Motorsport Week selected five key storylines from the IMSA SportsCar Championship’s thrilling Grand Prix of Long Beach sprint race event.
The streets of Long Beach hosted the 50th anniversary of the Grand Prix and the first sprint round on the 11-round IMSA calendar.
From the gruelling demands of Sebring, the IMSA paddock came to the East Coast for a 100-minute race at Long Beach.
Long Beach gave drivers the typical challenges from a street circuit with its surrounding walls and handful of run-off areas.
Minimising driver error proved vital for strong results at the street venue in addition to the pit stop strategy which depended on one pit stop and driver change.
It was refreshingly different from the two lengthy Endurance Cup rounds which began the calendar yet Porsche Penske came out on top having done so far this season.
Meanwhile, the GTD category was unsurprisingly competitive, boasting 16 GT3 cars racing simultaneously with 11 GTP entrants.
Read our race reports:
- Porsche’s Tandy and Nasr take third consecutive IMSA win at Long Beach
- Laurens Vanthoor leads IMSA GTD victory for ‘Rexy’ at Long Beach
BMW RLL’s costly pit stop blunder
BMW RLL took their third consecutive pole position this season having topped both free practice sessions.
Their optimism, however, was short-drawn as they discarded another victory.
The race’s duration meant that all teams needed to make one scheduled pit stop to gain enough fuel to reach the end which put a great amount of pressure on making the call.
During the early stages of the race, BMW RLL led 1-2 with #24 BMW M Hybrid V8 driver Dries Vanthoor followed by Sheldon van der Linde’s #25 BMW.
Together, they built a lead over three seconds after 10 minutes of green flag running. Ten minutes later, the first caution period is called after Orey Fidani temporarily buried his #13 AWA Corvette Z06 GT3.R in the tyre barrier at Turn 8.
GTPs pitted including D. Vanthoor with van der Linde and #60 Meyer Shank Acura ARX-06 driver Tom Blomqvist holding back.
Unfortunately, a disastrously slower pitstop for D. Vanthoor caused him to drop from down to fourth for the restart.
For van der Linde, he pitted on the following lap and fell down to 10th position.
Seconds separated success and failure during these pit stops as overtaking was a more challenging affair at the street circuit, thus pit stop cycles allowed opportunity for a loss or gain of positions – as a certain GTD achieved the latter.
So as BMW lost their winning chances, Porsche Penske simply continued their form so that halfway through, Felipe Nasr led from his #6 Porsche 963 team-mate Matt Campbell.
Philipp Eng was third in the #24 BMW but was unable to assert the pace to chase down the Porsche Penskes.
Porsche Penske earns hat-trick of wins
Porsche Penske have won five of the last seven races in the GTP category.
Their third consecutive win this year was, admittedly, less ‘hard-fought’ in comparison to the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring.
Porsche Penske have been the undeniable benchmark in IMSA’s top level category having won at least three races in each of all three GTP seasons so far – including Long Beach in the inaugural 2023 campaign.
The famed Penske corporation have partnered Porsche at all three of their wins so far at Long Beach with their LMP2 class win in 2007 (American Le Mans Series) by drivers Romain Dumas and Timo Bernhard.
Most interestingly, their last win at an IMSA sprint round came at the 2024 Sportscar Weekend at Road America, which was recently announced as a six-hour endurance race instead of Indianapolis in next year’s calendar.
Having carried out the opening stint, Nick Tandy and his co-driver Nasr took victory with a faultless performance by the Porsche Penske team.
Nasr in particular had not stood on the podium at Long Beach in four years whilst it was Tandy’s fourth win in eight starts at the venue.
Damage nullifies potential from DXTD Corvette
The GT World Challenge America race winners had notable attention coming to the third IMSA round.
Robert Wickens, the Canadian driver who suffered a dramatic accident in his debut 2018 IndyCar season, added another impressive milestone in his recovery and adaptation as a paraplegic.
His only IMSA appearance was during the 2017 Daytona 24 Hours, before his life-changing accident.
Wickens uses hand-controls developed by Bosch to drive and after testing at Sebring, he raced with them last weekend.
His pace was impressive as was his form during the opening stages of the race – amidst the competitive mid-to-upper GTD field.
At the first line of GTD pit stops, 35 minutes in, Wickens pitted as DXDT did something which no other GTD team opted to do.
All four tyres were expertly changed prior to the concluding of the refuelling process, adeptly not using extra time in the pit box to do so; the driver change took 18.7 seconds.
Milner was on a mission to use his fresh tyres to gain places, and so he did.
He fought up to sixth place albeit without misfortune as his contact with other rivals inflicted gradual bodywork damage which the team attended too – understandably ending their efforts.
Vasser Sullivan lands double GTD podium
One of the key winners during the GTD pit stop cycle was the #89 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 which climbed from sixth to third position.
The gaps were tight during the pits with the majority of the category in the pit lane. As a result, a slick pit stop performance by the #89 pit mechanics enabled Aaron Telitz to over jump the Heart of Racing #27 Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo.
Franke Montecalvo carried out a strong opening stint although confided to the intense fight within the mid-field.
Upon emerging in the top-three, Telitz was unmistakably under pressure to maintain their gain from the pit stop cycle.
Laurens Vanthoor crept away in the lead as did Jack Hawksworth in the #12 Lexus, so Telitz withstood great demand from his rivals behind.
Specifically, it was reigning GTD champion Philip Ellis of the #57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo who kept Telitz alert.
At the checkered flag, Telitz finished 0.485 seconds ahead of Ellis to finalise a double podium for Vasser Sullivan and Lexus.
Aston Martin Valkyrie lands best race result
One more round meant one more step closer for the new Aston Martin Valkyrie V12 Le Mans Hypercar towards competitive form.
Heart of Racing (HOR) scored an eighth place finish in a race which prioritised short-term pace over an endurance challenge – having taken P9 on its IMSA debut.
In a full-season of IMSA, your race car has to not only survive hours of pressure and punishment but also perform at the much shorter rounds on the calendar.
HOR quietly (albeit not literally because of the naturally aspirated V12) kept their #23 Aston Martin within reach of the upper half of the GTP class in its second racing event, its first time at a street circuit.
Drivers Roman de Angelis and Ross Gunn are team regulars and have made countless IMSA race appearances over the past five years – but in GT3 machinery.
Gunn had one win at this street circuit to his name from 2022 with Alex Riberas.
The #23 set decently competitive lap times behind the other GTPs yet at Long Beach, track position was key.
HOR capitalised on Meyer Shank Racing’s rear legality panel issues with the #93 Acura – as did D. Vanthoor who was promoted to third when the #93 pitted – as the #60 also struggled and bizarrely, Colin Braun lost his rear-left wheel at T5 on the cool-down lap.
The #23 Aston Martin stayed out of harm’s way, managed traffic at a venue where it is crucial to do so and commanded patience to safely reach the checkered flag in its second IMSA race outing.
READ MORE: Five key storylines from the IMSA 12 Hours of Sebring
