The second round of the 2024 NTT IndyCar Series season is the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, IndyCar's first championship race in 42 days. This 42-day break is the longest midseason break in IndyCar since there were 49 days between the Assen and Surfers Paradise rounds in the 2007 Champ Car season. This is the 31st time since the CART-USAC split in 1979 there have been at least 40 days between races midseason. Eighteen of those 31 40-plus-day breaks were between the race before the Indianapolis 500 and the Indianapolis 500. The most recent of those was during the 2004 Indy Racing League season.
Coverage
Time: Coverage begins at 3:00 p.m. ET on Sunday April 21 with green flag scheduled for 3:45 p.m. ET.
Channel: USA
Announcers: Leigh Diffey, Townsend Bell and James Hinchcliffe will be in the booth. Marty Snider, Kevin Lee and Dillon Welch will work pit lane.
Channel: USA
Announcers: Leigh Diffey, Townsend Bell and James Hinchcliffe will be in the booth. Marty Snider, Kevin Lee and Dillon Welch will work pit lane.
IndyCar Weekend Schedule
Friday:
First Practice: 5:50 p.m. ET (75 minutes)
Saturday:
Second Practice: 11:25 a.m. ET (60 minutes)
Qualifying: 2:25 p.m. ET
Sunday:
Warm-up: 12:00 p.m. ET (30 minutes)
Race: 3:45 p.m. ET (85 laps)
Qualifying: 2:25 p.m. ET
Sunday:
Warm-up: 12:00 p.m. ET (30 minutes)
Race: 3:45 p.m. ET (85 laps)
* - All sessions will be available live on Peacock
Can Penske Keep It Up?
The 2024 season could not have started much better for Team Penske. All three of its cars ended up in the top five at St. Petersburg with Josef Newgarden leading 92 of 100 laps on his way to victory from pole position. Scott McLauglin ended up third, his second St. Petersburg podium in the last three seasons, and Will Power was fourth.
It was the first time Team Penske had three top five finishers in a road/street course race since the July 2022 Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course race, but it was the first time Penske had three top five finishers in a street course race since the second race of the 2017 Belle Isle doubleheader.
This St. Petersburg race came after Team Penske had only four top five finishes combined on street courses in 2023 with zero victories.
After dominating the season opening street race, Team Penske has a chance for an encore performance at Long Beach. Last year, all three Penske cars finished in the top ten, but none finished in the top five as Power was the top driver in sixth. Before last year's race, Team Penske had a podium finisher in eight consecutive Long Beach races. Newgarden had been at the front and led 27 laps before he was forced to save fuel over his final stint, dropping him to ninth, a position ahead of McLaughlin.
Newgarden won at Long Beach in 2022 with 32 laps led after a methodical race with Álex Palou on in- and out-laps, and then ending with holding off a late charge from Romain Grosjean.
Since reunification, Penske has only three Long Beach victories. Along with Newgarden's victory two years ago, Will Power won in 2012 and Simon Pagenaud won in 2016.
Prior to last year's race, Newgarden had three consecutive podium finishes at Long Beach. He has eight consecutive top ten finishes in this race. Will Power has five consecutive top ten finishes in the Grand Prix of Long Beach, but he hasn't finished on the podium in this race since he was second in 2018. Since his Long Beach victory in 2012, Power has led only 12 laps over the last ten Long Beach races. In three Long Beach start, McLaughlin has finished 14th, 11th and tenth. McLaughlin has five consecutive top ten finishes in street races dating back to last season.
Only four times in Team Penske's history has it opened a season with consecutive victories. It first did it in 1982 when Rick Mears won at Phoenix and Atlanta. Penske would not do it again until 2010 when it won the first three races. Power won the first two races that year at São Paulo and St. Petersburg while Hélio Castroneves won the third race at Barber Motorsports Park. Two years later, Penske won the first four races. Castroneves won the St. Petersburg season opener and Power followed with three consecutive victories. In 2022, Team Penske opened the season with three consecutive victories. McLaughlin won at St. Petersburg and Newgarden followed it with two consecutive victories.
Penske Shooting For 300
Team Penske hits milestones on a regular basis, but it could hit a spectacular one this weekend at Long Beach.
The next pole position will be Team Penske's 300th in IndyCar competition. Josef Newgarden put the team within one of the milestone with his pole position at St. Petersburg, Newgarden's 16th pole position with Team Penske, and it broke a tie with Bobby Unser for fifth all-time amongst Team Penske drivers.
To the surprise of no one, Will Power leads Team Penske drivers with 64 pole positions for the organization, 15 more than Hélio Castroneves in second all-time on 49. Power has won a pole position in each of his first 15 seasons with Penske. Power has had multiple pole positions in 14 of those seasons. Rick Mears is third with 39 pole positions, and then there is a gulf of 21 pole positions between Mears and Danny Sullivan in fourth on 18 with Newgarden on 16.
Bobby Unser (15), Gil de Ferran (14), Paul Tracy (12), Ryan Briscoe (12), Simon Pagenaud (12) and Tom Sneva (10) are the other drivers to reach double figures in pole positions driving for Team Penske. Sneva was the first driver to double figures for Penske.
Emerson Fittipaldi won nine pole positions with Penske while Sam Hornish, Jr. won seven. Scott McLaughlin has won five pole positions in the last two seasons. Al Unser, Jr. and Mark Donohue are tied on four pole positions. Al Unser, Kevin Cogan and Mario Andretti each won two pole positions for the organization. Gary Bettenhausen, Johnny Rutherford and Juan Pablo Montoya were each responsible for one Penske pole position.
Team Penske's first pole position came at what is now Sonoma Raceway on April 4, 1970 with Mark Donohue. The 100th pole position came 22 years later on August 9, 1992 with Emerson Fittipaldi at Cleveland. The 200th pole position occurred on July 10, 2011 with Will Power at Toronto. Since making its IndyCar debut in 1968, Team Penske has won a pole position in 49 seasons. Newgarden's pole position at St. Petersburg made this 25 consecutive seasons with at least one pole position for Team Penske. The team's record for most pole positions in a single season is nine, which Danny Sullivan set in 1988.
At Long Beach, Team Penske has 13 pole positions. Castroneves won four Long Beach pole positions, including three consecutive from 2015 to 2017. Power won three consecutive pole positions at Long Beach from 2009 to 2011. Sullivan won two Long Beach pole positions. Tracy, de Ferran, Briscoe and Newgarden each have one Long Beach pole position. Newgarden is responsible for Penske's pole position here, coming in 2021. While Penske has 13 pole positions in this race, it has only won one of those races. That would be Castroneves' victory in 2001, where he led every lap.
Team Penske is 190 pole positions clear of Newman-Haas Racing in second all-time. Chip Ganassi Racing is next amongst active teams with 93 pole positions. The only other active team with more than 50 pole positions is Andretti Global with 54.
Can Ganassi Bounce Back?
After St. Petersburg, many were wondering where Chip Ganassi Racing was after it had won the Florida race the year before.
Álex Palou did end up finishing sixth, but it came after spending most of the race outside the top ten and it felt Palou's top ten finish streak would not stretch into 2024. Instead, a late flourish allowed the Catalan driver to extend his streak to 19 consecutive races.
Besides Palou, Scott Dixon ran a nondescript race and finished ninth. Kyffin Simpson kept his nose clean and finished 14th, but Linus Lundqvist was taken out from contact with Romain Grosjean, and Marcus Armstrong got in an incident all on his own and was the first retirement of the 2024 season.
St. Petersburg was the first time Ganassi did not have a podium finisher since the first Iowa race in 2023, ending a six-race streak. It was also Ganassi's first race without a top five finisher since the 2022 Gateway race, ending a 19-race streak.
The good news is Ganassi had a bounce back at The Thermal Challenge held at the Thermal Club last month. Palou smoked the field, leading every lap on his way to victory from pole position in his heat race and leading every lap on his way to victory from pole position in the main event. Armstrong and Lundqvist each made the final race as well. Armstrong was second to Palou in his heat race, and the New Zealander ended up fifth in the final. Lundqvist was fourth in his heat and sixth in the final.
Dixon will be looking for a break out. Contact with Grosjean in his Thermal Club heat race sent him to the back of the field and effectively kept Dixon from ever getting close to transferring to the main event.
It has been nine years since Chip Ganassi Racing's most recent Long Beach victory. That was with Dixon. He led 44 laps from third starting position to get his so far one and only Long Beach triumph. Ganassi has had a podium finisher in six of the seven Long Beach races since Dixon's victory in 2015, and Ganassi has had at least one top five finisher in every Long Beach race since then.
In three Long Beach starts, Palou has never finished worse than fifth. He was third in 2022. Armstrong was eighth in this race last year, his first visit to the famed street race. Dixon was taken out of last year's Long Beach race after contact with Patricio O'Ward. It was Dixon's only finish outside the top ten in the entire 2023 season. Prior to that result, Dixon had six top ten finishes in the last seven trips to Long Beach, four of which were podium results.
This will be the Long Beach debuts for Lundqvist and Simpson.
Chip Ganassi Racing has had five different drivers win at Long Beach. Along with Dixon, Jimmy Vasser, Alex Zanardi, Juan Pablo Montoya and Dario Franchitti are responsible for Ganassi's victories, with Zanardi having won consecutive years in 1997 and 1998.
More Debuts
It might be the second weekend of the season, but that does not mean we do not have some IndyCar debuts... well, we know of at least one, but a second could be on the horizon.
Nolan Siegel will compete in his first official IndyCar race this weekend driving the #51 Dale Coyne Racing Honda. Siegel competed in The Thermal Challenge last month at The Thermal Club for Coyne in the #18 Honda. He was seventh in the first heat race, falling one spot short of transferring to the final race.
The California is competing in his second Indy Lights season this year and he won the season opener for the series last month at St. Petersburg. Last year, Siegel won two races and stood on the podium five times as he finished third in the Indy Light championship. After starting the 2023 season with four podium finishes in the first six races, he had only one podium finish in the final eight races. Siegel has also won races in LMP2 competition between IMSA and the Asian Le Mans Series. He won at Petit Le Mans last year driving with George Kurtz and Ben Hanley for CrowdStrike Racing by APR.
He will become the first driver to start an Indy Lights race and an IndyCar race in the same season since Patricio O'Ward and Colton Herta each made their IndyCar debuts in the 2018 IndyCar season finale at Sonoma. Sonoma occurred after the Indy Lights season had concluded where O'Ward claimed the championship at Portland the week before with Herta finishing second in the championship.
At 19 years, five months and 12 days old, Siegel would be the 16th youngest driver in IndyCar history if he starts on Sunday. If he wins, Siegel would become the third-youngest winner in IndyCar history, and he would be two days younger than Marco Andretti when Andretti won at Sonoma in 2006.
Siegel's debut was scheduled prior to the start of the season. Théo Pourchaire's debut was unexpected, but with David Malukas remaining sidelined with a wrist injury, and Callum Ilott busy competing in the FIA World Endurance Championship, Pourchaire will take over the #6 Chevrolet this weekend.
Pourchaire was the 2023 Formula Two champion with only one victory in the Bahrain feature, but ten podium finishes, 14 top five finishes and 19 points finishes over the 26 races. The Frenchman made 81 starts over four seasons in Formula Two. He won six races, five of which were feature races. He was second in the 2022 championship behind Felipe Drugovich. Pourchaire was second in the 2020 Formula Three championship, three points behind Oscar Piastri and one point ahead of Logan Sargeant.
While still a Sauber F1 test and reserve driver, Pourchaire is competing full-time this year in the Super Formula championship driving for Team Impul. He was 18th in the Suzuka season opener on March 10.
At 20 years, eight months and one day old, Pourchaire would become the 28th youngest driver in IndyCar history. If he wins, Pourchaire would become the sixth-youngest winner in IndyCar history, and he would be three days younger than Rinus VeeKay when VeeKay won the 2021 Grand Prix of Indianapolis.
IMSA
Long Beach marks the third round of the IMSA season, and this weekend the GTP and GTD class will contest a 100-minute race along Shoreline Drive. Twenty-seven cars are set to compete on Saturday afternoon.
Through two rounds, the #7 Porsche of Dane Cameron and Felipe Nasr and the #40 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura of Louis Delétraz and Jordan Taylor are tied for the GTP championship lead on 706 points. The #7 Porsche went first and third at Daytona and Sebring respectively while the #40 Acura did the inverse, finishing third and first over the first two rounds.
The #31 Whelen Racing Cadillac of Jack Aitken and Pipo Derani is in third on 600 points while the #01 Cadillac of Sébastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande is on 594 points.
The BMWs sandwich the #6 Porsche. Connor De Phillippi and Nick Yelloly have the #25 BMW points on 570 points, 25 points ahead of Mathieu Jaminet and Nick Tandy in the #6 Porsche. Philipp Eng and Jesse Krohn are on 531 points in the #24 BMW.
Rounding out the top ten in the championship are the #10 WTRAndretti Acura of Filipe Albuquerque and Ricky Taylor on 525 points, the #5 Proton Competition Porsche, which has Mike Rockenfeller joining Gianmaria Bruni this weekend, is on 514 points, and the #85 JDC-Miller MotorSports Porsche of Tijmen van der Helm and Richard Westbrook on 497 points.
Jaminet and Tandy are the defending race winners while there have been five different winners in the last four Long Beach races. Prior to Porsche's overall victory last year, General Motors had won seven consecutive Long Beach races between the Corvette GP and the Cadillac DPi.
Seventeen cars are in the GTD class, including a few one-off entries.
Winward Racing has won the first two races with the #57 Mercedes-AMG, and it has Russell Ward and Philip Ellis leading the championship on 725 points. Among the teams entered for this weekend, Wright Motorsports is second in points with the #120 Porsche of Adam Adelson and Elliott Skeer 155 points behind the Winward Mercedes-AMG. Conquest Racing finds itself in third on 545 points with the Alberto Costa and Manny Franco.
VasserSullivan Lexus won last year in GTD Pro at Long Beach, and Lexus will enter two cars in GTD this weekend. Lexus is splitting its normal full-time GTD lineup. Frankie Montecalvo remains in the #12 Lexus while Jack Hawksworth joins Montecalvo. Parker Thompson moves to the #89 Lexus alongside Ben Barnicoat.
This isn't the only driver change this weekend. Heart of Racing Team has drafted in Spencer Pumpelly to pair with Roman De Angelis in the #27 Aston Martin. Pumpelly steps in for Zacharie Robichon, who has FIA World Endurance Championship responsibilities this weekend at Imola. Stevan McAleer will be in the #66 Gradient Racing Acura alongside Sheena Monk, as McAleer will replace Katherine Legge for the rest of the season.
There is also a returning entry this weekend. Flying Lizard Racing returns to IMSA competition for the first time since 2016. Flying Lizard has entered the #28 Aston Martin for Andy Lee and Elias Sabo.
Paul Miller Racing has won the last three years in GTD, but PMR is not here as it is competing in the GTD Pro class this season. BMW has won the last two years in the class, but the only BMW entered this year is Turner Motorsport's #96 M4 GT3 with Robby Foley and Patrick Gallagher.
The IMSA race will take place at 4:30 p.m. ET on Saturday April 20 with coverage on USA.
Fast Facts
This will be the seventh IndyCar race to take place on April 21 and first since Takuma Sato won at Long Beach in 2013. That remains A.J. Foyt Racing's most recent race victory.
Only once has the Grand Prix of Long Beach taken place later in the month of April than the 21st. The 1990 Grand Prix of Long Beach was held on April 22. Al Unser, Jr. won it. It was Unser, Jr.'s third consecutive Long Beach victory.
American drivers have combined to win five consecutive Grand Prix of Long Beach. This is the longest streak of American winners since Americans won the first nine Long Beach races under CART sanctioning.
Prior to this streak, American drivers had only won one of the previous 15 Long Beach races.
Alexander Rossi is the only repeat winner in the last ten Long Beach races.
Team Penske has the most Long Beach victories with seven. Newman/Haas Racing, Chip Ganassi Racing and Andretti Global are all tied with six.
Only twice in the 15 seasons since reunification has the Long Beach winner gone on to win the championship: Dario Franchitti 2009 and Scott Dixon 2015.
The Long Beach winner won the championship in eight of the 12 seasons preceding reunification.
The Long Beach winner has won the championship in 13 of its 39 seasons on the IndyCar schedule.
Four drivers have had their first career IndyCar victory come at Long Beach: Paul Tracy 1993, Juan Pablo Montoya 1999, Mike Conway 2011 and Takuma Sato 2013.
Only two drivers have won the Grand Prix of Long Beach and the Indianapolis 500 in the same season (Al Unser, Jr. 1994, Hélio Castroneves 2001).
The average starting position for a Long Beach winner is 4.256 with a median of second.
Four of the last five Long Beach races have been won from the front row. Sixteen of the last 19 Long Beach races have been won from one of the first two rows. Seventeen of the last 22 Long Beach races have been won from one of the first two rows.
The pole-sitter has won three of the last five Long Beach races. Prior to this streak, the pole-sitter had not won in the previous ten Long Beach races.
The average number of lead changes in a Long Beach race is 5.0769 with a median of six.
The last nine Long Beach races have had five lead changes or more.
The most recent Long Beach race with fewer than four lead changes was 2008, which only had three lead changes.
The most recent Long Beach race with zero changes was 2001. In the IndyCar-era, only two other Long Beach races have had zero lead changes (1984 and 1987).
The average number of cautions in a Long Beach race is 2.846 with a median of three. The average number of caution laps is 11.384 with a median of 12.
Eight of the last 12 Long Beach races have had three cautions or more. Twenty-two of the last 28 Long Beach races have had three cautions or more.
There has never been rain on race day for the Grand Prix of Long Beach.
Predictions
Álex Palou will extend his top ten finish streak to 20 races, and Palou will do it with a victory. Palou's toughest opposition will be a Team Penske driver, but Honda will take majority of the top five finishes, and Honda will have a great command over this race. Felix Rosenqvist will finish at least three spots better than his starting position and he will finish in the top ten. If Théo Pourchaire is in the race, he will be the top finishing rookie. Patricio O'Ward will not take out any cars. Romain Grosjean will not take out any cars. Alexander Rossi will not suffer a suspension failure on the final lap. Sleeper: Jack Harvey.
