Van der Zande on Long Beach “Right Decision” Moment

Photo: Mike Levitt/IMSA

Renger van der Zande believes the timing and strategy taken for the race’s one-and-only pit stop will again be key to victory in Saturday’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.

The Dutchman, who along with Sebastien Bourdais won last year’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship street race, embarks on his first sprint race with Acura Meyer Shank Racing, alongside new-for-2025 co-pilot Nick Yelloly in the No. 93 Acura ARX-06.

Despite winning twice on the Southern California streets and boasting five podiums out of eight starts, van der Zande said it’s been an open-book approach on ideas of how to master the strategy this year.

“The discussion here at Honda is about how short of a window it is to really find the right decision moment,” he said.

“It can be within five minutes. If there’s a yellow early, it means you’re going to be fuel saving towards the end.

“But it can also mean there’s an early yellow and the pit stop is [dictating] who’s going to be coming out of the pits first.

“There’s different ways.

“But honestly the homework they’re doing at Honda is incredible… There’s so many people with smart heads on their body that can come up with all kinds of suggestions.

“From a driver’s perspective, you try to give them what’s going on in the car and how it is on cold tires around the track and where there’s opportunities to overtake and where is there not.”

He added: “It’s a cooperation. It’s not like, ‘Hey, I’m Renger. I won it twice so I know what to do.’

“Every year is different again. For example, the Michelin tires are a little different compared to the past, where the tire warmup is a bit better than before.

“There’s so much to think about and the homework they’ve been doing is incredible and I just try to support it with the experience I have.”

When asked by Sportscar365 if he thinks double-stinting Michelin tires for the entirety of the 100-minute race, which helped take him to victory last year, will again be key to the race, van der Zande said it’s going to be about making the “right call at the right moment.”

“Everybody saw what we did last year, how we won it, and obviously the time before then it was the Porsche that won it that way,” he said.

“The shine is off that move, let’s put it that way.

“I [still] think it’s the move. But it still needs to fit in the whole picture because we don’t know how the tire wear is going to be this year.

“It’s going to be reasonably warm but not super warm. If you can take more tires, because of whatever window we’re in when the pit stop happens, then you take tires and you might move forward in traffic.

“It’s hard to overtake. We saw last year that nobody was able to overtake me. We didn’t have the fastest car on the old tires but we just kept them behind.

“But at the same time, if you have more tires and you have a good chance of making a move in traffic, it’s still better to have tires.

“You can’t say up front what’s going to be the strategy. But the strategy is going to be making the right call at the right moment.”

Van der Zande “Surprised” By Long Beach BoP; Predicts Cadillac as “Car to Beat”

The Acura driver admits he was left stunned by the Balance of Performance adjustments for this weekend, which sees the ARX-06 get a power reduction at the first-stage.

Both the Cadillac V-Series.R and Porsche 963s have more substantial reductions in speeds below 230 km/h, although van der Zande believes the turbocharged Acura needed more help in that department.

“I know the Cadillac is very strong there because I drove it last year to victory,” said van der Zande. “That’s the car to beat, and of course, Porsche is always executing well and has a good car there too.

“I think the Cadillac is strong at Long Beach because [it has] a very wide window of operating, setup-wise. The other thing is when you go to power, something happens. It’s a very powerful engine, especially on the low end.

“I saw already in Daytona but also Sebring, the way the car pulls away from me out of the corner when I’m now in the Acura is quite dramatic. It’s the same with the Porsche.

“I was very surprised about the BoP. We’re getting less in the low-end of the power, which we were losing so much already in Sebring. Especially in Long Beach, it’s going to be very, very hard for us.

“You’re basically doing most of the corners in first gear and that’s where a Cadillac engine is very strong. You touch the throttle, you go forward. With the Acura, you have to wait a little bit and then it starts going. We’ll see how that plays out.

“I think that’s not going to help us but at the same time a street track like Long Beach, anything can happen.

“You can be lucky or unlucky but how to win it is be smart at the right moment in time when it comes.”

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