Hyundai showed up at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with two agendas and managed both. On track, Preston Brown and Denis Dupont wheeled the No. 76 Elantra N TCR from eighth on the grid to a second-place finish in Saturday’s Indianapolis Motor Speedway 120. Off it, Hyundai Hope on Wheels handed Riley Hospital for Children a check for $300,000 before the race started.
The result keeps Hyundai’s podium streak intact heading into the final round of the 2026 IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge season. Bryan Herta Autosport placed all four of its Elantra N TCRs inside the top 10, a clean sweep that tightened the manufacturer and drivers’ championship pictures simultaneously. The No. 33 of Mason Filippi and Bryson Morris, which arrived at Indy leading the Drivers’ standings with 2,470 points, finished fifth after a drive-through penalty from a contact incident with the No. 72 car removed it from podium contention. Harry Gottsacker and Lance Bergstein took eighth in the No. 18, while Maddie Aust and Mark Wilkins rounded out the Hyundai effort in ninth with the No. 98.
In the championship standings, Filippi and Morris now sit at 2,730 points with Brown and Dupont second at 2,530. On the manufacturers’ side, Hyundai leads with 3,000 points over Honda’s 2,860, Cupra’s 2,750, and Audi’s 2,640. A 140-point cushion over Honda with one race remaining is workable, though not comfortable. At Indianapolis, Hyundai had entered leading the TCR Manufacturers’ Championship by 120 points.
The Hope on Wheels dimension of the weekend was not incidental. Hyundai debuted its National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month campaign, The Mark of a Warrior, using the No. 33 car as the canvas, with a special-edition livery built around the organization’s signature handprint. A handprint ceremony at the speedway preceded the donation presentation to Riley Hospital. The $300,000 figure substantially exceeds the per-lap donation model that has driven the season’s fundraising: Hope on Wheels donates $100 for every lap led by a Hyundai during the IMSA season, a structure that has generated $77,800 in research and treatment funds across the year so far. The Riley donation, by contrast, was a direct institutional grant separate from that lap-count mechanism.
Hope on Wheels has operated since 1998, funding pediatric cancer research through a model tied directly to new-vehicle sales. As of September 2025, the organization had awarded grants totaling over $303 million, making it one of the larger nonprofit funders in the pediatric oncology space.
The season closes at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta’s Fox Factory 120, scheduled for September 30 through October 2. Filippi and Morris need to hold off Brown and Dupont for the Drivers’ title while the team collectively defends the Manufacturers’ lead. Hyundai has every incentive to race its cars hard against each other, which is a tidier problem to have than racing against Honda with a smaller cushion.
Source: Hyundai. Images courtesy of Hyundai.
