LONG BEACH, California – Five Mercedes-AMG Motorsport Customer Racing teams step into the sprint race spotlight in a dual weekend of IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and SRO GT America powered by AWS competition at the 50th Grand Prix of Long Beach, April 11 – 13. Championship leaders Winward Racing join Korthoff Competition Motors in Saturday’s 100-minute WeatherTech Championship race while CrowdStrike by Riley, CRP Racing and Regulator Racing compete in twin 40-minute GT America sprints Saturday and Sunday.
Teams in both championships bring race-winning momentum to Long Beach after respective victories in the most recent rounds of both the WeatherTech and GT America series.
Reigning WeatherTech GT Daytona (GTD) champions Winward Racing and Mercedes-AMG took an early-season points lead with a convincing victory one race ago in last month’s 73rd Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring with the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 and team drivers Russell Ward, Philip Ellis and Indy Dontje. Meanwhile, George Kurtz drove the No. 04 CrowdStrike by Riley Mercedes-AMG GT3 to victory in the season-opening GT America race two weeks ago at Sonoma Raceway.
The top team in GTD, Winward joined Mercedes-AMG in a perfect six-for-six sweep of all IMSA driver, team and manufacturer championships last year on the strength of a series-leading four race wins. Their second-straight Sebring victory and a fourth-place finish in January’s season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona have moved Winward and Mercedes-AMG off to a strong early season title defense, topping the GTD driver and team championship standings coming into Long Beach with 690 points, 41 clear of the nearest competitors. Mercedes-AMG leads the GTD manufacturer championship with 694 points, 40 tallies ahead of the second-place challenger.
With endurance race specialist Dontje scheduled to return for June’s Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen, full-season co-drivers Ward and Ellis compete in the year’s first sprint race at Long Beach. A victory on the challenging 1.968-mile street course would be a first for Winward as Long Beach is one of the few tracks on the IMSA tour on which they have yet to score a victory.
Joining Winward in Saturday’s 100-minute sprint – the shortest WeatherTech GTD race of the season – will be the No. 32 Korthoff Competition Motors Mercedes-AMG GT3 of co-drivers Seth Lucas and Kenton Koch. The No. 32 finished third at Long Beach last year with then team drivers Mikael Grenier and Mike Skeen.
Lucas and Koch have stepped in as this season’s fulltime duo and both make their Long Beach debuts. For the 19-year-old Lucas, Long Beach will be the first street race of his career as well as his first on-site experience of any kind – spectator or competitor – at a temporary road course.
Joining Kurtz and CrowdStrike by Riley in GT America is Jason Daskalos in the No. 27 CRP Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 and Jeff Burton in the No. 91 Regulator Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3.
Daskalos swept last year’s GT America race wins at Long Beach after Kurtz withdrew from the event early in the weekend to tend to a personal matter. Familiar competitors in recent years, this weekend’s races are highly anticipated rematches at Long Beach between Mercedes-AMG stalwarts Daskalos and Kurtz.
Burton moves to the single driver GT America series at Long Beach with some winning momentum of his own. At the Sonoma opener two weeks ago, Burton co-drove the No. 91 to a Sunday GT World Challenge America powered by AWS race win with Ellis. He suits up for a GT America solo run this weekend for the first time since 2023’s season-opening race.
Practice and qualifying for the IMSA WeatherTech Championship takes place Friday, April 11, with the start for the 100-minute sprint on Saturday, April 12 set for 2:05 p.m. PDT. Fans in the United States can watch live on NBC’s Peacock, while international audiences can view a livestream of the race on the IMSA YouTube channel.
After practice and qualifying on Friday, the Long Beach weekend’s GT America races are scheduled to start at 5:20 p.m. PDT on Saturday and 11:20 a.m. PDT on Sunday. Both races and Friday’s qualifying session can be viewed live on SRO’s official YouTube channel GT World at https://www.youtube.com/@GTWorld.
Philip Ellis, Driver – No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3: “Long Beach has been one of those tracks where we haven’t been super lucky yet. We have always been kind of okay, but it has definitely not been a strong suit in the past. It is an important race on the calendar, so we will take it as it comes and just get the maximum that we can out of a clean and safe weekend. It is still a long run ahead in the championship, and we don’t want to really go for single results any more after a good start to the season. The target is clear that we want to go for a title defense, and we will do just that. At Long Beach, that just means surviving the weekend and grabbing a handful of points. If that’s the top five, that’s fine. Due to the track’s narrow nature, especially the last couple of corners that are really tight and tough, we just have to keep our focus on the big picture, especially in the heat of the day. What we have to do to start with is have a good qualifying because track position is key.”
Kenton Koch, Driver – No. 32 Korthoff Competition Motors Mercedes-AMG GT3: “So, this will be the first opportunity I actually get to race at Long Beach. I’ve been coming here since I was a little kid, watching the streets of Long Beach with IndyCar, Trans Am, IMSA and World Challenge throughout those times. This is a dream to come here and to be able to finally get to race here. This is pretty huge is my mentality coming into the weekend. More or less, I’m just going to try to enjoy my time and enjoy the event, enjoy the track and enjoy friends and family as part of it. It’s also Seth’s first opportunity to race here, so we’re going to be a bunch of newbies coming into this thing! There’s lots of tools and things you can do to get ready, so I think we’re going to be pretty prepared for everything that we can. From there, we will see how we do. Korthoff Competition has done well and has had some speed in the last couple of rounds. Now we are at the first sprint race of the year, and hopefully we can continue to have that speed.”
