The Long Beach Grand Prix Circuit hosts round three of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. The 3.167-kilometre street circuit features eleven turns and is regarded as the American equivalent of the Monaco Grand Prix. The Long Beach Street Course runs in a clockwise direction around the Convention Center. Its special features include the sweeping start-finish straight along the Pacific coast and the sharp right-hander at the end of the lap.
Along with the Detroit Grand Prix in June, the sprint over 100 minutes is the shortest race of the year.

Acura #40 and Porsche #7 are co-leading championships ahead of Long Beach

📷 © Luc Warnotte. TOP: at Sebring 2024, #40 Acura ARX-06; BOTTOM: at Daytona 2024, #7 Porsche Penske 963

Coming off a stellar victory at the Twelve Hours of Sebring, the #40 DEX Imaging Acura ARX-06 team with Jordan Taylor and Louis Delétraz will enter the sprint racing season for 2024 with the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach while simultaneously leading the championship standings together Porsche Penske Motorsport #7 Porsche 963 with Dane Cameron and Felipe Nasr who go to Long Beach with exactly the same number of points as their results in the first two rounds mirrors the #40 Acura with 350 points for victory at Daytona (at Sebring for the Acura) and 30 points for P3 in qualifying in P3 at Daytona (at Sebring for Deletraz and Taylor) plus a P3 at Sebring (at Daytona for the #40) and 26 points for a P4 in qualifying at Sebring (at Daytona for the Wayne Taylor pair).

📷 © Luc Warnotte at Sebring 2024. #40 Acura ARX-06

For Jordan Taylor, the Long Beach weekend marks his return to prototype racing at the 1.968-mile street course where along with his brother Ricky he recorded three wins in 2015, 2016, 2017 and two pole positions (2021, GTLM; 2022 GTD PRO). As for Louis Delétraz, this will be the first sprint race event in his IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship career and debut on the streets of Long Beach.

Louis Delétraz: “I am very excited for Long Beach. It will be my first time at this track and from what I hear it’s an amazing event. It’s the first sprint race of 2024 and we will continue with the same approach as we started the year. The Acura ARX-06 looked strong in 2023 and I can’t wait to be back with the WTRAndretti boys and girls and our No. 40 DEX Imaging Acura GTP.”

Jordan Taylor: “Long Beach is always a classic IMSA street fight. It’s our shortest race of the year so the intensity is always high throughout the weekend. There’s no room for error and everyone has to be on it from the drivers to the crew to the engineers. The No. 10 car was very strong there last year, so hopefully we can pick up from where they left off last year. We are coming into the weekend with some great momentum after Sebring, so hopefully we can keep that going and leave with two Acuras on the podium at their home race.” Source: Wayne Taylor Racing by Andretti

📷 © Luc Warnotte at Daytona. #7 Porsche Penske Porsche 963

Last year the Porsche Penske Motorsport IMSA team showed its full potential here. Nick Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet clinched the first race victory for the Porsche 963 thanks to a brilliant tactical masterstroke by the team. The outfit now aims to repeat this success next weekend.

Dane Cameron (Porsche 963 #7): “After the two longest races of the year, now comes the shortest of the entire season. That’s always a bit of a shock on the IMSA calendar. I really like the special challenges that the Long Beach street circuit throws at us. In 2023 I was racing in the FIA WEC and so I missed this sprint – such a shame. The narrow circuit takes no prisoners when you make a mistake. If we get over the distance cleanly, we’ll hopefully have a chance of scoring our second win of the season.” Source: Porsche

Both Cadillac are 3rd and 4th in Championship ahead of Long Beach

Following runner-up finishes by both the #01 Cadillac V-Series.R and #31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R, in addition to front-row qualifying lockouts, in the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) races this season, teams and drivers are primed to occupy the top step in Victory Circle.

Cadillac Racing will seek its sixth victory in seven races this week on the 1.968-mile, 11-turn temporary street circuit and manufacturer-leading 30th win in IMSA prototype competition since 2017.

A Cadillac DPi won five consecutive races through 2022 (no event in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic), including podium sweeps in ‘22 and ’21, to extend GM’s victory streak to seven in the event.

The #31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R, co-driven by reigning IMSA GTP champion Pipo Derani and Jack Aitken, has earned the pole in both races and started the season with second place in the 24-hour race at Daytona International Speedway. The hybrid Cadillac racecar was running strong in the first half of the 12-hour race at Sebring before an on-track incident forced its retirement. They scored 600 points in both championships (teams and drivers) which puts them in third.

“As usual, with any street circuit, qualifying is important if you want to have a good chance to win the race because it’s one of the two shortest races we have in the season. You can help yourself a lot by starting up front,” said Derani, who won at Long Beach in 2021.

Pipo Derani: “As usual, with any street circuit, qualifying is important if you want to have a good chance to win the race because it’s one of the two shortest races we have in the season. You can help yourself a lot by starting up front. Hopefully, we can continue our success in qualifying that we’ve had so far this year that will help us in the race. It’s also a race that can flip upside down quickly with yellows, so you need to be on top of your game if you want to maximize your chances. So, hopefully, we can do just that to recover from a difficult race at Sebring and try to do better than we did last year, which was a bit of a risky strategy that did not play out.”

Jack Aitken: “Definitely looking forward to Long Beach. It’s one on the calendar that I picked out at the start of the year as quite a cool challenge. Cadillac being strong there adds to that as well. Being a shorter format race, I’m interested to see if there’s much of a change of the view of traffic and how aggressive people are. With it being a shorter race, it’s about making sure you don’t make any mistakes because time to recover from those is at a premium. I enjoy street circuits, so really looking forward to it.” Source: Cadillac

With two P2 in qualifying a P2 at Sebring and a DNF at Daytona, Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande are currently fourth in both Championships with 594 points.

📷 © Luc Warnotte at Sebring 2024. #01 Cadillac Racing Cadillac V-Series.R

Bourdais and van der Zande won in 2022 and Bourdais – a 2019 Long Beach Walk of Fame inductee – is a four-time winner on the street circuit. They teamed with Scott Dixon to start and finish second March 16 at Sebring International Raceway.

“It’s a straightforward race with one pit stop and one driver change, but you have to get it right,” said Sebastien Bourdais, who will share time in the seat with Renger van der Zande. “Hopefully we can keep the strong performance we had in Sebring and particularly in Daytona where we didn’t get the result but were awfully strong.”

Sebastien Bourdais: “Long Beach is a place that’s been very good to me. I’m always happy to go to Long Beach and be part of that historic event. 2022 was really special, probably one of my top performances although it was created a bit by anger and that little miscue in traffic. I definitely put on a fun race to watch. Last year we struggled to bring the medium tire to temperature, got caught out at the first braking zone and unfortunately having to retire on the spot. That was definitely not a high, but we’ve learned a ton of things over the year now with the GTP. It will be a different tire this year; we’ll be on the soft tire this time so if it gets hot it will be quite a bit of tire management. If it’s overcast and on the cooler side it should be fine. Very different equation tire-wise than last year. Looking forward to the challenge. It’s a straightforward race with one pit stop and one driver change, but you have to get it right. Hopefully we can keep the strong performance we had in Sebring and particularly in Daytona where we didn’t get the result but were awfully strong. Hopefully we can close the gap to the leaders of the championship and get ourselves firmly in the fight.”

Renger van der Zande: “Long Beach is a special one. It has so much of a classic feeling with Formula 1 being there, IndyCar history and great sports car racing. Cadillac has been strong there. If you look at track position, it’s super important. Normally, it’s not easy to overtake on street tracks but Sebastien (Bourdais) has proven that wrong in 2022. He handed me the car in the lead and I was able to win it from there. And we were second the year before. What is very important is the strategy. With cold tires being not easy in this class we need to take that into consideration. I think the team has been on a high level since last year at Petit Le Mans and I think we have a strong package to fight for wins this season. I think you have to take it step by step, focus on the process in each race. I feel very good about it and see what we can do at Long Beach."

BMW M Team RLL is fifth in teams and drivers championships.

With a P4 in qualifying at Daytona and a P6 overall as well as a P4 overall at Sebring after a P7 in qualifying, Connor De Phillippi and Nick are fifth with 570 points in the Drivers Championship with Team RLL #25 BMW in Teams Championship.

📷 © Luc Warnotte at Sebring 2024. #25 BMW M Hybrid V8

BMW M Team RLL starts with good memories on the Long Beach street circuit. Last year, Connor De Phillippi and Nick Yelloly celebrated second place on the podium in the #25 BMW M Hybrid V8. Philipp Eng and Augusto Farfus completed the strong team result in the GTP class with a fourth place.

With the momentum from 2023 results, the team and drivers want to underline the strong performance of the BMW M Hybrid V8 from the first two weekends of the current year and finally reward themselves with the first podium in the third race of the IMSA season.

Philipp Eng (BMW M Team RLL, #24 BMW M Hybrid V8): “I am really looking forward to the race at Long Beach. It’s a very cool track for the first sprint race of the season. Last year we had a strong race here. We have developed the car in a good direction, and the result of the 12h Sebring did not fully reflect our performance. We have made some adjustments, and I am confident that we can achieve a top result.” Source: BMW Group