Long Beach Grand Prix 2010: ALMS race goes down to the wire [Spoilers]
 

Filed under: Motorsports

The featured race at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach might be Sunday afternoon's IndyCar race, but for the hundred thousand or so fans at the street course in downtown Long Beach on Saturday afternoon, it was all about the American Le Mans Series. The Tequila Patrón American Le Mans Series at Long Beach is the official title for this exciting event, which has been part of the Long Beach schedule four times in as many years.

While the series had its first race of the season at Sebring in March, Long Beach would be the first time the former LMP1 and LMP2 cars would be running together in the new LMP class, joining the handful of slightly slower LMPC-class Oreca FLM09 prototypes on track. LMP didn't have the Peugeots we had seen dominate at Sebring, but there were plenty of other strong competitors. Long Beach was also the debut of the new former-GT2-like GT class, joining the GTC category, the latter of which is essentially a spec series for Porsche this year.

Street races are always exciting because of the concrete walls surrounding the circuit, which give very little comfort to drivers who overdo it even a little bit. Long Beach can be particularly hard on machinery in that respect and even with the long front straight producing very high trap speeds, the technical nature of its 11-turn, 1.9-mile layout can also favor smaller, nimbler cars over heavier, higher-horsepower vehicles.

With typically gorgeous weather at this track nestled up against the Pacific Ocean in the shadow of the Queen Mary, it set up well for a memorable second race on the ALMS calendar. We were there ourselves this year and bring you our own live gallery to accompany the race report. Click below to see the pics, and follow the jump to see how the race unfolded.


Gallery: 2010 Tequila Patr?n American Le Mans Series at Long Beach

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Continue reading Long Beach Grand Prix 2010: ALMS race goes down to the wire [Spoilers]

Long Beach Grand Prix 2010: ALMS race goes down to the wire [Spoilers] originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 18 Apr 2010 13:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.



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