Long Beach – it’s IndyCar’s version of Monaco, except it’s about twenty times as rough as the Formula One circuit around the streets of Monte Carlo, and you can actually make legitimate on-track passes. Aside from the Indianapolis 500, the Grand Prix of Long Beach, forty-two years old in 2016, is the race drivers want to win.
All the legends of the sport have triumphed on the streets of Long Beach: Al Unser Junior, Mario Andretti, Michael Andretti, Alex Zanardi, Juan Pablo Montoya and, most recently, Scott Dixon. It’s rarefied company, and for one weekend every April, twenty-one hungry IndyCar drivers try to add their name to the record books.
It was a big weekend in sunny southern California, and here’s all you need to know from the 2016 Grand Prix of Long Beach:
The Race
For the first time since Mid-Ohio in 2013, an IndyCar race went flag to flag without any yellow flag interruption, and when the dust settled, it was Frenchman Simon Pagenaud who triumphed, earning his first win in his second season with Roger Penske’s squad, and giving Penske his sixth Long Beach victory.
Pagenaud’s victory was not without a tinge of controversy – it wouldn’t be an IndyCar race without some controversy – as he left the pits after his final stuff, edging ahead of New Zealander Scott Dixon only after crossing over the blend line with three wheels.
That’s a no-no, and Pagenaud was in the hands of IndyCar’s notoriously random Race Control. Anything was possible: a warning, a pit lane pass through, a stop-go penalty or even a stop and hold. In the end, and to the dismay of many in the paddock, and particularly the second-placed Dixon (not to mention his strategist, Mike Hull), Pagenaud was given only a warning.
That, as they say, was all she wrote, and Pagenaud, a Frenchman who had impressed for years on smaller teams and was decidedly underwhelming in 2015, his first go-around with the powerhouse Team Penske, held off Dixon by 0.3 seconds – the closest finish in Long Beach Grand Prix history. Pagenaud increases his hold on top spot in the championship heading to Barber Motorsports Park in seven days’ time. Their duel over the last twenty laps of the race was one for the ages. Dixon very nearly got Pagenaud on the last circuit, in what was a grandstand finish worthy of the event.
IndyCar released a statement after the race, indicating that Pagenaud had indeed broken the rules (Rule 7.10.1.1. regarding "Lane Usage") and Race Control was well in their rights to hand down any penalty from a warning to the stop-and-hold. IndyCar did what they thought was correct, and there will doubtless be plenty of discussion in the coming days.
Brazilian Helio Castroneves, who led more than half the race (47 of the 80 laps), was a distant third, finishing ten seconds back, giving Roger Penske a 1-3 finish in the sport’s second-biggest race. Australia’s Will Power, a two-time winner at Long Beach, finished seventh.
For the first time since 2011, every car completed the race distance and made it to the finish in only the fourth caution-free Long Beach Grand Prix in history.
Honda’s Struggles Continue
Another weekend, another horror story for Honda – and this narrative is fast becoming the big story of 2016. There were must two Honda-powered teams in the top twelve (Japan’s Takuma Sato in fifth, and Canadian James Hinchcliffe, who finished eighth) and even perennial Long Beach contender Ryan Hunter-Reay had a race to forget, finishing way back in eighteenth.
Exactly how bad are Honda runners? Well, there’ve been 440 laps of racing so far in the 2016 IndyCar Series season, and Chevrolet teams have absolutely and completely dominated, leading 422 of those laps. Honda teams have led a combined 18. Miserable reading if your name is Michael Andretti, whose cars finished 12th, 18th, 19th and 20th, spectacularly off the pace.
Andretti Autosport, you might remember, is Honda’s top team and the fact that they have consistently been out-performed by smaller Honda teams like Bobby Rahal’s Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan Racing and Schmidt Peterson Motorsports, (and, this weekend, even AJ Foyt’s squad), is nothing short of flabbergasting. They should, as a multi-car squad with close ties to the Honda factory, be significantly better than they are.
One thing is for certain: if there isn’t some sort of rapid improvement, both the 100th Indianapolis 500 and the rest of the 2016 season are going to be incredibly bleak for Honda, who had a chance to close the gap to Chevrolet after being spanked last year, but inexplicably failed to do so. It's plain embarrassing now.
Strong Finishes
A good day for Takuma Sato, driving for A.J. Foyt, in what is surely the strangest owner-driver combination anywhere in motorsports. The 2013 Long Beach winner came home a strong fifth – his best result in some time. And the afore-mentioned Hinchliffe brought his SPM Honda home in eighth.
Another Amazing Long Beach Weekend
The Grand Prix of Long Beach doesn’t announce crowd totals, but those in the know say the turnout for the 2016 race was the best it’s been in years, somewhere around the 180,000 mark, including a packed Friday, which is basically unheard of.
It’s not hard to see why: beautiful weather – it hasn’t once rained on race day at Long Beach! – forty-odd years of tradition, close racing and a packed schedule that includes IMSA sports car racing and the very popular celebrity race, plus loads of off-track entertainment. It’s a perfect mix.
In the current IndyCar climate, were events come and go with startling regularity, promoters of new races, especially on temporary street circuits, should use the Long Beach weekend as a model for their own event. Jim Michaelian and his crew do a sensational job.
Short Turnaround For Teams
There’s only seven days’ between races, with the series heading south to the picturesque Barber Motorsports Park near Birmingham, Alabama next weekend. This current three-race stretch – the short oval at Phoenix, the streets at Long Beach and then a natural terrain road course at Barber – is what’s so great and challenging about IndyCar racing, and what sets the series apart from all others in global motorsports.
Oh, and the Month of May, including the 100th Indianapolis 500, is barely a month away!
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