The Paul Miller Racing Duo Seek Their Third Straight Long Beach Win This Week
April 11, 2023
By David Phillips
IMSA Wire Service
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Bryan Sellers and Madison Snow are going for a rare feat at the 2023 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach – a three-peat. Having piloted the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini Huracán GT3 into victory lane in 2021 and the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 to the same spot last year, they would like nothing better than to notch a third consecutive win on North America’s most famous street circuit.
Not that they haven’t achieved considerable success elsewhere. The duo have 13 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship podiums in the Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) class since 2021, including four class wins, the most recent coming last month at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. That Sellers and Snow have done so with the mid-engine, V-10 Lamborghini and the front-engine, in-line six-cylinder BMW speaks to the secret of their success. For there is another constant in their successful collaboration: the Paul Miller Racing team. “You’ve got to look at the constants there,” says Snow. “That’s the team and Bryan and I. The team being able to do its very first race with the BMW at Sebring last year and then deliver us a car that Bryan and I can do our job with at Long Beach and end up on top. That’s certainly something special. “I like Long Beach, I like the street circuits. It’s definitely an aggressive, challenging circuit (and) I like challenges,” Snow continued. “I’m glad that IMSA doesn’t race at a street course every single weekend, but I’m glad we do race at Long Beach. We’re out here for a challenge, we’re out here to do something difficult and that’s what makes Long Beach one the best races of the year.” The now eight-year-old partnership between Sellers and Snow has enabled the twosome to become so thoroughly familiar with one another’s driving styles that they speak a common language, albeit one with different accents, so to speak. Important at any race, that familiarity is absolutely critical in an environment like Long Beach where the challenge includes limited track time and ever-changing track conditions. “The trust that you have to have in your co-driver in those scenarios is critically important,” says Sellers. “You don’t have much time on a track that is constantly evolving, and you have to rely on each other. I’ll only drive in the morning practice and basically won’t drive again until the race. So I have to talk to Madison and trust in what he tells me. That’s something we’ve had all along but it’s certainly developed further over time. He can say to me, ‘This is what you have to do, this is where you have to brake,’ and I can rely on that to be correct. And he believes in me the same way.”
As well, Sellers points to Paul Miller Racing race engineer Lars Giersing as a linchpin for their success. “Another big reality is that the race engineer has to have a mind for that circuit. He has to understand what you’re trying to accomplish on a street course, what’s important to cover and I think Lars is very good at that. Historically, our program has been pretty good on low-grip street circuits, and that’s because of him. He knows what he wants out of the car before he gets there.” It has also helped that Snow has collected the Motul Pole Award in GTD qualifying at Long Beach the last two years. “Madison has put us in good track position the past two years by qualifying on pole, which helps drastically at a street course race because when you’re out front you are controlling your race, your tire degradation, as opposed to someone else. And we’ve exited the pits in the lead every single time. Those two things together set you up for a good run towards the end.” Which doesn’t guarantee that Sellers, Snow, Giersing and the rest of the Paul Miller squad will be doing a hat-trick hat dance in Long Beach. “Long Beach is such an outlier of a race, it’s always hard to predict,” Sellers says. “The one thing I know for sure is a three-peat is hard in anything. It’s hard to win anything three times in a row, especially motorsports where things are constantly evolving. I do know that the competition is hard. I know there are a lot of players in the game right now. And I know if we had to show up with our ‘A’ game the last two years, we’ll have to show up with our ‘A-plus’ game this year. I’m hopeful, but the competition just keeps getting better and better, and you have to hope you’re on that same curve.”Saturday’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach airs live starting at 5 p.m. ET on USA Network and IMSA Radio. |
