Ahead of Saturday’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, Acura topped the close competition on display throughout a busy day of IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship action.
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Nick Yelloly put Acura in the best possible position to earn the manufacturer’s first win in the flagship Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class in its ‘home’ race. Yelloly lapped the 1.968-mile Long Beach street course in 1 minute, 11.626 seconds (98.913 mph) in the No. 93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing w/Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06 to claim the Motul Pole Award for Saturday’s 100-minute contest, the first sprint race of the 2026 WeatherTech Championship season.
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An Acura ARX-06 set the GTP track record and started from pole position at Long Beach in 2023, the first year for the revived GTP class. But Acura, which has U.S. headquarters in nearby Torrance, hasn’t claimed victory in the top sports car class of the popular Southern California festival that it has supported as title sponsor since 2019. Acura has won at Long Beach before, but it’s been since 2009 in the American Le Mans Series.
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Yelloly was the first driver to break the 1:12 barrier in Friday’s 15-minute qualifying session, and he was consistently able to string together fast laps culminating in his pole-winning effort. But it was a close-run thing, because Marco Wittmann got within 0.030 seconds with his last lap of 1:11.656 (98.872 mph) in the No. 25 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8.
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Louis Deletraz also improved on his final lap in the No. 40 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac V-Series.R to 1:11.833 (98.628 mph) to move up to third as four manufacturers (Acura, BMW, Cadillac, and Porsche) were represented in the top five.