First Sprint race of the year for the Heart of Racing GTD crews as IMSA visits Long Beach California

In terms of recent ones, this weekend is a relatively quiet one for us with just one event (as far as we are aware anyway) taking place with an Aston Martin Racing Partner or customer team representation.

That happens to be the third round of the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship around the street circuit layout of Long Beach California as the series again supports the IndyCar Series with the Heart of Racing entering two of the AMR Vantage GTD’s into the first Sprint race of the season.

Having already raced at both Daytona and Sebring with little to no success so far, a good result for their GTD and GTD Pro crews is a must to help alleviate the pain and disappointment of the race ending technical issues of Sebring and the accident damage of Daytona.

Being a shorter sprint race of just 100 minutes, that requires the driving services of just two per car as 2021 IMSA Sprint Champion Roman De Angelis pairs up with AMR factory driver Maxime Martin in GTD and Ross Gunn and Alex Riberas battle things out in GTD Pro.

Having run two cars at the corresponding round last season, the team do at least have double data going into the round having only ran with the #23 car for the bulk of last season.

A smaller the previous entry list of just 27 cars sees the teams #23 GTD Pro class entry compete in a field of just six cars and their #27 GTD class car in a field of fifteen. Whatever happens, it’ll be all fingers crossed for the team this weekend.

Photo credits - Team