Telitz Looking to Give the ‘Old Girl’ One Last IMSA Championship
Perry Nelson/Lumen Digital Agency/IMSA
By Dennis Krause
Coming off a win in the recent Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, Aaron Telitz and co-driver Benjamin Pedersen are on a mission — to give the venerable Lexus RC F GT3 one last title in its final season in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
A decade since it was introduced in the Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) and GTD PRO classes, the Lexus RC F GT3 is ancient compared to its on-track rivals. While its replacement won’t race until next season, the Vasser-Sullivan Racing team has been soldiering on with what it has.
As the series moves to this weekend’s StubHub Monterey SportsCar Championship at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, Telitz acknowledges that even though the Lexus may lack speed at some circuits, that doesn’t mean it is uncompetitive.
“Laguna Seca, historically, is not a great track for our Lexus RC F GT3,” noted Telitz. “But the best part about IMSA is you don't have to always be the fastest. You can have cleaner races and good pit stops, good strategy, and get yourself in a position to still come home with a trophy.”
While the Long Beach win ticked one box for the season, everyone one at Vasser-Sullivan knows what the car is still capable off doing according to Telitz.
“Oh yeah, for sure. I tell you what. Even just the start of this year, we've been in the mind frame of, we know what this car is capable of. Yeah, we've had a couple of rough years with a drought of no wins, but everything's hard, and you're not always going to be winning races every year, but we thought we'd have a great shot at it this year.
“The team surrounding us is just as good as it's always been,” said Telitz. “Vasser-Sullivan has so many great guys on it, and that whole core group is still there from when we won (GTD PRO) championship in 2023 and won the sprint championship in ’20 or ’21 or whatever it was. Everybody's still here, and everyone's ready to make it happen. So we're going to try to get the old girl another championship, that's for sure.”
Despite the Lexus showing a lack of pace at the season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona, Telitz at least had something to fight with at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. But the Birchwood, Wisconsin-native claims he never felt like the team had to climb out of a hole to start the year.
“Yeah, we haven't felt like we've had to climb out of a hole necessarily. You know, two races into a 10 race season. You've got 80% of the season left to go. The hole you're digging yourself out of is never that deep at that point. It's maybe when you get to the midway point, or your six races, seven races in, and you've had a couple of bad weekends in a row, that's when you feel like all we've got a short time to dig us out of our hole. We didn't feel that way. We knew we had we were going to have shots to win this year. We had chances to win last year. It just didn't fall our way, either.
“And so far this year, you know, the first opportunity we've had to win, we've grabbed it by the horns and we've done it. So we'll try to do more of that as we go along here.”
This is the first season Telitz has driven with Pedersen and the duo appear to be hitting it off quite well. With both drivers coming from open wheel backgrounds, they’ve bonded quickly, winning in just their third race together.
“I haven't known Benjamin very long, really. I've known of him when he was coming up through the INDYCAR ladder system, just like I did. So we've got a really similar background there, but I've never worked with him until this this year, starting at Daytona, but we just hit it off.
“Yeah, he's really similar to me in a lot of ways and I know a lot about what it's like to come from a open wheel background and then get into sports cars. So anytime he had a question with something, or was struggling with something. I knew exactly where he was coming from, and, yeah, it's just helped us get the ball rolling really quick here.”
Michael L. Levitt/Lumen Digital Agency/IMSA
If Telitz and Pedersen are to make a serious run at the GTD title in this swan song season for the RC F, what is it going to take in what is likely to be a wide open, hard fought championship?
“The easy answer is you just got to have consistent results,” Telitz stated. “And that's how IMSA always works out. A lot of times the peaks and the valleys approach to it doesn't end up playing out for you very well. And the reason why it's so wide open this year is because it seems like all the championship contending teams have done that in the first three races. They've had maybe one good race and two bad races, and that's kind of how we're still in it. We've had two not great races, and then one win, and we're we're in it, we're in third.
“So going forward, if you want to stay in it, you want to get out in front and stay out in front. It's going to be all about just maximizing every weekend that you have. Maybe you don't have a car to win, and that's all right, you're going to take whatever position you can get.”
The good news for Telitz and Pedersen is that there’s still some life in the old girl yet.
Dennis Krause has spent decades covering all forms of motorsports, including over 40 Indianapolis 500s, with stints at WIBA Radio, PIT PASS - Radio’s Premier Motorsports Magazine and Motorsports Minute. Follow him on X @DennisKrause500 or motorsportsminute.bluesky.social or motorsportsminute on Threads or MotorsportsMinute+ on Facebook.