Download The Racing Line on iOS today and get 70% off a year's subscription!
I wasn't originally going to write about IMSA's Grand Prix of Long Beach for Only Endurance. Officially, we're only planning on covering IMSA's Endurance Cup rounds, because we simply do not have the time or resources to cover the shorter IMSA races.
The Long Beach race certainly wasn't a classic. BMW's Dries Vanthoor stuck his car on pole for the third time in a row, led early on until a full course caution at pretty much the ideal time made the GTPs pit.
Porsche's quicker work in the pits meant they came out on top, and led from there, through another full course caution. Felipe Nasr led home Matt Campbell for Porsche's second consecutive 1-2 and Nasr and teammate Nick Tandy's third win on the bounce. Done.
But, how much quicker were Porsche? And could — should — BMW have won this?
Small gaps
We've looked at the average lap times for each car, over the course of the race. Porsche were quickest. But only by less than two tenths a lap compared to their nearest competition, the BMWs.
In the first stint, laps 1-16 before the full course caution, D. Vanthoor led from his teammate Sheldon van der Linde and Tandy in the #7 Porsche.
Tandy initially dropped back a bit from the two BMWs, but did begin to close that gap before the yellow came out. If you look at both top 20% average lap times, and the overall average for the stint, Tandy is almost three tenths slower in a traffic-free lap (the top 20% laps) but is a little closer in the overall average.
Tandy presumably wasn't pushing here, biding his time and either waiting for a yellow or planning to jump the BMWs in the pits, either through undercutting or faster pitstop work.
That yellow did eventually come. And by the time the race restarted, Porsche were ahead, 1-2.
If you look at the pit stop times, Porsche were five seconds quicker than the BMWs in the pits. When they were separated by under a second coming into the pits under yellow... yeah. It's obvious what will happen at exit.
I don't understand why the #25 BMW, with Sheldon van der Linde in the car in the first stint, pitted later than everyone else (alongside Meyer Shank Acura's Tom Blomqvist, in the #60 car). It dropped them right back from second to 10th.
Porsche consolidate a lead
Looking at the second stint of the race, laps 22-40 between the two cautions, this was when Porsche consolidated the lead.
By the end of the stint, the Brazilian had a four and a half second lead over his teammate Matt Campbell. The Aussie, meanwhile, had 1.75 seconds on Philipp Eng in the pole-sitting BMW behind.
If you look at the averages, Nasr was quickest overall, but Campbell was actually slightly quicker in the traffic-free laps, early on in the stint after the restart.
On the other hand, Eng was slightly quicker than Campbell in traffic but fell off in the top 20% times, by almost three tenths a lap on average.
Phil Oakley
Eng did manage to stay with the Porsches, or at least Campbell, in this period of the race though. If you flipped the script so Eng was at least in front of Campbell in second, would the Porsche driver have had the pace to overtake the BMW? Probably not.
And with only a couple of tenths overall on Nasr, arguably Nasr may not have found a way by either.
Porsche sweep to a 1-2
Our analysis found that, to make an overtake in the GTP class at Long Beach, you needed a positive time delta of around 0.329 on the car ahead.
BMW never had this after the first caution period — Eng gradually dropped back from Tandy in the lead and Campbell in second.
But, crucially, Porsche rarely had this in the first stint when they were behind.
So, the question is: had they been able to stay ahead in the pits, would the German manufacturer have been able to keep Porsche behind? It's obviously impossible to say, but based on this data, it's certainly within the realms of feasibility.
As it was, Nasr had the pace to keep both Campbell and Eng behind, and actually pulled out a gap of 12 seconds to Eng over the 30 laps which comprised the final stint.
Finally: check out the full race results, and see what Porsche themselves had to say.
Feature image: Porsche
This post is brought to you by The Racing Line, your personalised motorsport calendar app. Get session times for over 150 series, from rally to bikes, single seaters to sportscars with customisable notifications and built-in streaming. Download on iOS today!