A short week after the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the teams and drivers of the Champ Car Atlantic series were back racing on the streets of Long Beach California.
Over 90,000 fans attended Sunday’s race through the picturesque streets of Long Beach. The circuit is just under 2 miles, on the city streets of this suburban city within greater Los Angeles.
One of the biggest stars of the event was surely Chandler Team Jensen driver Frankie Muniz. Long Beach is effectively Frankie’s home race, since he lives in nearby Hollywood California. Few people remember that Frankie is only in his 14th month driving any type of race car, so that he set competitive times in Long Beach within 1.8 seconds of the race leader was truly a major achievement for Muniz. Finishing the race in an eventual 19th position on the lead lap was a good result, and Muniz stated “I was very careful in the race mostly because I just wanted to finish. It was disappointing to get crashed out at Las Vegas last weekend, and this weekend I wanted to prove to myself that I could drive the full one hour race. I accomplished that objective, and next week in Houston we will push quite a lot harder to move up the grid.”
Dominick Muermans unfortunately was blocked in Saturday qualifying, which resulted in a starting position much lower than what was his true speed at the Long Beach circuit. Before crashing in Saturday practice, Dominick had posted the 18th fastest time, and looked set to repeat a mid-pack qualifying effort on Saturday afternoon before being blocked badly by a slower car. In the race, Dominick moved up relatively quickly to 17th position, but was caught up in an accident on a re-start, and had to pit for a new wing. Dominick lost a lap in the incident, and finished a disappointing 23rd.
Tom Sutherland, driving the #2 ClickAway Team Jensen car, also made contact in the race causing significant damage to his front wing. Tom soldiered on to finish 14th, and to collect more valuable points in the championship standing. On Saturday, Tom did show his competitiveness, clocking at time on his final qualifying lap that would have been good for a P6 starting position if the red flag had not disallowed the lap. For sure this is a good sign that it’s only a matter of time before Tom runs high up in the top 10.
For more details, contact Jensen MotorSport at team@jensenmotorsport.com
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