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| Alexander Rossi looks to get back to the top step of the podium at Long Beach |
Coverage
Time: Coverage begins at 4:00 p.m. ET on Sunday April 14th with green flag scheduled for 4:42 p.m. ET.
Channel: NBCSN
Announcers: Leigh Diffey, Townsend Bell and Paul Tracy will be in the booth. Kevin Lee, Kelli Stavast, Marty Snider and Robin Miller will work pit lane.
IndyCar Weekend Schedule
Friday:
First Practice: 1:00 p.m. ET (45 minutes)*
Second Practice: 5:00 p.m. ET (45 minutes)*
Saturday:
Third Practice: 12:00 p.m. ET (45 minutes)*
Qualifying: 2:45 p.m. ET (Live coverage on NBCSN)
Sunday:
Warm-Up: 12:00 p.m. ET (30 minutes)*
Race: 4:42 p.m. ET (85 laps)
* - All practice and qualifying sessions are available live with the NBC Sports Gold IndyCar pass.
Can Honda Do What Toyota Couldn't?
The first 44 editions of the Grand Prix of Long Beach saw Toyota as the title sponsor. The Japanese manufacture was synonymous with this race and the Toyota branding around the circuit blended in with the palm trees and skyline surrounding the track. It all changes this year with Acura taking over as title sponsor for the famous race.
While Toyota had such a long history sponsoring this race and Toyota had a brief period in IndyCar and one that was fairly successful, a Toyota-powered car never won the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. While there will be no Acura-badged engines on the grid this year, although Jack Harvey's car will carry Acura branding, Acura is a subsidiary of Honda and there will be 14 Honda-powered cars lining up this Sunday.
Honda enters having won the last two races, including sweeping the podium in the Honda sponsored event at Barber last week. Honda has won the last two years at Long Beach and each year it has had two cars on the podium. In last year's race, Honda had five of the top six finishers.
Before Josef Newgarden won at St. Petersburg last month, Honda had won nine of the previous ten street course races and had 20 of 30 podium finishers in those ten races. While Newgarden won at St. Petersburg and Will Power finished third, Scott Dixon finished second, Felix Rosenqvist finished fourth and led 31 laps and Honda had seven of the top ten finishers. Not only did Honda sweep the podium at Barber but it had four of the top five, eight of the top ten and the non-Penske Chevrolet teams finished 16th through 22nd with the only two Hondas those seven Chevrolet entries beat being Graham Rahal, who retired because of an electrical issue, and Colton Herta, who retired due to a fuel pressure issue. Of the ten Chevrolet entries at Barber, only five finished on the lead lap while 12 of 14 Honda teams completed all 90 laps.
In the last two Long Beach races, Honda has led 161 of 170 laps. In each of the last two races, Honda has had seven of the top ten starters.
Toyota did not set the bar high for Honda to clear. In seven years Toyota competed in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach it only managed two podium finishers. Cristiano da Matta was the runner-up finisher in 2001 driving for Newman-Haas Racing and the year before Jimmy Vasser was the third place finisher driving for Chip Ganassi Racing. In that time frame, Toyota didn't even win pole position for the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach with Vasser starting second in 2000 and da Matta starting second in 2002.
Honda enters this year's race with 17 Long Beach victories. Alexander Rossi's victory last year broke a time with Cosworth for most Long Beach victories for an engine manufacture.
Will Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Back Up Barber Success?
With all the talk about Honda, attention turns to the team that brought Honda its most recent IndyCar triumph. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing shut out the front row in qualifying with Takuma Sato taking pole position and Graham Rahal starting second. Sato went on to lead 74 laps on his way to his fourth IndyCar victory and his first from pole position.
Rahal retired after an electrical failure but he entered that race fastest in the warm-up prior to the race and during the first stint Rahal remained in the shadow of his teammate. Both RLLR cars were consistently running in the 71-second bracket while the rest of the field struggled with tire degradation and could not match the pace. If his car had not let him down it would have been interesting to see if Rahal could have added pressure to Sato down the stretch.
RLLR has won a race in five consecutive seasons and Sato's victory in the third race of the season is the earliest RLLR has won a race since Bobby Rahal won the second race of the 1992 season at Phoenix, the second race in the team's history. Rahal won the championship that season.
The team has been hovering on the periphery of championship contention since 2015. Graham Rahal was alive for the title entering the final race of 2015 at Sonoma only to finish fourth in the championship after Sébastien Bourdais spun him in turn seven. Rahal won twice that season and had six podium finishes. The problem for the team is it has not put together those type of seasons on a consistent basis. Rahal would finish fifth in the championship in 2016 but his championship position has declined in each of the last two seasons and prior to those two seasons RLLR had not had a top five championship finisher since Buddy Rice in 2004.
Sato has never won consecutive races but he did famously finish second at São Paulo in 2013 the race after his first career victory at Long Beach. Rahal swept the Belle Isle races in 2017 but the only other time RLLR has won consecutive races was with Kenny Bräck at Motegi and Milwaukee in 2001. The team had double top ten finishes at Austin and likely would have had double top ten finishes again at Barber had Rahal's car not suffered the electrical issue. The team had both cars finish in the top ten in six of 17 races last year but in none of those races did both drivers finish in the top five and the team has not had double top five finishers since the 2005 Indianapolis 500 when Vitor Meira finished second and Danica Patrick finished fourth.
After picking up the team's first Barber victory, Sato and Rahal will aim for RLLR's first Long Beach victory. Graham Rahal was the runner-up finisher in the 2013 race, matching his father's best finish in this race, which came in 1988 and in three consecutive races from 1991 to 1993 races, the latter two races coming with the RLLR team, and Jimmy Vasser, who finished second to Michael Andretti after starting on pole position in 2002.
Last year, Rahal finished fifth at Long Beach and the RLLR team had four top five finishes in the five street course races.
Who Can Make It Four-For-Four?
Through the first three races there have been three different winners from three different teams and none of those teams are Chip Ganassi Racing and Andretti Autosport. Add to the situation that six different teams have won the last six Long Beach races and seven different drivers have won the last seven trips to Shoreline Drive and it appears IndyCar could be set for another new face on the top step of the podium.
Scott Dixon has two runner-up finishes from the first three races and those results have him second all-time in runner-up finishers on 42 with the Barber result elevating him ahead of Hélio Castroneves in that category. Dixon only trails Mario Andretti's record of 56 runner-up finishes. The New Zealander won this race in 2015 when Ganassi had Chevrolet engines. Dixon enters second in the championship on 98 points, 27 markers behind Josef Newgarden.
Alexander Rossi won last year's Long Beach race from pole position and he enters fourth in the championship on 84 points. He has fifth place finishes at St. Petersburg and Barber. Rossi has never won at the same track twice but at the five tracks he has won at, the only track where he has multiple podium finishes in Pocono. Rossi's 12 podium finishes have come at 11 different tracks.
At this point the last two seasons Sébastien Bourdais had already won a race but this year Bourdais has not been as fortunate. The good news for the Frenchman is since his engine failure at St. Petersburg he has rebounded with a fifth place finish in Austin and a third place finish at Barber. Bourdais is a three-time Long Beach winner and he was runner-up finisher two years ago to James Hinchcliffe. However, since 2011, Bourdais has only led five laps at Long Beach, four of which came last year.
James Hinchcliffe and Ryan Hunter-Reay are both past Long Beach winners and they are sixth and seventh in the championship. Hinchcliffe is on 71 points and a point behind Bourdais. Hunter-Reay is tied with Will Power on 66 points but Hunter-Reay holds the tiebreaker with an eighth place finish. Hinchcliffe has three consecutive top ten finishes at Long Beach but Hunter-Reay has finished outside the top ten in six consecutive trips to Long Beach. Hunter-Reay has only four top ten finishes in 13 Long Beach starts and his 2010 victory is his only top five result.
Marco Andretti rounds out the top ten in the championship on 61 points and Andretti has five top ten finishes in ten Long Beach starts but he has never finished in the top five at Long Beach and the six laps he has led on this track all came in his first Long Beach start in 2009.
Felix Rosenqvist is a point behind Andretti and while he salvaged a top ten result at Barber, Rosenqvist gets a chance to add to his street circuit conquests this weekend at Long Beach. He led 31 laps and finished fourth in his IndyCar debut at St. Petersburg last month. Long Beach was not on the Indy Lights schedule in 2016 when Rosenqvist ran part of the season but he won at St. Petersburg and swept the Toronto races, making his batting average .750 on street circuits that year. The Swede is renowned for his street course success with victories in the Pau Grand Prix, at the Norisring and he won the Macau Grand Prix twice and had a runner-up finish to boot.
Marcus Ericsson is coming off the first top ten finish in his IndyCar career and Ericsson has put together two encouraging races from poor starting positions the last two times out. While he only got the result in the one race, Ericsson had promising pace at St. Petersburg before the qualifying session from hell where very few drivers had any chance to get a flying lap in and the number of red flags trapped the Swede and he started 18th. In this race, he suffered a radiator puncture, ending his debut early. He worked his way into the top ten at Austin only to have a penalty for an unsafe pit release shuffle him to the rear of the field.
IMSA
Long Beach is the third round of the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship and after a pair of endurance races totaling 36 hours in Florida, the series now has its shortest race of the year, a 100-minute race on Shoreline Drive. This race will feature only the professional classes of DPi and GTLM meaning this race will feature 21 cars.
Cadillac is two-for-two this season and the Daytona-winning #10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac of Jordan Taylor and Renger van der Zande and the Sebring-winning #31 Action Express Racing Cadillac of Pipo Derani and Felipe Nasr tied on 67 points. Before last year's race where the #5 Action Express Racing Cadillac took the victory, Wayne Taylor Racing had won three consecutive years at Long Beach.
Acura is third in the championship with the #7 Team Penske Acura of Ricky Taylor, who was a part of all three of Wayne Taylor Racing's Long Beach victories, and Hélio Castroneves, who won at Long Beach in Indy Lights in 1997 and he won the 2001 Grand Prix of Long Beach. The #7 Acura has 58 points after a third and a fourth at Daytona and Sebring respectively.
The #5 Action Express Racing Cadillac of Filipe Albuquerque and João Barbosa looks to defend its Long Beach victory and those two are tied with the #54 CORE Autosport Nissan of Colin Braun and Jon Bennett in the championship on 54 points.
The #85 JDC-Miller Motorsports Cadillac of Misha Goikhberg and Tristan Vautier are sixth on 50 points, three points ahead of the #6 Acura of Dane Cameron and Juan Pablo Montoya and the #55 Mazda of Jonathan Bomarito and Harry Tincknell. Will Owen will have Kyle Kaiser join him in the #50 Juncos Racing Cadillac. Simon Trummer and Stephen Simpson are tied with Owen on 44 points and they will split the #84 JDC-Miller Motorsports Cadillac. Oliver Jarvis and Tristan Nunez rounds out the championship on 40 points in the #77 Mazda.
Patrick Pilet and Nick Tandy took the GTLM championship lead with 61 points after the #911 Porsche won at Sebring. Daytona winner Connor De Phillippi is two points back in the #25 BMW Team RLL entry and Tom Blomqvist is back for this second race of the season. Joey Hand and Dirk Müller sit on 56 points in the #66 Ford GT, tied with the #912 Porsche of Earl Bamber and Laurens Vanthoor but Hand will miss this weekend's race due to the flu. Sébastien Bourdais will pull double duty and replace the American in the #66 Ford GT this weekend.
Corvette has not won in GTLM since last year at Long Beach and the team is still looking for its 100th IMSA victory. Jan Magnussen and Antonio García are fifth in the championship on 55 points. Magnussen has won twice at Long Beach, including with García in 2014. Ryan Briscoe and Richard Westbrook is two points behind the Corvette in the #67 Ford GT. The #24 BMW of John Edwards and Jesse Krohn are on 50 points. Last year's Long Beach winners Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner round out the GTLM championship on 46 points in the #4 Corvette.
The Bubba Burger Grand Prix of Long Beach will take place at 5:00 p.m. ET on Saturday April 13th.
GT4 America
Another 21 sports cars will be on track in Long Beach in the inaugural GT4 America race at the event. Long Beach is the second of eight sprint rounds on the 2019 GT4 America schedule.
The season opening round was at St. Petersburg last month and Ian James and Jade Buford split the two races but Buford will not be at Long Beach. James leads the championship and he will return in the #50 Panoz entry. Gar Robinson is second in the championship on 33 points, two behind James and Robinson will be in the #74 Camaro with his teammate Shane Lewis fifth in the championship on 15 points in the #72 Camaro. Spencer Pumpelly is five points behind James and Pumpelly is back in the #66 TRG Porsche.
Rounding out the Pro entries are Michael Cooper, who scored 12 points at St. Petersburg in the #10 Blackdog Speed Shop McLaren, Nicolai Elghanayan, who did not score any points in the #71 Marco Polo Motorsports KTM and Matthew Brabham, who makes his debut this season in the #20 CRP Racing Porsche.
Preston Calvert leads the Am class sprint championship with 40 points in the #51 Panoz. Calvert split the St. Petersburg races with Alan Brynjolfsson, who is seven points behind Calvert in the championship in the #7 Park Place Motorsports Porsche. Marko Radisic is third on 30 points and he will be in the #22 BMW for Precision Driving Tech.
Tony Gaples has 22 points and he will be back in the #10 Blackdog Speed Shop McLaren. Mark Klenin rounds out the top five on 20 points in the #62 KPR McLaren. Jarett Andretti started on pole position in the first race from St. Petersburg but retired from that race. He rallied in race two with a third place finish and the driver of the #18 Andretti Autosport McLaren heads to Long Beach with 15 points.
The GT4 America race is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. ET on Sunday April 14th.
Fast Facts
This will be the sixth IndyCar race to take place on April 14th and the first since Michael Andretti won at Long Beach in 2002.
This will be the fifth time the Grand Prix of Long Beach will take place on April 14th. Mario Andretti won on April 14, 1985, Al Unser, Jr. took the victory in 1991, Jimmy Vasser in 1996 and the aforementioned Michael Andretti in 2002.
This year's race is the earliest the fourth round of a season taking place in one calendar year has been since 1996 when Long Beach was the fourth race on April 14th. The fourth round of the 1996-97 IRL season took place on March 23, 1997 at Phoenix but the first two races of that season where August 18, 1996 at Loudon and September 15, 1996 at Las Vegas.
Six of the 11 IndyCar seasons since reunification have had four different winners in the first four races of the season.
Team Penske, Chip Ganassi Racing and Newman-Haas Racing are all tied for most Long Beach victories at six apiece.
Five drivers have scored their first victory at Long Beach (Michael Andretti, Paul Tracy, Juan Pablo Montoya, Mike Conway and Takuma Sato).
Not only has seven different drivers won the last seven Long Beach races but those seven drivers all represent seven different nationalities.
There have not been consecutive American winners at Long Beach since Al Unser, Jr. in 1994-95 and Jimmy Vasser in 1996.
Alexander Rossi could join Mario Andretti (1984-85), Al Unser Jr. (1988-91 and 1994-95), Alex Zanardi (1997-98), Paul Tracy (2003-04) and Sébastien Bourdais (2005-07) to win the Grand Prix of Long Beach in consecutive seasons.
The average starting position for a Long Beach winner is 4.228 with a median of three.
Rossi's victory from pole position last year was the first time the pole-sitter won at Long Beach since Bourdais in 2007. It was the first time a front row starter won at Long Beach since Dario Franchitti in 2009.
Eight of the last 11 Long Beach races have been won from the second row.
The average number of lead changes in a Long Beach race is 4.97 with a median of five.
The last three Long Beach races have had six lead changes.
Only three times has the Long Beach race not had a lead change (1984, 1987 and 2001).
The average number of cautions in a Long Beach race is 2.857 with a median of three. The average number of caution laps is 11.628 with a median of 12.
Only three times has the Long Beach not had a caution (1985, 1987 and 2016).
Possible Milestones:
Ryan Hunter-Reay is one start away from passing Jimmy Vasser for 15th all-time.
Graham Rahal is one top five finish away from 50 top five finishes.
Takuma Sato is one top ten finish away from 50 top ten finishes.
Ryan Hunter-Reay needs to lead 45 laps to reach the 1,500 laps led milestone.
Simon Pagenaud needs to lead 64 laps to reach the 1,000 laps led milestone.
Alexander Rossi needs to lead 61 laps to reach the 600 laps led milestone.
Graham Rahal needs to lead 20 laps to reach the 400 laps led milestone.
Predictions
I am sticking with Alexander Rossi until he gets a victory and he defends his Long Beach victory but a Penske and a Ganassi car will join him on the podium. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has one car finish in the top ten and another finish outside the top ten. At least one driver will make the Fast Six for the first time this season. A.J. Foyt Racing continues its slide. Simon Pagenaud will not be the worst finishing Team Penske driver. Sleeper: Felix Rosenqvist.
