| Astounding Drives, Fluke Gaffes Rule the Day April 11, 2022By David PhillipsIMSA Wire Service  LONG BEACH, Calif. – With the 36 hours of Florida in the rear-view mirror, the 2022 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship staged its first sprint race of the season with the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach (a/k/a, the 100 minutes of Southern California). Not only a fraction of the distance of the Rolex 24 At Daytona and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Presented by Advance Auto Parts, with concrete walls lining every inch of the 1.968-mile street circuit, Saturday’s race presented a very different set of challenges than the opening rounds. So what did we learn? Amazing Recovery from Bourdais If you’re going to make a mistake, make it early. Case in point, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Sebastien Bourdais. The Frenchman was in the early stages of what looked to be a Saturday afternoon cruise to victory when his No. 01 Cadillac DPi-V.R ran out of road exiting the hairpin after lapping a GT Daytona (GTD) car. Not so wide as to hit the wall, mind you, but wide enough that he had to stop to avoid hitting the wall, then sit stationary while he searched for reverse … and the other five Daytona Prototype international (DPi) cars scooted past. Angry with himself, with a 21-second deficit to the new leader (Alex Lynn in the sister No. 02 Cadillac) and demonstrably the fastest car on the track, Bourdais proceeded to track down and pass all of his rivals to retake the lead in the ensuing 23 laps – all under the green flag. What’s more, he accomplished it efficiently enough to stay on the same fuel schedule as the other DPi cars, unmistakably staking his claim as the early frontrunner for the mythical 2022 IMSA Drive of the Year Award. A ‘Nutty’ Mistake by Corvette On the other hand, Corvette Racing waited 29 laps into the race to make a mistake, but it was an unusual doozy. When GTD PRO pole sitter Jordan Taylor pitted the No. 3 Corvette C8.R GTD after leading the first segments of the race, a wheel nut apparently came loose from pneumatic wheel gun used by one of the Corvette Racing crewmembers to change tires. The airborne wheel nut flew into the pit box in front of the Corvette, where the No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R that was running second to the No. 3 ‘Vette at the time was also taking on fuel and tires. Fortunately, the rogue wheel nut didn’t hit any Pfaff crewmembers but it did fly over the top of the car and drop into the opening on the car’s hood, puncturing the No. 9’s radiator and ending its day.The No. 3 Corvette was assessed a drive-through penalty that dropped it to a third-place class finish. Much later – make that too much later – the No. 25 BMW Team RLL BMW M4 GT3 squandered a chance at a strong finish, if not a win, when Connor De Phillippi went so long into the race before pitting that co-driver John Edwards had no chance of spending the required 35 minutes at the wheel and the No. 25 was relegated to last in class. That the driver exchange also featured a segment where De Phillippi struggled to reattach a loose door and technically became an extra crewmember “over the pit wall” only put the icing on the proverbial cake. Caddy Is the Daddy at the Beach Additional takeaways? Horses for courses. On the heels of wins in 2017 by Wayne Taylor Racing and in 2018, ‘19 and ’21 by Action Express Racing, Cadillac collected its fifth consecutive DPi and overall win at Long Beach. What’s more, Cadillac swept the podium Saturday with Ganassi entries earning a 1-2 finish with the No. 5 Mustang Sampling Caddy taking advantage of a late-race carve-up between the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Racing Cadillac and the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura to come home third and maintain JDC-Miller MotorSports’ string of podium finishes in the 2022 season. Clearly, the tight corners, long straights and corrugated surface of the Long Beach street circuit are music to the ears of the torquey, supple Cadillac DPi-V.R, regardless of livery. On the other hand, the GTD win by Madison Snow and Bryan Sellers in the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 proved it’s not just what car you have but what you do with what car you have that matters. Some seven months after Snow and Sellers took the GTD win in the Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini Huracán GT3 in September’s 2021 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, the same driver/team combination was a dominant force in their new BMW M4 GT3. So new that the team missed the opening round of the 2022 season waiting on the BMW to arrive. Starting from the GTD pole, Snow grabbed the lead and stayed there until handing over to Sellers. When the running order was restored following the pit stop shuffle, Sellers secured the win ahead of the No. 66 Gradient Racing Acura NSX GT3. As Sellers noted, Saturday’s win was a testimony to the expertise developed by Paul Miller Racing in more than a decade of IMSA competition with multiple cars and manufacturers. “With Lamborghini, we started in 2016 so we had years of that experience,” he said. “Now we’re in our second race with BMW. For Madison and I, this will be our second manufacturer we’ve run in and won in together as a pairing. But I’m gonna take a guess and say that the team’s probably at four manufacturers: Porsche, Audi, Lamborghini and now BMW, and it’s pretty cool. I think it shows what Paul Miller has built as a team owner and as a program.” |
