By alley - Apr 15, 2016, 7:37 PM ET

IMSA: Ford GT team fights through fire in practice

The cartoon anvil fell on the brand-new Ford Chip Ganassi Racing GT program for the third time in three events when the No. 67 Ford caught fire during opening practice at Long Beach.

The factory team has been a lightning rod for misfortune in 2016: A variety of breakages and electrical gremlins stifled FCGR's debut at Daytona; Sebring was less than kind after a massive impact took one of its cars out of contention; and opening practice on the streets of Long Beach delivered another blow as driver Richard Westbrook bailed out from the twin-turbo V6-powered coupe when the engine bay went up in flames at Turn 1. The cause of the blaze was traced to a leaking fuel fitting.

The team has opted to miss qualifying for IMSA's BUBBA burger Sports Car Grand Prix at Long Beach to ensure the No. 67 was fully prepared to take part in the race, and according to team manager Mike O'Gara, FCGR's veteran sports car mechanics have remained positive throughout each ordeal.

"Everybody's good right now; people are jumping in, we have people helping from the [No.] 66 car helping out and we're going to make sure it's cleaned up and ready to go racing," he told RACER. "We're lucky to have the people we do. We were planning to go do a little team building exercise at [Sarah Fisher's] go-kart track but ran out of time, so we'll make sure we do that next week as a thank you to everyone."

"I'm a firm believer that if you do the right things, good things will happen," he continued. "The Corvette guys came down and offered whatever they could. That's the cool thing about this paddock; you don't get that kind of support from the teams you're racing against elsewhere. I borrowed some stuff from the Porsche guys, and it's so cool because they all want to race us, so they're coming over to make sure we're out there with them."

O'Gara hopes the FCGR team can leave the bad luck behind and start to capture the results the Blue Oval and its many fans want to see from the curvy GTs.

"Our first year in Grand-Am wasn't stellar, and we had some growing pains, and here now, we're learning every day and getting better every day," he said.

The sister No. 66 Ford GT with drivers Joey Hand and Dirk Muller will represent the team in qualifying which takes place from 5-6:30 p.m. PT.