Korthoff Mercedes-AMG Driver Celebrates Mother’s 10-Year Anniversary Post Heart Transplant
By Holly Cain
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Kenton Koch’s rise through the IMSA racing ranks shows a lot of perseverance and commitment. It has certainly enhanced an uncommon natural combination of talent and drive.
And Koch gets it honestly, as they say.
The 30-year-old Californian has earned his way up the competition ladder to the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with the ultimate role model: his mother Karen Koch, who just celebrated being a 10-year heart transplant survivor.
From the “Donate Life America” emblem on his race cars to the inspiration that fills his heart, Koch and his family sure do not lack in motivation or can-do spirit.
“Having to go through something like that, you know, there’s the worry, but also the happiness of the promise that has resulted,” said Koch, who will drive the No. 32 Korthoff Competition Motors Mercedes-AMG GT3 in the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring on March 15 with teammates Seth Lucas and Maxi Goetz in Grand Touring Daytona (GTD).
“Now, having her support has brought me joy and just makes you cherish life. You appreciate your parents and it gives you a different perspective, I would imagine, than if life was a little bit different and you didn’t go through such a traumatic thing.
“You think your parents are invincible, you know. You don’t think anything bad can happen,” Koch continued. “Thankfully, everything went really well.”
In many ways, racing was a coping mechanism for Koch, who started racing after attending a car show in Los Angeles but quickly proved he had the talent to give the sport a real go. He captured multiple racing scholarships to propel each level in the early going.
In 2012, he absolutely dominated the Skip Barber Mazdaspeed Challenge winning 17 of 20 races en route to the championship. The next year he won the Skip Barber Pro Challenge Series championship in a similarly dominant fashion, scoring nine wins in 11 races and setting five track records.
A pivotal period in his racing career occurred a decade ago. Koch secured the Mazda MX-5 Cup title in 2014 with six wins from 12 races, with a scholarship secured into IMSA Prototype Lites for 2015 (the series has since evolved into the IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge).
Midway through the 2014 season, a race weekend in Houston in June changed Koch’s perspective. That was the weekend he remembers his mother was placed on the heart transplant list.
“We didn’t have a lot of funding or budget at that time,” Koch said. “I basically came up going through scholarship opportunities. MX-5 Cup was a huge year … if I didn’t win, then that was it, so you had to make it work.
“That weekend (in Houston) was a pretty big turning point. We were super fast, but we had to buckle down and my mom’s situation was always in the back of my mind,” he continued. “It gave me more of a desire to do well and we dominated that weekend and then did really well from that point on, winning the championship.
“That’s when I kind of fell in love with what (success) could do for you in terms of motivation and positivity. It was certainly a motivating factor. I would say I’m probably not on one of the more ‘emotional-lists’ when it comes to being in a car. There’s not really a lot that gets me, but that weekend, I actually broke down in tears.”
He began the Prototype Lites season at Sebring in 2015, which occurred shortly after his mother received her heart transplant in January. Without the MX-5 Cup championship scholarship to advance to begin with, it’s unclear how Koch might have progressed.
“She got it and was able to recover over six months or so,” he explained. “That was the year we were in IMSA Lites, which we were able to win, so we did pretty good.”
Koch began the 2016 WeatherTech Championship season with a Prototype Challenge (PC) class win on debut in the Rolex 24 At Daytona, part of JDC-Miller MotorSports’ lineup.
While he’s had intermittent starts since, he made just his 20th WeatherTech Championship start at the 2025 Rolex 24. He is coming off a 2024 season with a career-high seven starts, his first GTD win – which came at VIRginia International Raceway – and a subsequent podium at Indianapolis.
The reshuffled Korthoff team sees Koch now anchoring the team’s Mercedes-AMG GT3 alongside the up-and-coming Lucas, with Mercedes-AMG veteran Goetz as third driver. It comes after Koch was generally the third driver alongside Korthoff’s previous full-season pair of Mikael Grenier and Mike Skeen; that trio won the 2023 IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup GTD title. In a late-season tweak, Koch moved into the sprint race seat alongside Grenier at Road America and VIR.
This season marks Koch’s first full-time WeatherTech Championship campaign after a decade-long journey to get there, and after the new lineup finished ninth at Daytona. Ascending to this spot is a big step for his career, but one that he feels prepared for, and excited about.
“Being a third driver is very different than being a full season driver because as a third, you pretty much get the minimum amount of time in the car and just try not to screw up for the team,” Koch said, adding, “Now I’m in the position where I have a little bit more say and I like that. I feel like I have a lot to be able to add and I’m excited to be in that position to do that.
“I feel like I’m ready for it.”