4/10/2025
Strategy is the Name of the Game; Wickens’ DXDT Premiere; Memories, Magic and More
By David Phillips
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship has a long, memorable history of racing in the streets, ranging from Miami to Del Mar, San Antonio to Detroit, Nova Scotia to Australia. Bicentennial Park’s streets played host to a two-time Formula 1 World Champion coming out of retirement to race in 1983 in IMSA’s Grand Prix of Miami, setting the stage for a glorious second act to his legendary career. You may have heard of him: Emerson Fittipaldi. And it was Scotland’s Allan McNish (driving with a strained back he injured whilst stepping out of kilt during a pre-race photo shoot) who teamed with Rinaldo “Dindo” Capello and Brad Jones to win IMSA’s first and only race Down Under on the streets of Adelaide.
This weekend the WeatherTech Championship returns to North America’s most iconic street race, the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, to write a new chapter in a legacy dating to the early 1990s when IMSA GTO and GTU competitors first blasted down Shoreline Drive and along Seaside Way. In the intervening years, a veritable cornucopia of IMSA’s prototype and production sports car-based categories have competed at Long Beach, with this year’s entry list featuring the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) and GT Daytona (GTD) classes and 11 manufacturers represented across 27 entries.
Strategy is the Name of the Game
Several factors conspire to make Long Beach one of the most strategic races on the WeatherTech Championship calendar. With these cars unleashed on the 11-turn, 1.968-mile circuit where “track limits” are generally concrete walls and the exotic GTP machines struggle to average 100 mph lap times, on-track overtaking is a premium. Then there’s the one pit stop, which makes fuel filling and tire choice a gamble, all while getting the driver change done, to create the high-speed chess match.
“It’s a different dynamic of racing,” says Felipe Nasr, who with Nick Tandy seeks their third straight win to start 2025 in the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963. “It’s a one way forward to take in the race in terms of strategy. You only have the one pit stop to face.”
While going the distance on one set of tires has lately been the key to victory, there are no guarantees that will be the case this year.
“We have ideas,” Nasr continues, “but it always depends on track level, grip level and the degradation. And the out laps. If it’s best to keep the warm set, versus changing. Or where you’re at in the race. That makes a huge percentage on the decision.”
Renger van der Zande, who shares the No. 93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura ARX-06 with Nick Yelloly, said the cat is basically out of the bag now on no-tire changes since it’s been the winning move the last two years.
“The shine is off that move, let’s put it that way. I think it’s the move,” says the two-time and defending Long Beach overall winner.
“It still needs to fit in the whole picture because we don’t know how the tire wear is gonna be this year. It’s gonna be reasonably warm, but not super warm. You can’t say from what’s gonna be the strategy, but the strategy is gonna be making the right call on the right moment.”
Getting the driver change done as quickly as possible means more here too, as last year’s GTD class winner Parker Thompson explained.
“Obviously the start of the IMSA season you’ve got Daytona and you’ve got Sebring, which are theoretically two of the longest pit stops that we do throughout the year just because you’re doing full fills basically, and if you’re not doing full fills, you’re trying to top up the energy anyway, so really, you’re sitting there for 40 to 50 seconds,” said the Canadian, who shares his No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 with Jack Hawksworth.
“The first sprint race of the season is our shortest pit stop of the year. You have to comfortably be able to do pit stops, and I would say at the lowest 12 seconds, so that’s 12 seconds of getting a guy that’s 5’8” out and then a guy that’s over 6’ in comfortably buckled in and ready to go.”
All Eyes on “Wicky Bobby”
The inestimable Robert Wickens (sometimes called “Wicky Bobby” in deference to Will Ferrell’s “Ricky Bobby” in 2006’s Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby) is set for a feature film of his own: making his first GTD start aboard the specially equipped No. 36 DXDT Racing Corvette Z06 GT3.R.
With Pratt Miller-developed hand controls and Bosch’s EBS (electronic braking system), Wickens prepares to author his latest chapter to his comeback story since his 2018 accident in an IndyCar race. After testing at Sebring, the 2023 IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge Touring Car (TCR) champion was impressed with the Bosch EBS system’s integration into the Corvette.
“The biggest takeaway (from the test) is that it feels like the Bosch EBS and the hand-control system developed by Pratt Miller belongs in the car. There hasn’t been a single hiccup,” Wickens explains. “The first run with the system, if that was all I had and there was no tunability I wouldn’t have been upset about it. We started off in such a great window where I just got to figure out the race car.”
Among the challenges of “figuring out” the Corvette were coming to grips with a state-of-the-art traction control system for the first time.
“The biggest thing for me is understanding the traction control system that’s in this Corvette Z06 GT3.R because I haven’t really felt traction control for all of my career,” he says. “I’ve done some testing in GT3 from my times at Mercedes and some other stuff in a couple of other race cars here and there. But in terms of extracting lap times from a proper traction control system and all the aids and assists that we have inside the car (I’m) still trying to understand kind of what makes it click, because when I’m applying the throttle, my resolution is not spot on yet.”
Wickens heads in with both a flexible frame of mind and a four-time Long Beach-winning co-driver. Tommy Milner joins the DXDT IMSA lineup with the GTD PRO category off this race. Additionally, as IMSA shares the weekend with IndyCar, expect a parade of his friends and former competitors to the DXDT paddock and/or pits on Friday and Saturday.
Thanks for the Memories
When a racing series has been a part of an iconic event for as long as IMSA has been on the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach schedule, the result is a flood of great memories.
It’s featured “trading paint” (and body parts) from IMSA’s Long Beach debut in 1990. It witnessed a giant-killing top-six overall sweep by Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) cars in 2007, led by a Penske Porsche RS Spyder. It’s seen last-lap passes, such as Simon Pagenaud on Adrian Fernandez in 2010. And it’s seen several recent three-peats: Corvette Racing in GT1 from 2007 to 2009, the Brothers Taylor overall in both 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’ Long Beach stardom shifted from Champ Cars to sports cars when in 2022, the Frenchman put a new twist on the adage “if you can’t win be spectacular” by winning in spectacular fashion. He stormed back from a mid-race miscue to erase a 21-second deficit and grab the overall victory co-driving with van der Zande.
The last two years, age-old rivals and cagey riverboat gamblers Roger Penske and Chip Ganassi – and their strategists – drew “inside straights” and went the distance on a single set of Michelin tires. Meanwhile Vasser Sullivan Racing started a winning streak of its own with successive GTD PRO and GTD wins in their Lexus RC F GT3s.
Will Vasser Sullivan collect a three-fer of its own this year? Will one or two sets of tires be the ticket to the overall win for a third consecutive year? The only sure thing is that Saturday’s “100 minutes of Southern California” is destined to add a few more great memories to IMSA’s rich legacy on the streets of Long Beach.
Catch all the action of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach Saturday at 5:00 p.m. ET on USA Network and Peacock, IMSA Radio or streaming live on IMSA.tv and IMSA’s official YouTube channel (internationally).
