope our performance rang some bells,” Hodenius said. “It went awesome considering we lost the first practice, but then we recovered fully for second practice, and we did well in qualifying and at the start of the race. I love doing race starts, and it was awesome to drive and battle with the guys in IMSA. You are all kind of tied together in one big, nice mess sort of! It’s just awesome to drive in, and next time we will get a result as good as our performance.” The typically quick driver change pit stop the Lone Star crew performed when Hodenius stepped out of the car gave Brichacek great track position and his first experience battling in a lead IMSA GTD pack while racing in fourth. “With Lin joining us, it was a great fit,” Brichacek said. “We all get along super well, at the track and off the track. Everybody stepped up this weekend. We missed the first practice, but even with everyone getting 15 or 20 minutes of practice total this weekend, we all were right away on good pace. The team unloaded with a good car, a good flow for the whole team, and the race was looking good. Lin had an awesome start, and we had the pace to win, but it was just one of those things. We will bounce back and look forward to Petit, and hopefully we can continue this momentum there.” Andrews, the team’s most experienced professional driver, missed out on taking the wheel of the No. 80 on Sunday, but he still felt the positives of the weekend. |
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| “What happened on track in the race was a freak thing,” Andrews said. “We don’t expect that to happen again, but we still had some positives from the weekend. We ended up with only one practice session, but our car was really good off the truck, and we kept improving it all through Saturday’s 90-minute session. The team and driver feedback, and pro-active changes to the setup, were really good. Lin qualified and raced well at the start, even passed three GTD Pro cars and gapped the field a bit. Lin did a great job and is a great addition to the team. It’s a bummer, because I think that we had one of the best lineups out there. Wyatt was right up to pace and really quick. It’s pretty hard to argue that we wouldn’t have been on the podium at Indy.” Next up for Lone Star Racing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup is the season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, October 9 – 11. About Lone Star Racing: Based at Motorsport Ranch within the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area in Cresson, Texas, Lone Star Racing is competing in the No. 80 Lone Star Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 in the 2025 IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup in the GTD class. Lone Star Racing and its team members have won races across North America spanning sprint and endurance racing formats. The crew has worked together on many different teams and various types of cars, developing a strong bond and proven capability that gives them a competitive and winning advantage. Lone Star Racing competes with the support of primary partner ACS Manufacturing, Inc. (http://www.ACSManufacturing.com). Look for Lone Star Racing and team owner/driver Dan Knox on Facebook and follow the team on YouTube at Lone Star Racing, on Twitter and Instagram at @LSRTeam and on the official team web site at http://www.LoneStarRacingTeam.com. |
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