It was a clean sweep of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach for Chip Ganassi Racing.
Saturday’s 100-minute IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race offered the factory Cadillac Racing hybrid GTP team run by Ganassi a chance to redeem itself after a rough debut in 2023, when Sebastien Bourdais arrived at Turn 1 on the first lap with the No. 01 Cadillac V-Series.R sliding sideways against the outer wall. One year later, it was a masterful performance by Bourdais and teammate Renger van der Zande, and an equally impressive strategy call by the Cadillac Racing crew to skip changing tires, which saved time in the pits and promoted the No. 01 to the lead.
[lawrence-related id=353003]
A brutal start to the season for Ganassi’s IMSA squad, which will farewell the Cadillac program at the end of the year, made the Long Beach victory especially sweet, and with Scott Dixon repeating the feat on Sunday with the execution of a perfect strategy that delivered the IndyCar win with his No. 9 Honda, he reflected on the wonderful results for both of CGR’s camps.
“I’m probably more happy for the 01 guys to be honest,” Dixon said after claiming his 57th IndyCar victory. “They’ve had a bad run. It’s been frustrating with that side of the team. The fact that it’s a great group of people, I just don’t think they deserved the results they’ve had. Daytona was a bummer. I think it was ours to lose, and we did, through no fault of ours. Sebring, you couldn’t imagine anything worse. Leading a majority of the race; losing with four minutes to go. Having been a part of that team for quite some time and just seeing the ups and downs, the sadness that was there, that was huge. It was cool to see the strategy worked out.”
Just as Dixon used extreme fuel conservation to triumph over the field on Sunday, the choice to run the same set of Michelin tires for the entirety of the IMSA race was just as bold of a call.
“It was a little aggressive, but they got it done,” Dixon said. “Hopefully that gets a roll on for them, because they greatly deserve it. Chip, obviously he’s the team owner, but the people that work on that team have put in a lot of effort. It’s great to see them celebrating.”