2010 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach


The 2010 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach was the fourth round of the 2010 IndyCar Series season, and took place on April 18, 2010. The race was contested over 85 laps of the street course in Long Beach, California, and was telecast by Versus in the United States. The race also marked the 25th consecutive year of Toyota's sponsorship of the Grand Prix of Long Beach, one of the longest-running active sponsorships of a motor race in North America.

Report

Background

Practice and qualifying

Race

The 27th edition of the Grand Prix of Long Beach got underway at 1:15 p.m. PDT. Points leader Will Power, starting on the pole for the third consecutive race led into the first turn. Justin Wilson attempted to go down the inside of Ryan Hunter-Reay, the man who started alongside Power on the front row, but he eventually settled into third spot. Tony Kanaan moved into fourth having got around both Hélio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe at the start. The rest of the field got by the first turn without incident, usually uncommon in Long Beach. In the early laps of the race, Hunter-Reay stayed within a second of race leader Power, and Wilson kept a watching brief on the lead duo around 2 seconds behind Hunter-Reay. Fourth placed Kanaan was unable to keep up with the lead trio, but was able to keep Castroneves at arm's length.
This status quo was maintained till lap 17 when, coming off turn 11, race leader Power hit the pit lane speed limiter button by mistake. Both Hunter-Reay and Wilson took advantage of the error to go past, and Power got demoted to third by the time he had corrected it. On the next lap, Ryan Briscoe, who had spent most of the first stint holding off Scott Dixon, got around teammate Castroneves at turn 9 and left the latter to hold off the New Zealander.
The first round of pitstops took place between lap 25 and lap 30 and Hunter-Reay comfortably kept the lead ahead of Wilson and Power. Kanaan, in fourth, was now 15 seconds behind the leader, and fifth-placed Briscoe once again found himself harassed by Scott Dixon after the latter swapped places with Castroneves during the pit stops. Race leader Hunter-Reay began to catch lapped traffic at around the half-way mark, but maintained a lead of around 2–3 seconds over Wilson who in turn had Power 4–5 seconds behind him, the gaps fluctuating due to the traffic.
On lap 53, just a few corners after Hunter-Reay had got around Alex Lloyd to put him a lap down, Wilson also tried to get by him. However, he wasn't close enough and there was contact between the two, which left Wilson with a damaged front wing. He came in immediately and changed the entire nose assembly on his car, and filled his car up with fuel. However, the stop took 21 seconds and that meant that Power was able to make his second fuel stop and come out ahead of Wilson. Ryan Briscoe had a slow stop and dropped down to eighth behind Dixon, Castroneves and Mario Moraes.
The caution came out on lap 59 when Mario Romancini and Graham Rahal, both already a lap behind the leader, came together at turn 1 and ended up in the tyre barriers. This bunched the field up but importantly, Hunter-Reay had the two lapped cars of Raphael Matos and Takuma Sato between himself and second-placed Power. Thus, on the restart, Hunter-Reay had a clear run and pulled away from the field. Power struggled to get around Sato and Wilson took advantage of the situation to dive up the inside at turn 1 and take second. After his earlier incident with Lloyd, he was more cautious in dealing with the lapped cars, and by the time he had got around Matos, Hunter-Reay was over 5 seconds up the road.
Hunter-Reay managed the gap comfortably for the rest of the race and took his second career Indy Racing League win by 5.6 seconds from Wilson. Power had to make do with third ahead of Dixon and Kanaan. The top 10 was completed by Mario Moraes, Castroneves, Briscoe, Dan Wheldon and Mike Conway. Hunter-Reay's win moved him to third spot in the points standings, just 1 behind second-placed Castroneves. Points leader Power extended his lead to 42 points. Wilson moved to fourth in the points table, 4 points behind Hunter-Reay, while defending series champion Dario Franchitti dropped to sixth after his 12th-place finish.

Classification

Qualifying

PosNo.DriverTeamGroup 1Group 2Top 12Fast 6
112 Will PowerTeam Penske1:09.92701:09.54691:09.3185
237 Ryan Hunter-ReayAndretti Autosport1:09.93221:09.58151:09.7506
322 Justin WilsonDreyer & Reinbold Racing1:09.97721:09.79091:09.7939
43 Hélio CastronevesTeam Penske1:10.00551:09.74461:09.8470
56 Ryan BriscoeTeam Penske1:10.24391:09.83631:10.0255
611 Tony KanaanAndretti Autosport1:10.18561:09.76561:10.1618
777 Alex TaglianiFAZZT Race Team1:10.22281:09.8730
89 Scott DixonChip Ganassi Racing1:10.12331:09.9688
926 Marco AndrettiAndretti Autosport1:10.35941:10.1760
104 Dan WheldonPanther Racing1:10.16761:10.2574
1106 Hideki MutohNewman/Haas/Lanigan Racing1:10.04331:10.2730
1210 Dario FranchittiChip Ganassi Racing1:10.18161:10.3358
1378 Simona de Silvestro HVM Racing1:10.3722
1414 Vítor MeiraA. J. Foyt Enterprises1:10.4259
1532 Mario MoraesKV Racing Technology1:10.5093
1624 Mike ConwayDreyer & Reinbold Racing1:10.4586
178 E. J. VisoKV Racing Technology1:10.5991
182 Raphael MatosLuczo Dragon Racing de Ferran Motorsports1:10.5068
195 Takuma Sato KV Racing Technology1:10.7000
207 Danica PatrickAndretti Autosport1:10.5503
2119 Alex Lloyd Dale Coyne Racing1:10.8003
2267 Graham RahalSarah Fisher Racing1:10.7722
2334 Mario Romancini Conquest Racing1:10.9914
2436 Bertrand Baguette Conquest Racing1:11.4345
2518 Milka DunoDale Coyne RacingNo time

Race

Championship standings after the race

;Drivers' Championship standings
PosDriverPoints
1 Will Power172
2 Hélio Castroneves130
3 Ryan Hunter-Reay129
4 Justin Wilson125
5 Scott Dixon112