Courtney Crone returns to IMSA VP Racing Sportscar Challenge with Peregrine Racing for GSX campaign

After a season in F1 Academy, Courtney Crone returns to the IMSA paddock in 2026, joining Peregrine Racing to launch her first GSX campaign in the BMW M4 GT4, beginning at Daytona.

Photo credits: F1 Academy Ltd

Courtney Crone is set to return to the IMSA paddock in 2026, as she joins Peregrine Racing for the IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge, driving a BMW M4 GT4. The American racer will kick off her season this weekend at Daytona, marking a new chapter with a new team, a new car, and her first full campaign in GT4 competitions, as she shifts her focus back to sportscar racing after a year in single-seaters.

Crone in fact spent the 2025 season in F1 Academy with ART Grand Prix, representing the MoneyGram Haas F1 Team; her entry into the series followed her wild card debut at Miami in 2024, where she improvement over the weekend and finished 11th in Race 2 in her first outing in the new-generation Tatuus T421 F4 car.

Prior to her F1 Academy campaign, Crone had built her single-seater experience in the F4 US Championship and Formula Pro USA F4 series in the first-generation Ligier machinery, before initially transitioning into sports cars in 2021.

Crone’s career has spanned an unusually wide range of disciplines: she began racing quarter midgets at just four years old, later combining car racing with speedway motorcycles, and competing across USAC midgets and sprint cars, formula cars, and prototypes. Her move into LMP3 racing both in North America and Europe followed, as she initially became as a front-running contender in endurance.

Crone in fact entered the IMSA Prototype Challenge in LMP3 in 2021, finishing eighth overall, and continued to progress in 2022 with multiple top-five results. Her breakthrough came in 2023, when she scored six podium finishes in the newly rebranded IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge, ending the season fourth in the championship. In parallel, she contested Prototype Cup Germany, securing top-ten finishes in seven starts.

In 2024, the IMSA scholarship earned her an opportunity in Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America, although her campaign was halted after the Sebring season opener.

A surprise return to open-wheel racing followed in 2025, when Crone joined F1 Academy as the Haas F1 Team representative. She claimed her first top-ten finish of the season in the reverse-grid race at Miami, but endured a challenging year before finally breaking into the points at the penultimate round in Singapore. She closed her campaign with her best result of the season, a seventh place in Las Vegas Race 1, ending the year with three points.

Now focused on her return to American sportscar racing, Crone’s 2026 programme with Peregrine Racing signals a fresh start in the IMSA paddock. The Daytona opener will mark her first competitive outings in GT4 machinery, as she begins her campaign aboard the BMW M4 GT4.