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15 April 2023, 11:55 PM
A fantastic opening lap dash to second on the grid from Nick Tandy, strategic mastery from Penske Motorsports, and a perfectly driven closen stint from Mathieu Jaminet were the recipes for the Porsche 963 to get its first competition victory.
The #6 Penske Porsche of Jaminet and Tandy won Saturday’s IMSA Grand Prix of Long Beach sprint race, the third round of the WeatherTech Sportscar Championship. 28 cars from GTD, GTD Pro, and the all-new GTP category entered this weekend, but two cars in the GTD class were withdrawn after qualifying accidents just seconds apart from one another: The #80 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R (PJ Hyett/Seb Priaulx), and the #93 Racers Edge Motorsports Acura NSX GT3 (Ashton Harrison/Mario Farnbacher).

Filipe Albuquerque in the #10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-06 led the field to the green flag followed by Tom Blomqvist in the #60 Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura. Behind them, defending race winner Sébastien Bourdais in third tried to outbrake Blomqvist heading into turn one. Along Shoreline Drive, Bourdais locked up the rear wheels, spun, and crashed into the barriers. Then, Blomqvist was turned around by the #25 BMW M Team RLL V8 Hybrid of Nick Yelloly.
The Safety Car was deployed at the end of the first lap. In the aftermath, the #60 Acura dropped off the lead lap, the #01 Cadillac retired before Renger van der Zande could even dream of driving it, and somehow, the #6 Porsche of Tandy had picked its way through all the mess and gone from sixth to second!
Albuquerque led from the restart until the end of his stint. After 40 minutes, the Portuguese driver brought the black and blue #10 Acura in for routine service. As Ricky Taylor got on board, the car had a gearbox issue and couldn’t get out of neutral, which cost the Wayne Taylor Racing team several agonising seconds in the pits.
So when Tandy brought the #6 Porsche in a lap later, all the Penske crew needed was a clean stop to send the car back out with Jaminet in a comfortable net lead. To gain extra track position, Porsche elected not to change tyres on either one of their cars, including the #7 (Matt Campbell/Felipe Nasr).
Campbell had to serve as Australia’s Minister of Defence to try and keep both the #25 BMW of Connor de Philippi, and the #10 Acura of the rapidly-recovering Ricky Taylor. De Philippi tried a bodacious lunge up the inside of Campbell at turn six, but missed his braking point and shot through the runoff, letting Taylor through into third. Taylor fancied a try at second position, but even with a quicker car, Taylor found it hard to get by Campbell. The two even made contact down Seaside Way and sent pieces of the Porsche’s rear wing endplates flying off – but Campbell still held his advantage.
Finally, with ten minutes left, Campbell’s resistance broke and Taylor drove through at turn eight to take second place.
Out front, Jaminet maintained a steady rhythm to protect his tyres and manage the traffic around him and was leading by as much as seven seconds. But the Michelin tyres underneath his white and red Porsche were starting to lose their grip, and all it took was for him to catch one batch of slow traffic at the worst time to allow Taylor to close within half a second!
Jaminet would have to hang on for dear life over two laps to protect his lead, but Taylor wasn’t willing to wait around. As he began his penultimate lap Taylor got a good drive out of the hairpin onto Shoreline Drive. Taylor tucked underneath Jaminet and braked as late as he dared on the run into turn one.
In agonising fashion, Taylor was too late on the brakes. He slid off and hit the tyre barrier – ironically covered in advertising banners from the manufacturer he represents – to concede the victory at that moment. All that the second-generation racer could do was sit in stunned silence with his head down, after throwing away what would have, should have, been an easy come-from-behind win.

Jaminet recalled the final moments, saying: “He (Taylor) had fresher tyres and after I got caught in traffic with two laps to go, it made sense that he went for it. “I braked really late, and I saw him going past. I thought, ‘If he can make it stop, I’ll be impressed.’ I saw him lock up and he went straight in the fence.”
The caution flag came out just before the start of the last lap, sealing the victory for Porsche – their first overall win at Long Beach since 2007, when Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas guided the famous RS Spyder LMP2 to an overall win.
With little to no optimism of success after two frustrating qualifying sessions for the 963 in two different series, Porsche had to be clever, and cool-headed, and they were both at the same time when they needed to be.

Connor de Philippi may have had a chance to close in and take the win for BMW. Instead, he and Yelloly would finish in second place. But considering the state of the BMW M V8 Hybrids at the start of the season at Daytona, it’s a consolation prize that they’ll happily accept.
Porsche Penske Motorsports got both of their cars on the podium as Campbell and Nasr finished third in the #7 car.

“We kind of knew from practice and qualifying that our pace was probably not going to win us a race,” Tandy admitted. “We wanted to try something different, and one of our options was to try and negate the tyre warm-up issue that many teams have had in GTP this year, so we went with no tyres. What we didn’t know was how the tire was going to end up over the last 40 minutes because nobody had run the tyre that long.”
“I knew it was going to be very close,” added Jaminet. “I just tried to make no mistakes with the traffic. As a team, you need to figure out the opportunities and take what’s there when it’s in front of you. Today was a real team effort, in the pits and with car No. 7. Everybody can be proud today.”
While not quite as quick as their stablemates, the #24 BMW of Philipp Eng and Augusto Farfus came home a respectable fourth place, followed by the #31 Whelen Engineering Racing Cadillac (Pipo Derani/Alexander Sims) in fifth.
The Action Express-run Cadillac had a fascinating race. Sims started but vacated the cockpit of the red and grey #31 after just 12 minutes at the wheel, as the team gambled on an alternate fuel strategy. When Derani took over he spent much of his stint trying to remain on the lead lap, hoping that more Safety Cars would come their way before they had to pit prior to the finish.
Derani brought the #31 Cadillac in for a refuel with 30 minutes left, but not before mixing it up with the two leading Porsches as he ran off-sequence.
The #60 Acura of Blomqvist and Colin Braun did finish after the first-lap dramas, but they also dropped off the lead lap following a pit speed violation and subsequent drive-through penalty. Taylor and Albuquerque in the #10 Acura would be credited with seventh place, two laps down.
Unofficially, Tandy and Jaminet now lead the GTP Drivers’ Championship by a single point over Derani and Sims in second. Taylor and Albuquerque are 20 points back in third place, while De Philippi and Yelloly are fourth in the table, just 21 points behind the leaders!

Jack Hawksworth and Ben Barnicoat pieced together an understated, yet dominant drive in their #14 VasserSullivan Lexus RC F GT3. They led their class from flag to flag, all 73 laps, for their first GTD Pro category win of the 2023 season.
Hawksworth led the combined GTD field early on and pulled out a gap to the #9 Pfaff Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R of Patrick Pilet behind him. After routine pit work was completed, the #14 Lexus returned to the track with Barnicoat driving it home. In that time, the black and yellow Lexus, sporting new sponsorship from eSports outfit 100 Thieves this weekend, never conceded the top spot.
“Perfect weekend for us, really,” Hawksworth said, accurately summing up his race. “One of the best-executed races we’ve been a part of. It was good to clear Sorensen off the start, and that put our Lexus RC F GT3 up at the front. Had an amazing pit stop and then Ben drove his tail off from there.”

Behind them, came a great battle for second place. After Klaus Bachler took over the #9 Pfaff Porsche, he found himself under pressure from the #3 Corvette Racing Chevrolet Corvette C8.R GTD of Jordan Taylor.
Taylor put some of his recent NASCAR experience to good use and leaned on Bachler’s plaid Porsche doors to pass him at turn six and take second position.
Barnicoat maintained a healthy margin of a little less than five seconds all the way to the chequered flag. The #14 VasserSullivan crew, who finished third in Daytona, and second in Sebring, completed the gradual step-up with their Long Beach victory. They also took a 73-point lead in the GTD Pro Championship table heading into the next round.
Taylor and Antonio Garcia finished second in the Corvette, ahead of the Porsche of Bachler and Pilet. The #23 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 (Ross Gunn/Alex Riberas) was fourth in class, followed by the #79 WeatherTech Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Daniel Juncadella/Jules Gounon) in fifth – one lap down after being caught up in a traffic jam at the Hairpin turn 11.

Bryan Sellers, Madison Snow, and Paul Miller Racing successfully completed a GTD class three-peat at Long Beach. Their #1 BMW M4 GT3 drove to its second win of the 2023 season.
The team and its two drivers won the 2021 race in a Lamborghini Huracán and in 2022, they won with the new BMW. Early in the 2023 edition, Snow ran second behind the #27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 of Marco Sørensen.
Behind them, many great battles unfolded in the GTD midfield – and a fair bit of carnage too. Brendan Iribe in the #70 Inception Racing McLaren 720S GT3 Evo hit the #97 Turner Motorsport BMW of Chandler Hull in the door as he tried to get through in the hairpin. Six minutes later in the same spot, Hull turned Iribe around, creating a bottleneck which trapped several GTD cars. For his role, Hull was given a drive-through penalty for incident responsibility.
Sørensen pitted the #27 Aston Martin after leading for 35 minutes and turned the cockpit over to Roman de Angelis. Snow brought the second-ranked #1 BMW into the pits on the next lap.
Sellers rejoined ahead of De Angelis on cold tyres. He didn’t just park the bus, but the entire transit authority on the racing line in order to stay ahead and preserve his class lead. Amazingly, he was able to do just that, and did not relinquish the lead for the rest of the race.

Sellers said afterwards: “Certainly, everyone that’s been up here has talked about track position and how hard it is to pass. Our race was decided in the pits. I think were three or so seconds faster than the Aston in the pits. Madison had two really good in laps, which were key. We reviewed the race from last year.”
De Angelis would settle for a second-place finish in the #27 Aston Martin, while the #12 VasserSullivan Lexus RC F GT3 (Frankie Montecalvo/Aaron Telitz) finished third in GTD, one of only three cars in class that finished on the same lap.
The finishing order in GTD at Long Beach also reflects the post-race championship standings. Sellers and Snow have a 99-point lead over De Angelis and Sørensen. But the Heart of Racing Team crew are only a point ahead of the third-ranked combination of Montecalvo and Telitz, and just eight points ahead of Iribe and Frederik Schandorff, who finished sixth in class in their #70 McLaren.
UNOFFICIAL RACE RESULTS >>
The IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship returns to action next month, on 14 May for the Motul Course de Monterey at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.
Images Courtesy of IMSA
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