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The Long Beach street course will showcase Acura versus Aston-Martin versus Cadillac versus Corvette versus Ferrari and Porsche among other famous brands for the 100-minute race that is considered Honda Racing’s U.S. home event.  It’s exciting racing on the 1.968-mile Long Beach street circuit. That’s because teams and drivers start “cold” and have to work through significant track condition changes over three sessions Friday while four other classes add rubber to the surface. IndyCar is here too, further adding to the puzzle. The IMSA field of 28 cars is split between the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) and Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) classes.

Penske Racing President Jonathan Diuguid said the team’s Long Beach approach is, well, flexible. “At Daytona and Sebring[ much longer endurance races – AutoCrat] we said, ‘I don’t care if you’re last place after the first corner, we don’t really want you to be aggressive on the start,” Diuguid said. “It’s probably the opposite (at Long Beach). I think in ’24, Nick (Tandy) went from eighth to second on the start. Those are the kind of aggressive moves you’re gonna see in the first couple laps. I think you’re going to see the drivers be a lot more aggressive in traffic, and that’s definitely a clear mentality change. “Really, it’s just, it’s aggressiveness from the drop of the green flag until the checkered flag, which is probably slightly different from the approach that’s been taken in Sebring and Daytona.” Continue reading →