2017 BUBBA Burger Sports Car Grand Prix
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The 2017 BUBBA Burger Sports Car Grand Prix was an International Motor Sports Association (IMSA)-sanctioned sports car race held on the Long Beach Street Circuit in California, United States, on April 8, 2017 as part of the Long Beach Grand Prix event weekend. The race was the third of twelve scheduled rounds of the 2017 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, and was held for the Prototype, Grand Touring Le Mans (GTLM) and Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) categories. The race was the shortest of the 2017 WeatherTech Championship calendar.
Jordan Taylor and Ricky Taylor won an incident packed race in their No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R to take their third win in the opening three races of the championship. The Nissan Onroak DPi of Scott Sharp and Ryan Dalziel and the Mazda RT24-P of Tristan Nunez and Jonathan Bomarito completing the podium. Corvette Racing's Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner won in the GTLM class driving a Chevrolet Corvette C7.R while the Riley Motorsports – WeatherTech Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Cooper MacNeil and Gunnar Jeannette won in the GTD category.
Three GTD cars who crashed into the wall on the outside of the turn eleven hairpin on the last lap caused chaos for a number of vehicles as it partially blocked the track. The biggest loser was the No. 3 Chevrolet Corvette of Jan Magnussen and Antonio García. They had been leading the GTLM class but their path through the hairpin was blocked and they dropped from sixth outright and first in class to tenth outright and fifth in class, handing the class win to their teammates. Although the passing had happened under yellow flag conditions, IMSA officials took the view, as they had done earlier in the race when a crash at the hairpin partially blocked the track, that the passing was done to avoid completely blocking the track and no penalties were handed out.