No Caution-Fest, Please! IMSA GTD Class Has Chance to Shine at Long Beach

The teams in GTD class of the WeatherTech Championship will get a chance to show what they can do in the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, where winning is hard and the walls harder.

The IMSA category for GT3-type cars, where teams must use at least one lower-ranked driver, will be the only class competing with the headline GTP hybrids.

Such is the prestige of winning at Long Beach, Lexus will split its GTD Pro drivers, Jack Hawksworth and Ben Barnicoat, between two entries to improve it chances under the GTD-only format. Another sign of the race’s pull is the return of Flying Lizard Motorsports for the Saturday event, one of 17 entries along with 10 of the GTPs.

There is not much margin for error on this street circuit. Will the focus and pressure on silver and bronze drivers in GTD be an opportunity to shine or will the race turn into a caution fest? Will the gold-ranked or platinum-ranked pros, who are the designated race finishers for their teams, push the limits too far?

“It’s always a question of skating that fine line or pushing too much and going over the line,” said Frankie Montecalvo, who will co-drive a Lexus RC F GT3 with Hawksworth for Vasser Sullivan. “(Maybe) having a little bit of a rub versus a hard impact taking you out. You have to be conservative, but at the same time pushing as hard as you can.”

Even if the Shoreline Drive grandstands thin out after IndyCar qualifying, Long Beach’s legendary status—and the opportunity to stand on the single GT podium—will no doubt have GTD drivers on the cam. This may not be a good thing in a 100-minute contest.

At the two season-opening enduros at Daytona and Sebring, where large crowds had drivers pumped up, cautions occurred regularly and may have been a factor in TV and streaming ratings that did not match the events’ green flag excitement.

Due to limited space in the paddock, the GTD Pro teams were not invited to Long Beach and will run in their own 100-minute street race in Detroit along with the GTP hybrids. The Mustang GT3 and Corvette Z06 GT3.R factory teams will be missing at Long Beach, but customer teams Proton Competition (Mustang) and AWA (Corvette) are entered.