Shift Up Now Athlete Hannah Grisham earned the pole position and set a new series track record for the LP Building Solutions 120 at the Glen, the sixth event of the 2026 IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge season (IMPC) at Watkins Glen International Raceway on June 25-28, 2026. She and teammate Hannah Greenemeier also brought home a season-best sixth place finish in the GS class.
Competing in the fourth race of their first season with the series, “The Hannahs” piloted the Heart of Racing No. 26 Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT4 Evo on the 2.45-mile, 11-turn road course.
The first practice session took place in the rain on Thursday afternoon. With mixed conditions in the forecast for the weekend, most of the 43 cars in the full field chose to participate. The Hannahs ran inside the top 20 overall on the time sheets.
The following morning, practice session two was dry. Greenemeier and Grisham continued to show fast pace as they prepared to qualify later that afternoon.
In a change of strategy from the previous races, the Heart of Racing team elected to put Grisham behind the wheel for qualifying, which also made her the starting driver for the race. Friday afternoon’s qualifying session was incredibly competitive among the 29 GT4 cars in the GS class.
Grisham’s fast lap put her on pole by nearly three-tenths of a second and set a new IMPC track record for Watkins Glen. Her first professional pole position was also the first in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge era, following in the footsteps of Valerie Limoges 19 years ago, who took the first-ever overall GS pole by a female racer.
On Saturday, the two-hour competition began at 1:05pm EDT under sunny skies. Grisham lined up at the point to lead the field to green. She had a great start, running cleanly through turn one, despite the second-place car being right on her heals as the field headed up to the esses.
Grisham maintained the lead under pressure through the bus stop and into the toe of the boot. By the end of the first lap, she had started to break away, with clean air between her car and the one behind. She would go on to maintain a gap to the rest of the field for her entire stint under green-flag conditions.
Just over 40 minutes into the race, Grisham pitted for fuel and four new Michelin tires, and handed the wheel to Greenemeier. Once the pit stop cycle was complete, Greenemeier was in second place with her sights set on regaining the lead.
Over the next 40 minutes of racing, in an effort to save fuel and shorten the final pit stop as much as possible, Greenemeier dropped back to sixth. After pitting, the cycle advanced her to fifth.
With 10 minutes remaining in the competition, a stopped car on track caused a full-course caution. A six-minute cleanup ensued, and then the field packed up for a sprint to the finish.
After the green flag, cars ran two-by-two through the esses and into the bus stop. Greenemeier narrowly dodged an incident with a car ahead, losing one place in the melee and dropping back to sixth.
She wasted no time challenging to retake the fifth-place spot and putting the car ahead on the defense for several corners in a row. Unfortunately before she was able to make the pass, another full-course caution flew. Without time to return to green, Grisham and Greenemeier would finish sixth, their best IMPC result so far.
“It was a really great race at Watkins Glen,” said Grisham. “The entire team did an amazing job, and we took away some really valuable championship points. I started the race from the pole, which was super-exciting, and my first time doing that. My stint was fairly straightforward, and everything went to plan. We had a full green-flag stint, and I focused on building as much of a gap as I could while doing a bit of fuel-saving.
“Then Hannah [Greenemeier] got in the car for the rest of the race and did an amazing job. We came home in sixth place. There’s a lot to take away from this weekend but it’s definitely a positive step forward. We’re heading to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park with a lot of momentum, and I’m really excited to keep building on this as a team.”
Next up, “the Hannahs” head to Clarington, Ontario for the seventh event of the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge series, the Chevrolet Grand Prix at the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park on July 10-12, 2026.
