Albuquerque: Acuras Will Be “Way Closer” in Long Beach

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

Filipe Albuquerque believes the Acura ARX-06 cars will have a fighting chance for victory in this weekend’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach thanks to the “packed up” GTP field witnessed in the first two IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship races of the season.

The Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport driver and teammate Ricky Taylor enter Saturday’s 100-minute race sitting second in the championship and will be seeking the team’s first win on the Southern California streets since 2017.

The ACO and IMSA’s new LMDh platform, which has been controlled by a narrower performance window compared to the previous-generation DPi machinery, should put all four manufacturers on relatively equal footing this weekend.

Previously, the ORECA-chassied Acura ARX-05 struggled at the street courses in Long Beach and Detroit, with the package generally better suited on smooth, fast-flowing circuits.

“With new regulations for everybody, I think whatever track we are going to, it’s always a question mark of the competitiveness of each manufacturer,” Albuquerque explained.

“Not knowing if our car will be competitive or not, it will always be more competitive than the previous DPi [formula].

“The [Acura] DPi struggled a lot [on street circuits] in past years. It was very hard for us coming over there knowing that we weren’t going to be competitive.

“I think it will be way more competitive across all the manufacturers. I’ll take that. I think we’ll be way closer. I don’t know who’s going to be the leading manufacturer or the one who’s going to be dominating it.

“But I’ll take those chances because it’s way better than any of them before.”

Acura had been winless on the streets of Long Beach in the IMSA DPi era, which saw Cadillac sweep all five editions from 2017-22.

With Cadillac also debuting its new V-Series.R on the streets alongside the Porsche 963 and BMW M Hybrid V8, Albuquerque said he’s optimistic of seeing a closer-than-before fight in Long Beach.

“I think it’s great racing because you can see clearly that we are all much more packed up than ever before,” he said.

“Before it was always, ‘Acura more dominant in one track and Cadillac more dominant in street courses’ and now, at least in two races, we could see that everyone is within a tenth.

“It’s going to be interesting to see Long Beach qualifying because qualifying is obviously always very important.

“Those walls, they don’t move. So it’s going to be interesting.

“We have been focusing on our job so I don’t think everyone was 100 percent by Daytona. There were some manufacturers that were more ready than others.

“But we are expecting by the end of the season for everyone to be super packed up.

“We just need to focus on our own job and make our own car better and not really focusing on the other guys. We just have to assume they’ll be there sooner or later.

“Because we maybe started a bit better than others, we should never underestimate the others will not be there.

“We could see Porsche and Cadillac having some strong stints in Daytona and they just proved that in Sebring. We just need to keep working every day to make our car better.”

Cadillac driver Renger van der Zande, the defending Long Beach overall winner alongside Sebastien Bourdais, shared a similar viewpoint to Albuquerque in that Saturday’s race could be a wide-open fight between the four GTP manufacturers.

“LMDh is a different platform where the weight is the same, the power is the same, the basics of the car are the same,” van der Zande said.

“We all have the same tires, the same weight, the same power.

“I do think that things are much closer. We’re all searching here and there for details and fine-tuning the setup – from the engine side, the chassis side and the aerodynamics and balance everything.

“What you saw at Sebring and Daytona is it’s pretty close. Going to Long Beach, I think it’s a new starting level. It have a strong feeling that it is more equal than ever before.”

Albuquerque added: “We have some idea of where to improve, especially for Long Beach. I think we were really competitive in Sebring and from Sebring to Long Beach, it’s a similar type of track.

“OK you don’t have fast corners [in Long Beach] but how the car reacts and the bumps… In the past, it was painful to go through those two races with the DPi car because we were not good over the bumps.

“Then you go to Long Beach, which was even worse.

“But now it seems like our car rides well [over the bumps]. I’m not so concerned about it.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John