For Telitz, Road America is More Than Just His Home Track
Photo: Jake Galstad/Lumen Digital Agency/IMSA
By Dennis Krause
He’s racing at the track where his career took shape - and he’s involved in a battle for a championship, to boot.
What’s not to get excited about for Birchwood, Wisconsin native Aaron Telitz as he continues his pursuit of a Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) title in this weekend’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Motul Sports Car Endurance Grand Prix at Elkhart Lake’s Road America?
“That's where I grew up racing, not only go karts, but my first Skip Barber events as well,” Telitz said. “We're at Road America, so a really special place for me. And I know (for) a lot of other people in IMSA, as well. Everyone loves going there.
“And first time that it's a six hour race for me. I think it used to be a longer endurance race, maybe back in the day, but I never participated in that. So really looking forward to it.”
For Telitz, his favorite part of Road America is more than just the sweeping 14-turn, 4.048-mile circuit.
“It’s my home track. I love everything about it, from just the atmosphere that's there,” Telitz enthused. “The fans are incredible. It's the only place on the IMSA calendar that I can walk around and I see people wearing Telitz shirts. You can go to Siebkens after after the race on Sunday, and there'll be a bunch of racers there having a good time. Just the whole event is just - it feels so cool and old school, and it still has that great classic sports car experience. It's amazing.
“Obviously, the track's great too, but for me, it's everything else.”
While Telitz will certainly soak up the Road America vibe this weekend, there is a championship chase to attend to as he’s 92 points behind class leader Dudu Barrichello. That Telitz and co-driver Benjamin Pederson have their No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RCF GT3 in the mix for a championship is a tribute to the team, considering the Lexus is the oldest car in the field and will be going away at the end of the season.
“It comes down to how good this Vasser Sullivan team is,” Telitz noted, “and it goes to prove that the Lexus RCF still has what it takes to to win races in IMSA and compete for championships.
“But for right now, we're just focused on on the next race at Road America and getting the most out of it. This car's been been so good to us over the years, and we've continued to figure out how to get speed out of it year after year.
“So yeah, we're going to take it one race at a time, and Road America's next.”
Photo: Michael L. Levitt/Lumen Digital Agency/IMSA
Telitz has been with the Vasser Sullivan Lexus program since transitioning to sports cars in 2019 from what is now the INDY NXT Series. Success came early with wins, poles and third-place championship finishes in 2020 and 2023. After a couple of down years, Telitz has apparently hit his stride again with a win this season at Long Beach and a runner-up finish recently at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park.
“Yeah, I think Lexus and Vasser Sullivan have always had faith in me. That's why I've been around the program for as long as I have been, and I just have years and years of experience now in IMSA.
“It seems weird to now say I'm a veteran in it, but I've been there. I know what it takes. I know what it's like to not quite make it a few times. We've came up short in GTD a couple of times while I've been here, so I know what not to do, and I know what works as well now.
“And so that's kind of just how I've been approaching it. I've seen what works. I've seen what doesn't, and I'm applying all the things that I know that work, and avoiding all the things that definitely didn't work in the past.”
Given that experience, Telitz doesn’t plan to change much about his approach to Sunday’s race which has more than doubled in length for 2026.
“I'm going to be honest. It's not going to change much for how we've approached each weekend this year. Just trying to maximize what we have and where we can finish.
“When we've had chances at good finishes, we've capitalized, we've gotten them, and we've had rough weekends. We've still gotten as much as we can. You know, Daytona. We just just didn't have quite the speed to compete for a win there, but still collected some decent points at Daytona and a couple other events where we had maybe some drive-throughs or some penalties. We still figured out how to get ourselves back towards the front and still collect good finishes.
“So we'll have the same mindset at Road America, nice and clean. And if anything goes wrong, we're still just trying to finish as high up as we can every weekend.”
Whether Sunday’s race will be clean, or not, is open to some speculation. Last year’s 2-hour, 40-minute sprint race was marred by numerous yellow flags and penalties for over aggressive driving. Telitz is of the opinion that this year’s longer race length won’t lead to more full-course yellow flag periods.
“Yeah, six-hour race at Road America, it's still a sprint race. Funny enough, in IMSA, these six hour races just inevitably end up being sprint races. Track position matters almost the entire way through the race.
“But I'm going to say this year at Road America, I think there will be significantly less yellow than we actually saw in the sprint race, just because people will want to try to get to the end, try to make it more than in the in the sprint race format. Some of the restarts in the sprint race the last couple of years have been absolutely wild, but I think we'll see some more green flag running this time, and hopefully that'll make for some really exciting racing.”
Photo: Jake Galstad/Lumen Digital Agency/IMSA
And as far as that weather forecast that includes some rain for Friday and Saturday? Telitz isn’t having any of it.
“I can tell you, just having lived in the Upper Midwest my whole life, I'm not going to put any stock in what a weather forecast says more than two days out, maybe,” Telitz said. “It could tell me it's going to be perfectly sunny, and I don't believe it. It could tell me it's going to rain all weekend. I don't believe it. It could pop. You have thunderstorms pop up. Who knows? It's Wisconsin in July and August.
“So I bet you it rains at some point during the weekend, and I bet you there's a lot of sunshine too. We're going to get a bit of both.”
Even if it does rain, Telitz isn’t going to let it dampen his homecoming weekend at Road America.
“I love driving in the rain. It's actually a lot of fun,” Telitz stated. “It's a different challenge in the car, and it's more enjoyable in sports cars because you're not getting soaked all the time like you would be in an open wheel (car). And at Road America, it's such a fun track, too, in the wet. All the elevation changes where the water pools, runs across the racetrack or how the lines change as well. There's a lot of different lines you can take in different parts of the racetrack. So it makes some really fun racing.
“Anytime it's rained at Road America during a race, I think I've gotten on the podium in any car I've driven,” Telitz added. “So that helps too. So I really don't care if it rains. If it doesn't, we'll be fine too.”
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.