I was in California all last week to prepare for all the events around the 35th Annual Long Beach Grand Prix. The course is about a 1.9 mile street course with 11 turns, and the race is 85 laps The weather for the entire week could not have been better. I really enjoyed the week at such a great track that I had gone to many times as a spectator with my godfather Paul Newman and my dad. Since it is the closest track to Los Angeles, I considered this my home track.


Practice was a long process of testing and adjustments. After the second practice, Honda asked us to swap out the entire engine for a new one. This was in addition to the crew's changes to the gearbox, springs and brakes!

Learning these new style of cars is something that is very challenging. I am fortunate to have Al Unser Jr available to help coach me on the IndyCars and this challenging track. (Al Unser Jr is the six-time Long Beach Grand Prix Champion).



We got our race car up to speed a lot faster than we had for the St Petersburg race. We qualified 21st of 23 entries. The track was extremely rough and steering this track was much tougher than St. Petersburg. By making mechanical adjustments and working hard on my driving, we were able to run some very competitive times during the race. By the end of the race we ended up in 17th position, ahead of many very experienced drivers and teams, so we were very pleased with this.

During the race I went off the track on turn 9, which cost us a lap and otherwise would have resulted in a 14th place finish. But overall for the weekend if that was the biggest mistake I made as a rookie who never have driven these cars in such a competitive series with the world's best drivers, then I am pleased!

Live Free and Fast,

Stanton