Stars align in ‘race of the year’ for Acura and MSR

In the build-up to this year’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, Acura Meyer Shank Racing’s Renger van der Zande expressed his desire to win this race for not only himself, but his team and manufacturer as well. “It’s the event of the year for Acura,” van der Zande said going into the week. “And we’re trying to make it happen this year.”

Thanks to a quick car, two quick drivers, and a little luck, the stars finally aligned. Van der Zande and Nick Yelloly reached the top step of the Long Beach podium, winning from pole in their No. 93 Acura ARX-06 to end a painful win drought at Long Beach for the Honda Motor Company.

“Winning the Acura Grand Prix, for Acura, as an Acura driver…I think that’s what makes it very, very special,” said the Dutchman, whose third Long Beach IMSA win feels like the sweetest of them all.

Before Saturday’s win for van der Zande and Yelloly, Honda’s last IMSA win at Long Beach came back in 2013, predating the merger of the American Le Mans Series and Grand-Am into today’s IMSA. The 2013 ALMS Long Beach race was the scene of Pickett Racing’s HPD-badged ARX-03 going back-to-back at the circuit.

And Acura, the luxury brand launched 40 years ago by Honda in the United States, hadn’t won since 2009 when Simon Pagenaud and the late Gil de Ferran won together in their ARX-02.

“We got brought to this program almost to win this one, I would say,” van der Zande said of himself and Yelloly, who finally got it done to cap off the two-day IMSA weekend.

The win got the No. 93 Acura’s season back on track after two disappointing results to start the 2026 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season – fifth at Daytona, sixth at Sebring, races filled with regrettable misfortunes and frustration over Porsche Penske Motorsport’s dominance becoming hard to constrain.

Together, van der Zande and Yelloly led 53 out of the race’s 70 laps, including the last 38 laps. Of course, it wasn’t all as straightforward as it could have appeared at a glance.

“I mean, it was all relatively smooth sailing until it wasn’t,” joked Yelloly, a first-time winner at Long Beach. He coughed up the lead early on in the race when negotiating slower GTD traffic. As Orey Fidani and his 13 Autosport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R pulled to the left, Yelloly got stuck behind the Corvette, which allowed Jack Aitken in the No. 31 Cadillac Whelen V-Series.R to pass him on the right.

“I went one way, thinking the guy had seen me, and he clearly hadn’t. I think he panicked when he’d seen Jack go to the left a little bit and slammed the brakes. So I gave him a little nudge, and unfortunately, that wasn’t what we’d planned on doing,” admitted Yelloly.

“I just tried to then stay as close as I could with quite a big fuel target, and see how it played out in the pit stops.”

Their good fortune came in the form of a mad battle between the WRT BMW of Philipp Eng and the JDC-Miller MotorSports Porsche of Laurin Heinrich, which ended with Eng in the turn eight tire barrier, and a full course yellow that came out just at the right time, as Yelloly had already dove into pit lane for the No. 93 Acura’s only routine pit stop.

The team's pit stop was timed to perfection. Michael Levitt/IMSA

“Obviously, we fell on the right side of that yellow, which was great for us. And then, yeah, it was a nail-biting finish, but I knew the man behind the wheel could do the job,” he added, gesturing towards his co-driver.

The job wasn’t done after van der Zande cycled to the front of the GTP field, though, as Aitken’s co-driver Frederik Vesti kept him honest towards the end. Four times, van der Zande needed a good restart to keep Vesti and his red Cadillac in the rear view.

“I think it was a great battle, but for sure, they had a bit of an upper hand on the pace,” van der Zande said. “I had to keep the rears (tires) alive a little bit. Our car generally has a bit of oversteer and more tire degradation on the rear than the other brands have. So I think we seem to be very, very fast in qualifying and then lack a bit of racing pace.”

It meant that van der Zande, a man that’s never been shy of taking calculated risks to win in IMSA, had to do the same thing to keep the red Cadillac from moving back out into the lead. “I think the car came alive a little bit just before the traffic, I kind of was managing the pace, just feeling where the grip was and all that. I knew my time in traffic where I could make a gap – and it happened like that,” he recalled.

“You have to be lucky in a way, for sure. But I think the risks I took in traffic was high to get a gap. When I was through traffic, the yellow came, so it was not very good. And then yellow, after yellow, after yellow!

“I think the restarts were quite easy, I would say, to maintain the front. But then when the No. 31 got the tire temperatures in the car, that’s when I needed to worry a little. I was managing it, but on a street track, it’s so hard to overtake.”

Of course, in telling the story of this race, it’s hard to ignore the revelation on Friday that Acura’s future in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is doubtful after 2026. But regardless of whether or not this was the last chance for Acura Meyer Shank Racing to win the IMSA race at Long Beach, neither of the winning drivers seemed to be bothered with the speculation that’s run rampant over the last 48 hours. Instead, they’re reveling in the moment, enjoying a win that’s put them back on course to contend for a championship with six races left for the GTP class.

“Winning races is the best solution to a lot of things,” van der Zande said in response to a question about the team’s future. “And yeah, we’re just having the time of our life. My family is here. Nick is a great teammate.

“We have a great team, and we’re trying to win races…and that’s what we just did. So (we’re) enjoying the moment a lot!” And it’s a moment of joy that everyone has earned in a time when nothing seems certain.