The third round of the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series season keeps IndyCar in California and Southern California to be more specific. From an inaugural event to a 50th anniversary, IndyCar heads to Long Beach, which is celebrating its golden jubilee. Fifty years after its first event, Long Beach hosts IndyCar for the 41st time. Five different drivers have won in the last five visits to Shoreline Drive. In 2025, there has only been one winner, and he has yet to win in his first four trips to IndyCar's most historic street race. However, history is on his side.
Coverage
Time: Coverage begins at 4:30 p.m. ET on Sunday April 13 with green flag scheduled for 4:52 p.m. ET.
Channel: Fox
Announcers: Will Buxton, Townsend Bell and James Hinchcliffe will be in the booth. Kevin Lee and Jack Harvey will work pit lane.
Channel: Fox
Announcers: Will Buxton, Townsend Bell and James Hinchcliffe will be in the booth. Kevin Lee and Jack Harvey will work pit lane.
IndyCar Weekend Schedule
Friday:
First Practice: 6:00 p.m. ET (75 minutes)
Saturday:
Second Practice: 11:30 a.m. ET (60 minutes)
Qualifying: 2:30 p.m. ET
Sunday:
Warm-up: 12:02 p.m. ET (25 minutes)
Race: 4:52 p.m. ET (90 laps)
Qualifying: 2:30 p.m. ET
Sunday:
Warm-up: 12:02 p.m. ET (25 minutes)
Race: 4:52 p.m. ET (90 laps)
FS1 will have coverage of all practice session while FS2 will have coverage of qualifying. Fox will have race coverage.
Honda's Home
Recently, Long Beach has been Honda's home.
The Japanese manufacturer has won the last two years and it has won six of the last seven Long Beach races. Honda also heads Long Beach having won four consecutive street races. The most recent saw Álex Palou take the victory in St. Petersburg. Now Palou is looking for his third consecutive victory to open the 2025 season, and it would be his first in the famed event.
Though he has yet to win, Palou has finished in the top five in all four of his Long Beach starts. Twice he has finished on the podium. Three years ago, he led 22 laps before dropping to third behind Josef Newgarden and Romain Grosjean. If there is any good news for Palou, it is his last eight victories have come on eight different circuits. He has also won the last two races run in California.
Chip Ganassi Racing has won the last four races run in California as Scott Dixon won at Long Beach last year and he won the 2023 season finale at Laguna Seca. Dixon heads to Long Beach attempting to achieve consecutive victories in the event for the eighth time in Long Beach history. Last year, Dixon won multiple street course races, the only driver to do so. He has four consecutive podium finishes in street races.
Andretti Global has been a street course front-runner for the last two seasons, and Andretti has a fantastic history at Long Beach. Two years ago, it won with Kyle Kirkwood and the team has won four of the last six Long Beach races. Colton Herta won at Long Beach in 2021, and Herta won at Toronto last year. Herta has top five finishes in three of the last four Long Beach races.
While Kirkwood won two years ago, he was seventh last year. Marcus Ericsson has finished in the top five of the last two Long Beach races. This is after Ericsson did not finish better than 20th in his first three Long Beach starts.
Meyer Shank Racing has shown signs of promise over the last two seasons with Felix Rosenqvist leading the way. Rosenqvist started on pole position last year at Long Beach, but he dropped to ninth at the finish. Rosenqvist has three top ten finishes in five Long Beach starts, and he has never finished worse than 13th. Marcus Armstrong has finished eighth and 12th in his first two visits to Long Beach.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has never won the Grand Prix of Long Beach. Neither did Bobby Rahal in his illustrious driving career. RLLR has failed to produce a top ten finisher in the last two years at Long Beach. Last year, the team's best finisher in this race was 17th. Graham Rahal was runner-up in the 2013 Long Beach race. Rahal has finished 11th and 12th to open the 2025 season. The other two RLLR drivers, Devlin DeFrancesco and Louis Foster, have yet to finish better than 20th.
Dale Coyne Racing has not had a top fifteen finisher in the last three Long Beach races. DCR has not had a top ten finisher in this race since 2017 when Sébastien Bourdais was second and Ed Jones was sixth. Rinus VeeKay's average finish in four Long Beach starts is 19.5. Jacob Abel's average finish in his first two starts is 24th.
Lundgaard Love
Álex Palou might have won the first two races, and Patricio O'Ward might have dominated the Thermal Club race prior to Palou having the tire advantage in the final stint, but the driver that has probably stood out the most over the opening two races is O'Ward's newest teammate.
Christian Lundgaard has opened the season with finishes of eighth and third. Lundgaard led laps in the season opener at St. Petersburg, and he started on the front row at Thermal Club. This combination of results has Lundgaard placed fourth in the championship on 60 points, only one point behind Scott Dixon in third and only three points off his Arrow McLaren teammate O'Ward.
For the first time in his IndyCar career, Lundgaard has opened a season with a pair of top ten finishes. In each of his first three seasons, the Dane had at least one finish outside the top fifteen in the first two races. Last year, he opened the year with finishes of 18th and 23rd. His podium finish at Thermal Club is his earliest top five finish in a season let alone his earliest podium result. It had taken Lundgaard at least four races to get his first top five finish in his first three seasons.
Street courses have been sort of hit-or-miss for Lundgaard in IndyCar. He was eighth at St. Petersburg, but last season, his best street course result was seventh at Toronto, his only top ten result in a street race. His first career, and so far, only victory was at Toronto in 2023, but that remains Lundgaard's only top five finish in a street course race. As a rookie in 2022, his best street course was eighth. In 15 street course starts, Lundgaard's average finish is 11.667. His average starting position is slightly worse at 11.8 though he has started in the top five on three occasions, including fifth in the St. Petersburg season opener, and a pole position when he won at Toronto in 2023.
Lundgaard has already been giving McLaren more production for a second driver than the team has seen in recent seasons. His third at Thermal Club gave McLaren its first double-podium day since the 2023 Grand Prix of Indianapolis. It is only the second double-podium day for McLaren since it returned to IndyCar in 2019. The next most recent double-podium finish for this organization was the 2015 Grand Prix of Louisiana when Schmidt Peterson Motorsports went first and third with James Hinchcliffe and James Jakes respectively. Saturday will be the ten-year anniversary of that NOLA Motorsports Park race.
This organization won at Long Beach as Schmidt Peterson Motorsports in 2017 with James Hinchcliffe. In the six Long Beach races since, this team has only one top five finish. O'Ward was fifth in 2022.
Lundgaard will enter this weekend looking for his first top ten finish at Long Beach. He has finished 18th, 14th and 23rd in his first three Long Beach starts. He started seventh in last year's race after not starting better than 17th in his first two appearances.
Two-Race Hole
Nobody likes a slow start, but not everyone can start on a heater. History shows IndyCar is not the place for slow starts. Nine consecutive champions were top ten finishers in the opening race. Three of those drivers won the first race. Six of them were top five finishers.
Some drivers got off the mat at the Thermal Club.
Will Power responded after an opening lap accident at St. Petersburg. Though Power started 21st at Thermal, he went forward and finished sixth.
Colton Herta was looking poised for a victory at St. Petersburg. One bad pit stop cost him dearly and he finished 16th. At Thermal, Herta spent most of the race in the top five and he finished fourth.
Marcus Armstrong brushed the barrier in the season opener and what could have been a top ten finish turned into a 24th-place result. In the second race of the season, Armstrong rebounded to finish seventh.
One top ten finish does not mean much when the championship leader has won the first two races. Only one driver is within 40 points of Álex Palou. Only eight drivers are within 60 points of Palou. Herta is just inside that second group. The likes of Power, Armstrong and even Scott McLaughlin and Marcus Ericsson are on the outside.
McLaughlin's spins and hybrid issues at Thermal have the New Zealander 61 points behind Palou. Ericsson's spin in Thermal sunk any hope of a promising finish and the Swede is 65 points back. Both drivers opened the season with top ten finishes. McLaughlin led the most laps in the opener.
The Indy Racing League starting awarding 50 points for a race victory in the 1998 season. In the previous 27 seasons, the fewest points an eventual champion had through the first two races was Greg Ray in 1998, who had 23 points through the first two events. Ray was also ranked 23rd in the championship after those races. Only two other champions had fewer than 50 points after the first two events. Kenny Bräck had 33 points through the first two races of 1998. Scott Dixon had 34 points from the first two races of 2015. Bräck and Dixon were 14th and 15th respectively in the championship.
Twenty-one of these 27 champions were ranked in the championship top five after the first two races. The average championship position for these 27 champions through the first two races is 4.259 with an average of 69.7037 points. The last six champions have had at least 60 points from the first two races. Currently, only the top four (Palou, O'Ward, Dixon and Lundgaard) have at least 60 points through the first two races. Only three other drivers have at least 50 points (Felix Rosenqvist, Kyle Kirkwood and Josef Newgarden).
The bad news for everyone is Palou has 102 points from the first two races. It is the fourth time a driver has opened a season with at least 100 points from the first two races. Only once has a driver not converted hitting the century mark in two races into a championship. Sam Hornish, Jr. and Scott Dixon were successful in 2001 and 2020 respectfully. Will Power was not in 2010.
Five Extra Laps
This year's Long Beach race has been extended to 90 laps, five laps longer than the previous seven editions. This will be the longest Long Beach race since 2003, which was 90 laps.
With five additional laps, this should turn the race into a three-stop race for everybody.
In last year's race, the top nine finishers and 13 of the top fourteen finishers only made two pit stops.
Scott Dixon won last year's race after stopping under caution on lap 17 and then under green flag conditions on lap 51, stretching the fuel over the final 35 laps and holding off charges from Josef Newgarden and Colton Herta.
In 2023, the top eighteen finishers all did it on a two-stop strategy. Every driver that made three stops or more did not finish on the lead lap. Eventually winner Kyle Kirkwood stopped under the lap 22 caution with only one car staying out. Kirkwood then stopped on lap 54. In 2022, the top 12 finishers all only made two stops. Newgarden stopped on lap 30 and then lap 57. Newgarden's final stop came two laps after Álex Palou's final stop, and Palou had been leading prior to that pit cycle. Newgarden leap-frogged to the lead during that pit cycle.
Colton Herta started 14th in the 2021 race. Herta stopped on lap 18, which was two laps prior to a caution. After two cautions in quick succession, Herta took the lead on lap 34 when Hélio Castroneves and Graham Rahal each made pit stops. Herta had passed Scott Dixon and Josef Newgarden to position himself to inherit the lead. The final stop for Herta was lap 54.
Alexander Rossi won consecutive Long Beach races, and Rossi did it on near-identical strategies. In 2018, he stopped on lap 25 and lap 56. In 2019, Rossi went a lap longer on his first stint, stopping on lap 26 and his final stop was still on lap 56. In both races, the first three laps were run under caution.
The 2017 race saw a mix of strategy, but James Hinchcliffe was on a two-stopper. Hinchcliffe stopped on lap 28 and lap 57. However, Hinchcliffe took the lead leap-frogging Alexander Rossi in the second pit cycle. Rossi also stopped on lap 28 but stopped on lap 56. Rossi would drop out with a mechanical issue on lap 63. Hinchcliffe was the only finisher in the 2017 race to complete the race in two stops. Sébastien Bourdais ended up finishing second after stopping under caution on lap two, under green flag conditions on lap 30 and on lap 58. Josef Newgarden was third on a three-stop strategy with stops on lap 16, lap 33 and lap 61. Scott Dixon finished fourth despite stopping on lap 16 like Newgarden, but going to lap 41 for his second stop and his final stop was on lap 62.
The last 12 Long Beach race winners have made only two pit stops. From 2013 to 2016, Long Beach was only an 80-lap race. Mike Conway in 2011 was the last driver to win Long Beach on a three-stop strategy, an 85-lap event, but the next six finishers were all on a two-stop strategy. Only one other finisher in the top 12 made a third stop, and that was Tony Kanaan in eighth.
IMSA
For IMSA, Long Beach marks the third round of the season and the first non-endurance race. This will be a 100-minute race and it will only feature the GTP and the GTD classes. Despite cutting the number of classes in half, 27 cars are entered for the first of two street course weekends, as a few one-off entries join the grid.
Leading the 11-car GTP class is the #7 Porsche Penske Motorsport entry as it swept the two endrance races from Daytona and Sebring. Felipe Nasr and Nick Tandy will carry on full-time and the Anglo-Brazilian duo has 760 points. That is 91 points more than its sister car, the #6 Porsche. Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell were third and second in the first two races.
Meyer Shank Racing is third and fourth in the championship, and those cars are tied on 587 points. The #60 Acura of Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun have finished second and tenth. The #93 Acura of Renger van der Zande and Nick Yelloly have finished eighth and third.
Cadillac has the #10 Wayne Taylor Racing entry and the #31 Whelen Racing entry in the next spots in the championship with only one point between them. Filipe Albuquerque and Ricky Taylor sit in 547 points, just ahead of Jack Aitken and Earl Bamber. The BMW entries are tied on 540 points. The #24 BMW of Dries Vanthoor and Philipp Eng has started on pole position in the first two races, but it has yet to finish better than fourth. Sheldon van der Linde and Marco Wittmann were fifth at Sebring.
JDC-Miller Motorsports has 528 points with Gianmaria Bruni and Tijmen van der Helm in the #85 Porsche. Louis Delétraz and Jordan Taylor have finished 11th in each of the first two races and the #40 Cadillac on 447 points.
Off a victory at Sebring, Winward Racing leads the GTD championship as Philip Ellis and Russell Ward has 690 points, 41 points ahead of the #27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin. Tom Gamble and Casper Stevenson have finished third in each of the first two races. A pair of top five finishes to open the season has the #120 Wright Motorsports Porsche third in the championship on 633 points with Adam Adelson and Elliott Skeer
Daytona winners AWA dropped to fourth in the championship on 590 points after finishing tenth at Sebring. Matt Bell and Orey Fidani are back in the #13 Corvette. Turner Motorsport rounds out the top five with Patrick Gallagher and Robby Foley on 549 points in the #96 BMW, one point more than the #12 VasserSullivan Lexus of Jack Hawksworth and Parker Thompson
This weekend marks the debut for Robert Wickens in the #36 DXDT Racing Corvette with Tommy Milner as his co-driver. VasserSullivan has entered an additional Lexus with Aaron Telitz and Frankie Montecalvo in the #89 Lexus. AO Racing has entered the #177 Porsche, which will see Laurens Vanthoor lead the way alongside Jonny Edgar. Vanthoor won overall in the first two races of the season with the #7 Porsche Penske entry.
General Motors has won overall at Long Beach in eight of the last nine visits. Porsche won in 2023 with Jaminet and Tandy. Renger van der Zande has won two of the last three years. Lexus won last year in GTD with Ben Barnicoat and Thompson, ending a three-year winning streak for Paul Miller Racing, which now competes in GTD Pro. Lexus also won at Long Beach in 2023 in GTD Pro with Barnicoat and Hawksworth.
IMSA's Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach will take place on Saturday April 12 5:00 p.m. ET.
Fast Facts
This will be the eighth IndyCar race to take place on April 13 and the first since Mike Conway won at Long Beach in 2014.
This will be the fifth Long Beach race to take place on April 13.
Six of the first seven races to run on April 13 were held in California. The other two were at Hanford in 1969 (Mario Andretti won) and Ontario in 1980 (Johnny Rutherford won).
The one non-California races was the Indy Racing League race at Motegi in 2003 (Scott Sharp won).
This year's race falls on the 39th anniversary of Michael Andretti's first career victory.
This year's 90-lap race falls 22 years to the day of the last 90-lap race at Long Beach.
Alexander Rossi is the only repeat winner in the last ten Long Beach races.
Will Power, Alexander Rossi or Scott Dixon could become the fifth driver to win at least three Long Beach races.
Team Penske and Chip Ganassi Racing are tied for the most Long Beach victories with seven. Newman/Haas Racing and Andretti Global are tied with six victories.
Only twice in the 16 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 40 seasons on the IndyCar schedule.
Five drivers have had their first career IndyCar victory come at Long Beach: Paul Tracy 1993, Juan Pablo Montoya 1999, Mike Conway 2011, Takuma Sato 2013 and Kyle Kirkwood 2023.
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 4.35 with a median of 2.5.
Four of the last six Long Beach races have been won from the front row. Sixteen of the last 20 Long Beach races have been won from one of the first two rows. Seventeen of the last 23 Long Beach races have been won from one of the first two rows.
The average number of lead changes in a Long Beach race is 5.15 with a median of six.
The last ten 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 2.8 with a median of three. The average number of caution laps is 11.2 with a median of 12.
Eight of the last 13 Long Beach races have had three cautions or more. Twenty-two of the last 29 Long Beach races have had three cautions or more.
In the IndyCar-era, four Long Beach races have been caution-free (1985, 1987, 1989 and 2016).
There has never been rain on race day for the Grand Prix of Long Beach.
Predictions
Chevrolet gets it first victory of 2025, and Team Penske makes up for the missed opportunity at St. Petersburg. It will be Josef Newgarden taking the victory with Will Power in second but Álex Palou will finish third. Scott Dixon will not have the longest final stint of the race. Colton Herta will make up at least six spots for his starting position. There will be multiple cautions but there will be at least one pit green flag pit cycle. Louis Foster is the top finishing rookie. Robert Shwartzman will run at least 90 laps before he even gets to the race. The pole-sitter will not lead the most laps. Sleeper: Marcus Armstrong.
