Albuquerque Confident Acura Can Challenge For First Long Beach Win

Wayne Taylor Racing driver Filipe Albuquerque is confident that Acura’s LMDh car can challenge for the brand’s first win at Long Beach since the Grand Am-ALMS merger when the current crop of GTP cars make their street circuit debuts this weekend.

Looking ahead to this weekend, he expects the new Acura ARX-06 to be better suited to the narrow, bumpy street circuits than the previous ARX-05, which always struggled against the Cadillac DPi-V.Rs. During the DPi era, Cadillacs won every race on the streets of Long Beach, and all but one of the races held at Detroit Belle Isle between 2017 and 2022.

“With new regulations, there is now a question mark over the competitiveness of each branch at each circuit. But I am really optimistic about it. It (the ARX-06) will be more competitive than the DPi Acura. Before when we went to Long Beach we knew we wouldn’t be competitive. We know where we need to improve for Long Beach. It will be closer,” he said ahead of the meeting.

“We were really competitive in Sebring, and Sebring and Long Beach are a similar type of track. Ok, you don’t have the fast corners, but you have to have a car that reacts well to the bumps. In the past, it was painful to go through these two races in a DPi (Acura) because we were not good over the bumps.

We were really competitive in Sebring, and Sebring and Long Beach are a similar type of track

“But now our car drives well there (at Sebring). I think we will be fine. Cadillac will be strong, but we just need to work hard for it. We are addressing the slow corners, which are mainly found in the second sector at Sebring. It’s going to be about setting up the car for that specific area, we cannot give away traction or slow corners.”

On the other side of the fence, Cadillac Racing driver Sebastien Bourdais echoes this feeling heading into the meeting and expects this weekend’s 100-minute GTP battle in California to be closer than in previous years.

“The car (Cadillac DPi) was always labelled as the car to beat at Sebring and the street courses, because it was a car that wasn’t super ride height sensitive. I think now we are seeing cars of this new generation which conceptually are closer together, I think it will be more open everywhere,” he said in the pre-event media conference.

In addition to being a sign of real progress for Acura, a good result this weekend for Wayne Taylor Racing would go a long way in getting the team’s title challenge back on track after the multi-car pile-up at the end of the 12 Hours of Sebring.

The incident in question came in the closing laps when Albuquerque clashed with Porsche’s Mathieu Jaminet while battling for the lead. It cost the team valuable points, though Albuequeque and his full-season teammate Ricky Taylor are just 10 points back from the drivers in the Action Express Cadillac that went on to win the 12 Hours.

It’s clear everyone involved wants to put the incident behind them. Albuquerque says that going forward there are no hard feelings between Wayne Taylor Racing and the Penske Porsche team.

“Risk management is all about what you have to lose and what you have to gain,” he explained. “Lately, I have been aggressive because I’ve been in situations where there was not a lot to lose.

There are no hard feelings, let’s move on

“Obviously in Sebring, I really wanted to win that race, we were looking good and in my mind, at that speed, the gap was there. When the spot is there, everyone needs to play along, you need to go, it’s natural, I’m sure Seb (Bourdais), Ranger (van Der Zande) and (Felipe) Nasr are the same. You get two-tenths to think about it and go for it or not, especially at high speed and you just dive.

“When you look again it’s easier to react and say what you should have done. He (Jaminet) went to the right, then to the left when I was already there. We need to share the guilt, maybe I was optimistic but that that stage of the race the spot was there, the track is narrow and things happen. Unfortunately, he didn’t see me, and there was nothing we could do.

“It’s racing and it’s important to say that it happened, and there are no hard feelings, let’s move on.”

The Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach is set to start at 17:05 local time on Saturday, April 15th.

Featured image courtesy of Brian Cleary/Wayne Taylor Racing