Sargent Scores Dominant Saturday Win at Long Beach

Photo: Jessica Johnk/Porsche

Tom Sargent claimed a commanding flag-to-flag victory in the opening Porsche Carrera Cup North America race of the weekend on the streets of Long Beach.

The Porsche Motorsport North America Selected Driver, who was making his first start in the single-make series since 2023, dominated Saturday’s 40-minute contest from pole in the No. 32 GMG Racing Porsche 911 Cup.

Sargent took a 2.245-second win over the No. 24 Kellymoss entry of Aaron Jeansonne.

Jeansonne, who started third, passed the No. 9 JDX Racing Porsche of Callum Hedge at the start but was unable to challenge the Australian driver, who was subbing for GT World Challenge America powered by AWS co-driver Kyle Washington.

Hedge came home in third, ahead of the No. 77 Topp Racing Porsche of Tyler Maxson, who swept the season-opening pair of races at Sebring International Raceway last month.

Maxson pressured Hedge in the closing laps, including making contact multiple times in the final laps of the race but was unable to get around the Kiwi, who held onto the final podium position.

Connor Bloum, in the No. 23 JDX entry, completed the top-five.

Pro-Am class honors went to the No. 54 ACI Motorsports Porsche of Patrick Mulcahy, despite an excursion into the Turn 1 run-off.

Mulcahy lost the majority of his commanding class lead when he had the slip-up in Lap 17 although managed to recover and finish 16 seconds ahead of the second-placed-in-class No. 58 Kellymoss Porsche of Steve Wetterau.

ACI doubled up on Saturday with Marco Cirone taking Masters class honors.

Cirone’s No. 88 Porsche finished 2.6 seconds ahead of Ruckus Racing team owner/driver Scott Blind.

The only notable incident came when Rob Walker got into Chris Bellomo in Turn 1 just prior to the halfway mark, resulting in a drive-through penalty for incident responsibility to the JTR Motorsports Engineering driver.

Race 2 is on tap for Sunday at 11:20 a.m. PST (2:20 p.m. EST) with live coverage on Peacock as well as IMSA and Porsche Motorsport North America’s YouTube channels.

RESULTS: Race 1

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