Porsche Penske Motorsport’s Mathieu Jaminet seemingly lost the lead with two laps to go to Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport’s Ricky Taylor. However, Ricky went too fast into turn 1 and crashed his Acura ARX-06 into the tires.
That allowed Jaminet and Nick Tandy to retake the lead as the caution came out. From there, they drove at a reduced pace to win the IMSA Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. It is the first-ever win for the new Porsche 963.
“I would have never believed this morning [that we could win],” Jaminet said after the race. “It was tough but at the end, we never stopped believing. The team did an amazing job. They put us in this position.”
BMW M Team RLL’s Connor de Phillippi and Nick Yelloly were second, then Matt Campbell and Felipe Nasr in the second Porsche. Philipp Eng and Augusto Farfus were fourth, while Action Express Racing’s Pipo Derani and Alexander Sims were fifth in their Cadillac. Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport’s Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque were credited with seventh.
Albuquerque led the 26-car field to green). However, trouble was not far away. Chip Ganassi Racing’s Sebastien Bourdais locked up under braking for turn 1 and spun into the wall.
While trying to avoid the incident, Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian’s Tom Blomqvist also spun after he was tapped by Farfus. Both cars were unable to continue without assistance, drawing the race’s first full course caution.
Bourdais’ Cadillac V-Series.R had significant nose damage. That damage triggered an electrical fault that put the team out on the spot.
Blomqvist’s Acura was all but undamaged, but stalled out. He was able to continue after getting assistance, but ended up a lap down. He would never make that lap up and finished seventh.
After the green came back out, Albuquerque stretched out his lead over Tandy to three seconds. Ultimately, lapped traffic brought Albuquerque back to the rest of the field.
Tandy was right on Albuquerque’s tail when Albuquerque brought the Konica Minolta Acura in for their only pit stop 42 minutes in. The stop was disastrous as the team had significant trouble getting Ricky Taylor buckled in.
The driver change issues was all Porsche Penske Motorsport needed. Tandy brought the No. 6 Porsche in a lap later to swap over to Jaminet. With teams only allowed four sets of tires for the whole weekend, the No. 6 squad decided to go with only fuel on…
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