The Tight Final Corner on the Street Course Has Seen More Than Its Share of Action through the Years
April 10, 2023
By John Oreovicz
IMSA Wire Service
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The hairpin turn at the Long Beach street circuit shouldn’t be difficult.
After all, it’s the slowest corner that competitors in the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship will encounter all year long, taken at barely 30 miles per hour. What could go wrong?
“The hairpin is tricky,” acknowledges Sebastien Bourdais, co-driver of the No. 01 Cadillac Racing Cadillac V-Series.R in the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class. “It definitely is its own animal, for sure.”
Bourdais should know because he encountered his share of adventure at the hairpin while leading the 2022 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. Just seven minutes into the race, he misjudged the hairpin entry while lapping a GTD-class car, taking such a tight line that he couldn’t complete the corner exit without hitting the wall. He had to sit stationary for around 30 seconds until the field passed before he could reverse to “un-park” his car and resume down Shoreline Drive, now trailing at the back of the pack.
Bourdais can laugh about his rare mistake now. He roared back through the field to put the Cadillac in position for Renger van der Zande to complete a remarkable back-to-front overall and Daytona Prototype international (DPi) class victory. But the Frenchman isn’t the only driver who has fallen afoul of the innocent-looking 180-degree turn over the years.
Tommy Milner and Corvette Racing experienced both sides of Long Beach hairpin havoc. In 2016, Milner led the GT Le Mans (GTLM) class into the closing laps but was punted in the hairpin by Fred Makowiecki’s Porsche, allowing Nick Tandy’s Porsche to sneak past them both for the victory. A year later, Milner ran second to his Corvette teammate Antonio Garcia as they headed into the hairpin for the final time, only to find it blocked by a prior accident. While Garcia was stuck in the traffic jam, Milner snuck past to take the checkered flag and win.
Bill Auberlen has more IMSA top-series race wins than any other driver with 65, including two at Long Beach. But he has nightmares about the scenarios encountered by Bourdais and Milner at what he calls his home track in Southern California.
Even worse, triggering them.
“I’ve always wanted to go under somebody into the hairpin, but I’m afraid I won’t have enough steering to make the corner,” says Auberlen, who grew up in nearby Redondo Beach.
“It’s a freaky turn,” continues the longtime BMW factory pilot. “Everyone always pulls left to set up for it, and I just so badly want to shimmy it in there under somebody. But I always have this fear that I won’t be able to make the corner and get out. I’ve already looked like Austin Powers in Turn 1, and I didn’t want to look like it again in the hairpin. So, I’ve never done it.”
Racers will often say that slow corners can be harder than fast ones. With the Long Beach hairpin, it’s not about pure difficulty. But as the 11th and final corner in a relatively short lap, it plays a critical role in a driver’s race craft.
Backtracking a few corners, cars barrel down the back straight into Turn 9, a 90-degree right-hander that offers the Long Beach circuit’s second-best opportunity for passing. Then it’s a short straight burst into Turn 10, which extends 135 degrees to the left before immediately transitioning into the braking zone for the hard right hairpin. The whole stretch from Turn 8 to the blind entry of the hairpin is a narrow canyon of concrete walls and fences on both sides.
“Sometimes when you come into the hairpin, you concertina up when you’re in traffic,” says Ross Gunn, co-driver of the No. 23 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 in the GTD PRO class. “You can gain time or lose time massively on competitors around you.”
The exit of the hairpin is even more important than the entry because it propels cars onto Shoreline Drive, a gently curved “straight” taken flat out that ultimately sets up the Turn 1 overtaking zone. A clean launch from the hairpin with minimal wheelspin is absolutely vital if a driver wants to slipstream a rival down Shoreline to set up a move into Turn 1.
“You can’t mess the hairpin up, but you also can’t focus on setting the car up for one corner,” says Madison Snow, seeking his third consecutive Long Beach victory in the GTD class with co-driver Bryan Sellers in the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3. “What makes it different is just how slow it is; throttle off the corner, you’re so slow, you’re in a straight line, so you might want to adjust traction settings for just that one corner instead of the rest of the track.”
For van der Zande, strategizing the Long Beach hairpin comes down to a case of risk versus reward.
“That last corner is special, and the corner before that – the long left-hander with all the rubber from the drifting – it’s easy to screw it up there as well,” he says. “Around that corner there really is only one line. It sets up those do-or-die moves on the last corner of the last lap of the race. We’ve seen a lot of action there over the years, some misfortune for some people stranded there and losing out on a lot.
“That makes Long Beach a difficult street track with no room for error, and if there is a little error, it might stack up there,” van der Zande adds. “If you dive bomb on the inside, you probably won’t get away with it. But you might get lucky and win that race.”
