Long Beach Post-Race Notebook

Photo: Porsche

***Porsche has become the third LMDh manufacturer to claim victory in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTP era, joining Acura and Cadillac that took wins in the Rolex 24 at Daytona and Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, respectively.

***Saturday’s win marked the 33rd IMSA victory for Team Penske and the first for the Penske-Porsche combination since the 2008 Petit Le Mans with the Porsche RS Spyder, which saw a LMP2 class podium sweep by the team.

***Nick Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet were joined by teammates Matt Campbell and Felipe Nasr on the Long Beach podium, marking a 1-3 result for the factory Porsche 963s.

***Porsche Penske managing director Jonathan Diuguid credited Campbell’s drive, whose battles with Ricky Taylor and Connor De Phillippi, effectively gave Jaminet a large enough of a gap to the faster cars that were on fresher Michelin tires. “He had the sister car’s back,” Diuguid said.

***Diuguid added: “This day will go down in the history of our team. The first victory with the Porsche 963 is incredibly important to us. We put in so much energy and work to be able to celebrate such a success.”

***Jaminet said his No. 6 Porsche was a handful to drive in the closing laps on double-stinted tires, a strategy that proved key to victory for the team. “It was really tricky with the rear, with no rear grip at the end,” the Frenchman said. “I was just trying to avoid hitting the wall too many times.”

***Tandy and Jaminet have taken over the GTP championship lead, with a one-point margin over the Action Express Racing pairing of Pipo Derani and Alexander Sims, who finished fifth on Saturday after its call to go off-strategy early in the race failed to pay dividends.

***Derani, who drove all but 13 minutes of the race, held his own ahead of the then-leading No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport Acura ARX-06 of Filipe Albuquerque, in a successful attempt to remain on the lead lap, and passed the No. 7 Porsche of Campbell for second after all the leaders had made their stops.

***The Brazilian said: “It was one of those races where you start from the back and then you have to try something different, and we did. It was a nice fight up until a certain point of the race. I could fight, overtook a few cars while we were close to the leading cars. We knew we were on a different strategy, and we were counting on another yellow toward the end of the race, which didn’t happen.”

***BMW M Team RLL claimed its second consecutive runner-up finish, but this time on merit, with Connor De Phillippi recovering from a trip into the Turn 1 runoff while battling with Campbell to finish second alongside co-driver Nick Yelloly.

***De Phillippi told Sportscar365: “Honestly I knew it was probably not very likely to [podium] if it had stayed green but I just had a lot of steam coming out of my ears after that. I just drove the hell out of it. I apologized to the guys right away and said I would do my best to get us back up there.”

***De Phillippi recorded the fastest lap of the race, a 1:11.503. Owing to the category’s competitive nature, the best times from the seven GTP cars that completed race laps were separated by less than four tenths of a second.

***Acura Vice President and brand officer Jon Ikeda defended Ricky Taylor’s bold attempt to take the lead with two laps to go: “Yes, Ricky Taylor really ‘sent it’ into Turn 1 in an effort to win the race, and it didn’t turn out the way we wanted, but were we not entertained by what Ricky was trying to achieve?”

***Wayne Taylor revealed post-race that the No. 10 Acura encountered more issues than just a problem with the driver change that dropped the Acura from the lead to fifth. The team had a radio issue, while Taylor lost seven additional seconds when the rev limiter came on that briefly saw him drop behind the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura of Tom Blomqvist.

***Blomqvist and Colin Braun finished one lap behind in sixth after a spin at the start by the Englishman, followed by briefly losing drive on the exit of the hairpin and a drive-through penalty for a pit lane speed infraction during its pit stop.

***Defending race winners Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande’s race ended in the Turn 1 runoff area at the opening lap, when the Frenchman spun and made contact with the wall in his No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac after locking up the brakes. “Weird situation for sure there,” he said.

***Vasser Sullivan has taken over the GTD Pro championship lead, with a 73-point advantage over the No. 79 WeatherTech Racing pairing of Jules Gounon and Dani Juncadella, following Jack Hawksworth and Ben Barnicoat’s class win on Saturday.

***It marked the first Long Beach win for the Lexus RC F GT3 in what Hawksworth described as a “perfect weekend” for the team, which scored pole, and led all 73 laps in the race. “It was one of the best executed races I’ve been involved with,” he said.

***Corvette Racing settled for a second place class finish after a spirited battle between Jordan Taylor and the No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R of Klaus Bachler for the runner-up position that was aided by quick pit work by the Pratt Miller-led crew that helped reduce the gap to Bachler before Taylor’s move.

***Bryan Sellers and Madison Snow extended their GTD points lead to 99 points over The Heart of Racing’s Marco Sorensen and Roman De Angelis following back-to-back victories and their third consecutive at Long Beach.

***The Paul Miller Racing pairing are also out front in the WeatherTech Sprint Cup, with Long Beach having served as the opening round of the season.

***LMP2 cars will rejoin GTP, GTD Pro and GTD class machinery in the next round of the season at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca on May 14 as the second leg of the series’ West Coast swing.

***Laguna Seca recently installed a new pedestrian bridge at the start/finish line, although Barry Toepke, the track’s director of public relations, told Sportscar365 that it will be inoperable for the IMSA weekend due to construction delays related to heavy rains over the winter.

***Additionally, the 2.238-mile circuit will not be resurfaced until after the IMSA event.

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