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LBGP: No Longer A Girl, She Ages Into Majesty

With high-rise buildings as the backdrop, Sebastien Bourdais shown in action in turn 11. [Joe Jennings Photo]

There is a lot to like about the “Roar on the Shore”.

There’s car racing, there’s pretty girls, the weather is fine….

Now presenting, in its 41st year, the Long Beach Grand Prix, the race most likely to turn your head and break your heart if you let it.

The LBGP tempts you this year with an IndyCar event, a sports car event, an Indy Lights event, a round of the Pirelli World Challenge. Dolloped on top of that is Formula Drift, and a bunch of trucks running around way too fast on city streets for my liking.

Then there’s the Pro-Am race, an unpredictable wild-mouse ride that pits local celebrities (and in this locale that means TV and movie stars) against pros in spec Toyotas for about thirty minutes of tortured asphalt and screaming rubber free-for-all.

When a gal gets over forty she worries about her looks fading, about her popularity waning. Usually at this point in her life she is on the hunt for a good man to keep her warm and happy on the other side of the hill.

This very, very popular and now 41-year old race venue brings out the stars in the sky and on the runway. If there are any visible signs of her age impeding her desirability they are not readily seen.

On Thursday several big names from IndyCar got dressed up and went to the new movie “Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman”. Michael Andretti, Sebastien Bourdais, Justin Wilson, Oriol Servia and Graham Rahal attended the premiere.

Car nut Adam Carolla is the producer. You may remember him from a much ballyhooed kids movie starring a rat who became a great French chef in “Ratatouille”. Yes, Carolla’s voice is that of “the little chef”.

Tony Kanaan and Sage Karam were in the “American Idol” audience Wednesday night. Carlos Munoz sat in “the chair”, the one that whirls around to face the prospective next Barbra Streisand on the talent show “The Voice,”

Dax Shepard (“Parenthood”) and Josh Morrow (“The Young and the Restless”) were passengers aboard the two-seater.

And of course the weather was luxuriously right. “I thought the crowd today was great but with this weather, why wouldn’t it be?” said Graham Rahal.

Some angst may arise occasionally because the LBGP has never been one to settle in for a long run on the boards with any singular suitor.

There was a stint with Champ Car running from the mid 90’s until the merger. She was the jewel in the crown of the series…its beautiful girl. She was so revered that the LBGP opened up the season from 2004 onward.

There were the turbocharged Formula 1 years, from 1976 through 1983. Huge crowds for an F1 venue, two hundred thousand and more, jammed in for this American version of Monaco.

Befitting a choosy mistress the LBGP never permitted a turbo-engined car to win her. She frustrated the stars by perpetually advancing cars very low on the grid to the top and keeping them there.

In her last dance as an F1 race John Watson in his McLaren/Ford started 22nd of 26 cars and won.

Two weeks ago this circuit (with a few modifications) hosted Formula E, an electric-powered open-wheel racing series from Europe. Admission was free.

“The free admission will afford everyone the opportunity to come out and witness this historic and unique event,” Jim Michaelian, president of the Grand Prix Assn. of Long Beach, said in a statement.

The LBGP was party to the infamous “split-weekend” race in 2008 where the merging Champ Car and IndyCar series went west and even further west to conduct separate events.

She gets her way, it seems.

Chris Pook, the original promoter of the Long Beach Grand Prix openly lobbied a year ago for the race to return to Formula One.

“I’m not knocking the IndyCar race, but Formula One will bring the economic value the city enjoys,” Pook told the Long Beach Press Telegram. “We wouldn’t be talking about this if it wasn’t financially successful.”

If not for a three-year extension of its contract with IndyCar the race’s legal obligations to continue with the series would have ended following this year’s race.

The city council voted 8-0 to extend the contract. A slew of penalties to discourage the association from canceling a race or failing to meet the terms of the contract were added.

For now she, the Long Beach Grand Prix, resides in the house of IndyCar. She holds a pre-eminent spot second only to the King of all motorsports events the Indianapolis 500.

For now she seems content to be hugely successful, still popular and as beautiful as ever.

For now, her wanderlust is tempered by satisfaction.

But will it last?

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