You will discover Roscoe’s Home of Rooster and Waffles situated two blocks off the Lengthy Seashore Grand Prix’s landmark Flip 11 hairpin nook. Not solely is Southern California’s candy and savory cultural tentpole a longstanding fixture in films, songs and tv, but it surely additionally serves as a well-liked vacation spot for post-race victory celebrations — as 2021 IndyCar champion Alex Palou confirmed.

Due to @OfficialRoscoes for the scrumptious meal! 😋@AlexPalou | @IndyCar pic.twitter.com/5HxRRJpBsv

— Chip Ganassi Racing (@CGRTeams) September 27, 2021

In contrast to Components One’s marquee road race, Lengthy Seashore is not nestled into the coastal hills of the French Riviera and it is positively missing in opulent casinos and black-tie affairs. Ours is geared extra towards the surfers and tailgate crowd.

On the annual gathering on the streets of Lengthy Seashore, we have got fried hen, Patron, taco vehicles, sand, palm bushes, flip-flops, bands, drifting, IndyCar, IMSA’s sports activities automotive championship and historic F1 vehicles in probably the most American of occasions. Get to mid-April, and it is a whole week filled with love and revelry for motor racing as our world turns its consideration towards Shoreline Drive and the Pacific Ocean, a practice that started with the inaugural Lengthy Seashore GP in 1975.

“For me, it’s my Monaco,” McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown tells ESPN. “I am from L.A. The primary-ever race I went to was the 1981 [Long Beach] Grand Prix and I nonetheless have the race program. I keep in mind it prefer it was yesterday. I used to be like, ‘There’s Mario Andretti!’ At one Lengthy Seashore Grand Prix, I completely fell in love with racing.”

In the identical means the Tremendous Bowl and World Cup dwell on bucket lists, Lengthy Seashore is a worthy addition to the roster of occasions that have to be skilled at the least as soon as in a sports activities fan’s life.

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Run on a winding collection of metropolis streets, vehicles weave round a manicured mattress of roses that encompass a water fountain that includes a statue of a dolphin. Drivers streak previous a movie show and a Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Nearing 180 mph, they blast by means of the shadows behind the Lengthy Seashore Conference Middle earlier than rising into daylight and sky-high condo buildings.

After which they navigate a tough advanced that terminates on the aforementioned Flip 11 hairpin the place collisions are commonplace. If drivers can escape being rear-ended or speared within the aspect, although, it is an opportunity to rocket down Shoreline and a beachfront flirtation with 200 mph with the titanic Queen Mary in sight because it sits docked on the adjoining harbor.

Freed from pretense and self-importance, ticket patrons can rise up near the vehicles and drivers within the IndyCar and IMSA paddocks, pose for images, get autographs, and accomplish that for the worth of fine seats at a Main League Baseball sport. Doing the identical at one of many three American F1 races would require mortgaging the home, and you continue to will not get inside 200 toes of Max Verstappen or his Purple Bull RB19. Beer and different spirits circulate freely on this motorized model of Spring Break.

Lengthy Seashore additionally ranks because the second most essential cease on the IndyCar tour.

“That is the forty eighth 12 months of the Lengthy Seashore Grand Prix, which is simply unimaginable,” says 1986 Indy 500 winner and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing IndyCar workforce proprietor Bobby Rahal. “That is numerous time, and it is clearly probably the most profitable road course in North America that we have ever had, whether or not it was Components One within the earlier days or IndyCar, it is turn into a tremendous occasion that solely comes second to the Indianapolis 500 for us on the calendar.”

Rahal notes one other considered one of Lengthy Seashore’s distinctive attributes: a motor racing star maker. Simply as goals run wildly unabated half-hour north in Hollywood as actors try to get seen by brokers and producers, a robust run in considered one of Lengthy Seashore’s help races can change a driver’s life.

ONE WEEK TILL RACE WEEKEND😝 Retweet if we’ll see you there!🎉 pic.twitter.com/L46Azw8k4N

— Acura Grand Prix of Lengthy Seashore (@GPLongBeach) April 7, 2023

“My first occasion there was in ’77 and I noticed Mario Andretti win, which in fact was very talked-about,” Rahal says. “After which then I went again in ’78 to compete within the Components Atlantic race, and from the drive I put in there, I received the journey with Walter Wolf in Components 3, which led to racing for him in Components One on the finish of that 12 months, so Lengthy Seashore has at all times had one thing further particular that makes folks sit up and concentrate like nearly no different race we go to.”

Having used Lengthy Seashore as an expert springboard that led to F1, Rahal returned to the U.S., and by 1984, made his first IndyCar begin on the venue that remodeled his profession. He’d go on to race 15 occasions at Lengthy Seashore, and regardless of his huge Indy 500 victory and securing three IndyCar championships earlier than retiring on the finish of the 1998 season, 4 runner-up finishes on the road circuit are recalled as we speak like salt in a wound of unfulfillment.

“I’ve at all times actually simply liked Lengthy Seashore, however boy, there’s disappointments from by no means having gained it,” Rahal provides. “Completed second various occasions, and one of the best 12 months, the 12 months I used to be gonna win it, was ’95 when the gearbox broke on the entrance straight with about eight laps to go. And that was that. Needed it badly, but it surely’s the one which received away.

“It is all the pieces that is good about motorsport, and naturally, being in Southern California, it could not be in a greater spot. Through the years, I’ve at all times marveled about because the race received larger and greater, Lengthy Seashore received higher and higher. And so it is actually been an awesome partnership between motorsports and the town. Going again there annually, for nearly all people I do know, it is one thing that everyone actually appears to be like ahead to and each workforce needs to win. You wish to win all of them, however profitable Lengthy Seashore is one no person forgets.”

Lengthy Seashore is not reserved as a bucket listing merchandise for followers. Sunday’s 85-lap contest is one other alternative for many who’ve come up quick or by no means had the prospect to win the massive race to settle a rating.

“It is massively iconic, my hometown race,” says Brown, who raced on the undercard within the early Nineteen Nineties when he dreamt of driving for a similar sort of groups he runs as we speak. “Unbelievable historical past between Components One and IndyCar, and I really advised our [IndyCar] drivers that there are two races I actually wish to win: Indianapolis and Lengthy Seashore.

“Lengthy Seashore is the Monte Carlo of IndyCar racing, and it is at all times been that solution to me. You realize, I used to be on the Lengthy Seashore Grand Prix as a substitute of the Russian [F1] Grand Prix a number of years in the past, the one Lando [Norris] nearly gained for us, as a result of I needed to decide which race to attend, and needed to be at Lengthy Seashore. And simply the sound within the streets … Once you pull up in your automotive off the freeway, you possibly can simply hear the IndyCars from a mile away. It is received such an awesome vibe to it. So iconic.”