Starworks Motorsport is back under their own name in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

The team will enter the GTD category with an Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo, where Ryan Dalziel and Parker Chase will be two of the drivers in the car at the opening round at Daytona in January.

It has already been decided that Dalziel will do the full season for the team, while it’s still unsure if Chase will do the North American Endurance Cup rounds (Daytona, Sebring, Watkins Glen, Petit Le Mans) only, or if he will do a full season. A lot probably depends on how the standings are after the first two rounds at Daytona and Sebring. Meyer Shank Racing #86 with Katherine Legge had a similar plan of NAEC-only in 2018, but ended up doing the full season, since they were so well placed in the Championship after the first two round, eventually finishing second.

Even though the car will run in the new Evo spec, it is a 2016 version, which will be upgraded. Daziel and Chase shared the car throughout the 2018 season, where they won the Pirelli World Challenge SprintX Pro/Am Championship.

Starworks Motorsport and team boss Peter Baron already have knowledge with the car model from the IMSA series, where they ran all the NAEC rounds in 2018, helping out Montaplast by Land Motorsport.

Starworks/Baron have quite a CV, since the team was founded in 2010. They won the FIA World Endurance Championship LMP2 Championship and the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2012. They also claimed the NAEC Championship in the same season, before winning the IMSA Championship in 2016 in the PC category.

The IMSA series will be brand new for Parker Chase, while Ryan Dalziel has knowledge from both Starworks, but also from Tequila Patron Extreme Speed Motorsports through several seasons.

Baron and Dalziel have worked with each other on-off since 2005, and are really good friends on and off the track. They jokingly refer to each other as “Thunder Buddies”.

The 2019 season of the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship starts on 26-27 January at the Daytona 24 Hours.