LONG BEACH, Calif. — The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship has an extended, memorable historical past of racing within the streets, starting from Miami to Del Mar, San Antonio to Detroit, Nova Scotia to Australia.
Bicentennial Park’s streets performed host to a two-time Formulation 1 World Champion popping out of retirement to race in 1983 in IMSA’s Grand Prix of Miami, setting the stage for an excellent second act to his legendary profession. You might have heard of him: Emerson Fittipaldi.
And it was Scotland’s Allan McNish (driving with a strained again he injured while stepping out of kilt throughout a pre-race photograph shoot) who teamed with Rinaldo “Dindo” Capello and Brad Jones to win IMSA’s first and solely race Down Below on the streets of Adelaide.
This weekend the WeatherTech Championship returns to North America’s most iconic road race, the Acura Grand Prix of Lengthy Seaside, to jot down a brand new chapter in a legacy courting to the early Nineteen Nineties when IMSA GTO and GTU rivals first blasted down Shoreline Drive and alongside Seaside Approach. Within the intervening years, a veritable cornucopia of IMSA’s prototype and manufacturing sports activities car-based classes have competed at Lengthy Seaside, with this 12 months’s entry record that includes the Grand Touring Prototype and GT Daytona courses and 11 producers represented throughout 27 entries.
Technique Guidelines
A number of elements conspire to make Lengthy Seaside probably the most strategic races on the WeatherTech Championship calendar. With these vehicles unleashed on the 11-turn, 1.968-mile circuit the place “monitor limits” are usually concrete partitions and the unique GTP machines wrestle to common 100 mph lap instances, on-track overtaking is a premium. Then there’s the one pit cease, which makes gas filling and tire alternative of venture, all whereas getting the driving force change carried out, to create the high-speed chess match.
“It’s a distinct dynamic of racing,” says Felipe Nasr, who with Nick Tandy seeks their third straight win to begin 2025 within the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963. “It’s a a method ahead to soak up the race when it comes to technique. You solely have the one pit cease to face.”
Whereas going the space on one set of tires has these days been the important thing to victory, there aren’t any ensures that would be the case this 12 months.
“We’ve concepts,” Nasr continues, “however it at all times depends upon monitor degree, grip degree and the degradation. And the out laps. If it’s greatest to maintain the nice and cozy set, versus altering. Or the place you’re at within the race. That makes an enormous proportion on the choice.”
Renger van der Zande, who shares the No. 93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura ARX-06 with Nick Yelloly, stated the cat is mainly out of the bag now on no-tire modifications because it’s been the profitable transfer the final two years.
“The shine is off that transfer, let’s put it that method. I believe it’s the transfer,” says the two-time and defending Lengthy Seaside general winner.
“It nonetheless wants to slot in the entire image as a result of we don’t understand how the tire put on is gonna be this 12 months. It’s gonna be fairly heat, however not tremendous heat. You may’t say from what’s gonna be the technique, however the technique is gonna be making the correct name on the correct second.”
Getting the driving force change carried out as rapidly as potential means extra right here too, as final 12 months’s GTD class winner Parker Thompson defined.
“Clearly the beginning of the IMSA season you’ve obtained Daytona and also you’ve obtained Sebring, that are theoretically two of the longest pit stops that we do all year long simply since you’re doing full fills mainly, and if you happen to’re not doing full fills, you’re attempting to prime up the vitality anyway, so actually, you’re sitting there for 40 to 50 seconds,” stated the Canadian, who shares his No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 with Jack Hawksworth.
“The primary dash race of the season is our shortest pit cease of the 12 months. It’s a must to comfortably be capable of do pit stops, and I might say on the lowest 12 seconds, in order that’s 12 seconds of getting a man that’s 5’8” out after which a man that’s over 6’ in comfortably buckled in and able to go.”
“Wicky Bobby”
The inestimable Robert Wickens (generally referred to as “Wicky Bobby” in deference to Will Ferrell’s “Ricky Bobby” in 2006’s Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby) is making his first GTD begin aboard the specifically outfitted No. 36 DXDT Racing Corvette Z06 GT3.R.
With Pratt Miller-developed hand controls and Bosch’s EBS (digital braking system), Wickens prepares to writer his newest chapter to his comeback story since his 2018 accident in an IndyCar race. After testing at Sebring, the 2023 IMSA Michelin Pilot Problem Touring Automotive champion was impressed with the Bosch EBS system’s integration into the Corvette.
“The most important takeaway (from the take a look at) is that it feels just like the Bosch EBS and the hand-control system developed by Pratt Miller belongs within the automotive. There hasn’t been a single hiccup,” Wickens explains. “The primary run with the system, if that was all I had and there was no tunability I wouldn’t have been upset about it. We began off in such an ideal window the place I simply obtained to determine the race automotive.”
Among the many challenges of “determining” the Corvette have been coming to grips with a state-of-the-art traction management system for the primary time.
“The most important factor for me is knowing the traction management system that’s on this Corvette Z06 GT3.R as a result of I haven’t actually felt traction management for all of my profession,” he says. “I’ve carried out some testing in GT3 from my instances at Mercedes and another stuff in a few different race vehicles right here and there. However when it comes to extracting lap instances from a correct traction management system and all of the aids and assists that now we have contained in the automotive (I’m) nonetheless attempting to know sort of what makes it click on, as a result of once I’m making use of the throttle, my decision is just not spot on but.”
Wickens heads in with each a versatile state of mind and a four-time Lengthy Seaside-winning co-driver. Tommy Milner joins the DXDT IMSA lineup with the GTD PRO class off this race.
Reminiscences
When a racing collection has been part of an iconic occasion for so long as IMSA has been on the Acura Grand Prix of Lengthy Seaside schedule, the result’s a flood of nice recollections.
It’s featured “buying and selling paint” (and physique components) from IMSA’s Lengthy Seaside debut in 1990. It witnessed a giant-killing top-six general sweep by Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) vehicles in 2007, led by a Penske Porsche RS Spyder. It’s seen last-lap passes, equivalent to Simon Pagenaud on Adrian Fernandez in 2010. And it’s seen a number of latest three-peats: Corvette Racing in GT1 from 2007 to 2009, the Brothers Taylor general in each DP and DPi from 2015 to 2017 and Paul Miller Racing’s Madison Snow and Bryan Sellers in GTD from 2021 to 2023.
Sebastien Bourdais’ Lengthy Seaside stardom shifted from Champ Vehicles to sports activities vehicles when in 2022, the Frenchman put a brand new twist on the adage “if you happen to can’t win be spectacular” by profitable in spectacular vogue. He stormed again from a mid-race miscue to erase a 21-second deficit and seize the general victory co-driving with van der Zande.
The final two years, age-old rivals and cagey riverboat gamblers Roger Penske and Chip Ganassi – and their strategists – drew “inside straights” and went the space on a single set of Michelin tires. In the meantime Vasser Sullivan Racing began a profitable streak of its personal with successive GTD PRO and GTD wins of their Lexus RC F GT3s.
Will Vasser Sullivan gather a three-fer of its personal this 12 months? Will one or two units of tires be the ticket to the general win for a 3rd consecutive 12 months? The one certain factor is that Saturday’s “100 minutes of Southern California” is destined so as to add a couple of extra nice recollections to IMSA’s wealthy legacy on the streets of Lengthy Seaside.
