IMSA Long Beach Saturday Notebook
Bell was on the winning team for the class victory in GTD at the 2014 Rolex 24 At Daytona, and this year notched a sixth at Daytona and a third at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in the No. 63 Ferrari 458 Italia.
"We are extremely pleased to have Townsend back in our car for the Indianapolis 500," said Dennis Reinbold, DRR team co-owner, during the announcement Saturday just prior to the Tequila Patron Sports Car Showcase. "Townsend has proven to be a contender at Indy for many years including last year’s event when he was running second with 10 laps to go. With the Robert Graham brand, we feel Townsend and the No. 24 Chevrolet-powered machine will be right in the thick of things when the checkered flag is in the air on May 24."
The GTD class didn’t run at Long Beach due to the small size of the 1.968-mile street course, but the class will return, along with Prototype, Prototype Challenge and GT Le Mans on May 2-3 at Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca in California.
Long Beach one of the top races: Scott Atherton, president of IMSA, said in pre-race comments that the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship “belongs in Long Beach. This is ground zero for the sports car community. And who wouldn’t want to be here racing in Long Beach in these conditions?"
Indeed, the weekend was graced with Chamber of Commerce weather. That, the enthusiastic crowd and the 41-year history of the oldest active street race in the U.S., “makes a Long Beach win something ever driver wants on his or her resume."
DeltaWing street course debut a downer: The innovative DeltaWing Prototype has made multiple appearances on road courses, including the 2015 Rolex 24 and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.
But the car has never raced on a tight street course, and its debut at the Tequila Patron Sports Car Showcase at Long Beach was eagerly anticipated by both its drivers. Katherine Legge won the Atlantic race here in 2005, the first win for a female driver in a major open-wheel-series, and she had raced here with success multiple times in other open-wheel cars.
And Claro/TracFone co-driver Memo Rojas took an overall victory here at the TUDOR Championship race last year, as teammate to Scott Pruett in the Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates Ford EcoBoost Riley DP.
But only a few laps into the 100-minute sprint race, the DeltaWing pulled to the pits with a mechanical problem. The transmission has long been an Achilles heel for the car, and this time, a shifting actuator failed, and had to be replaced. The DeltaWing finished 17th in last place.
It was, incidentally, the first time Legge had raced at Long Beach in a car with a roof. The DeltaWing was originally an open car before it was redesigned as a closed car – which does she prefer? The open car offered better visibility, she said, “but when it comes to safety, I’ll take the enclosed cockpit."
Strategic planning: The Long Beach race, at just 100 minutes, is a true sprint race compared to the 24-hour season opened at Daytona, followed by the 12-hour race at Sebring. Long Beach “is a completely different dichotomy," said Jim Lutz, Chevrolet Program Manager for the Corvette DPs. “A 100-minute race means there is little time to recover from mistakes. Strategy and execution has to be perfect. The other big challenge teams face is getting the power down out of the slow corners – most especially the hairpin (Turn 11) as it leads to the longest straight on the circuit. So getting the most out of the traction control and basic chassis setup are key."