Speaker 1: Every year in long beach, California, 1.98, six miles of the streets around the convention center are turned into racetrack for the long beach grand Prix. Now we can't drive an actual race car. It speeds up to 190 miles per hour on the course itself, but we can throw our very own Tim Stevens into a simulator and me into Alexis it's 500 and see just how fast it is for regular cars and how fast it is for the big guns. Starting line is in the middle of east [00:00:30] shoreline drive at marina green park, heading to the first lefty onto aquarium way, go around the traffic circle and to a right hand turn. And then another right-hander back onto west shoreline drive truck on down until south pine avenue in Haal Loui, then a right onto east sea sideway. The next right takes drivers through a parking lot with a bit of a left hand sweeper leading to a hairpin, right? Putting the cars back on east shoreline drive and across the finish line.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna [00:01:00] show you what the course is like on the regular everyday Workday and go, all right, turning left on aquarium way and I'm coming into a traffic circle again. I think that the cars are gonna go to the left. Uh, I'm not in Britain, so I'm gonna go around here to the right, taking a right hand, turn on this little access road here, and then I'm gonna go right back to shoreline drive. Ooh, I got a green light perfection, [00:01:30] but I'm trying to keep it to the speed limit it. All right on shoreline drive, going straight passing through aquarium way, taking a left on pine.
Speaker 1: All right. Now we're cruising up past the long beach convention center and we are gonna take this small-ish little road here. Seaside way. You can actually see the little, uh, red and white Stripe that they've got set up on the road already. [00:02:00] All right. So now I'm kind of in between the convent center and it looks like a hotel. And then according to my map, uh, I'm gonna be going straight. I'm gonna hang a right. And then that should put me back onto sea sideway and wait, what? Oh my gosh. I can't get through it's just for race cars, crap. Okay. Well now I gotta figure out how to get it around, I guess. [00:02:30] All right. Now we are back on shoreline. Looks like gonna join back up with racecourse right here. And now we are on our way to the finish line, uh, finish line right there. That was the finish line. Let's see how fast Tim can do it in the simulator. And I'm gonna take you for a
Speaker 2: Lap in this simulator [00:03:00] to show you what the drivers are going to see as they're driving around this course, when it is fully closed. So let's start my engines and get going here in my to Laura IndyCar. Now I have the full course to myself, no traffic to worry about as I go out and pull out of the pits here, the pits come out at the end of the front straight, which really isn't all that straight at all. It curves around to the right, and as the drivers come down to the breaking point here, they're gonna be going upwards of 190 miles an hour, which is pretty quick for any street. Of course, this one helps since it's all been closed out, breaking somewhere between the [00:03:30] 300 and the 400 markers here into a hard first or second gear. Lefthander you gotta be careful here because the wall's kind of creep up on you on the right, which is kind of a common theme for this.
Speaker 2: We got a quick left right left here as we go around the dancing purposes on the fountain here, and then a quick spurt of acceleration for your back, hard on the brakes for a tight, righthander be careful of the curbs here because you catch too much of those with kick the car to the left, and you'll be making more marks on the tire wall here. This is the trickiest corner of all for me, fast righthander of that's up [00:04:00] over a crest. So if you catch too much curbs or get on the power too early, your car's are gonna wanna spin around and that will not help your left time at all. Nice little bit of acceleration here. As we go into a downhill lefthander this is a fast corner leading on to the widest part of the course outside of the convention center. Here, you wanna take advantage of all the width of the track to go full over the right, and then back to the left again, get as much speed as you can, and a nice line.
Speaker 2: Here's what we take this flowing right hand or into a very narrow part of the course. This is my favorite part of the course, because [00:04:30] we've got so many pedestrian bridges as we go past the performing arts center, all these trees and everything else here gives you a really good sensation of speed through one of the quickest parts of the course, upwards of 150 miles an hour here, hard on the brakes into this, to the very technical part of the course. There's this double apex left hander here that you're tempted to carry a little too much speed into, but you've gotta be careful because you have the tightest corner on this track. And indeed one of the tightest corners of the entire indie car season right here, a hairpin righthander that is very important in this course [00:05:00] because it leaves you onto the front.
Speaker 1: Now don't go thinking that because Tim put down a one minute, 12 lap time. You can do the same. This is a grand pre track for just one weekend a year catch the long beach grand pre September 24th through 26. It's three full days of racing on one killer track.
