Racers Edge Commits to Long Beach With Farnbacher, Harrison

Photo: Racers Edge Motorsports

Racers Edge Motorsports with WTR Andretti has committed to next month’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, with Mario Farnbacher joining Ashton Harrison at the wheel of the team’s Acura NSX GT3 Evo22 in the GTD class.

The Florida-based team, which had initially confirmed an IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup program for Harrison, Kyle Marcelli and Danny Formal, will contest three WeatherTech Sprint Cup rounds with its 2022 Fanatec GT World Challenge America Pro-Am class championship-winning pairing.

“The plan all along was to try to add in a couple of Sprint Cup races,” team owner Jon Mirachi told Sportscar365. “Everything worked out for us to do Long Beach as one of them.

“Then we’re going to do a couple more before the season is over. We’ll sort of take whichever ones fit everybody’s needs — the sponsor’s needs and logistically what works for us and that sort of thing.

“Long Beach will be one we’re going to do.”

While it will mark Harrison’s street course debut, Farnbacher claimed a third place finish in last year’s Long Beach race at the wheel of Gradient Racing’s Acura.

“Mario is one of our drivers and he won a championship last year,” Mirachi noted. “We committed to Kyle and Danny for the Endurance Cup and we felt like from the beginning that these would be separate and special.

“We hadn’t really committed to anybody on the driving. As things developed and we got our program together to do this again this year, we decided we’d like to use Mario for the sprint races.”

Mirachi indicated that they’ve earmarked the two other Sprint Cup rounds on its calendar but are not yet ready to make an announcement.

The Long Beach effort will involve a degree of logistics, with its WeatherTech SportsCar Championship car, which suffered an accident at Sebring, needing to be shipped out to California to be met with its transporter that will remain on the West Coast following this weekend’s GTWC America season opener at Sonoma Raceway.

“While this car was being transported out here [to Sonoma], fortunately we had two cars, the guys stayed home and fixed the other car,” Mirachi explained.

“It’s totally repaired and ready to go for Long Beach. It’s coming out separately to meet us at Long Beach; the transporter is staying out here but we only have the one car with us.

“We’ll run the Long Beach event and then both cars will go back in the transporter.”

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