Two North American street races, one built on a promoter's Monaco dream and one that has run since 1967, and how each survived.
The Long Beach Grand Prix began in 1975, ran as a Formula One race from 1976 to 1983, then moved to CART in 1984 and IndyCar in 2009. Trois-Rivieres, in Quebec, has staged its Grand Prix since 1967 and calls itself North America's longest-running street race.
When the Long Beach Grand Prix was a Formula One race, its promoter was gambling a possible profit of $100,000 against a budget of $6 million to $7 million. One poor weekend could have bankrupted the event. That arithmetic pushed Chris Pook to move the race to the Indy car world in 1984, and the decision turned a risky street party into the longest-running major street circuit race in North America. Far to the north, in Quebec, another street race has been running even longer on its own terms.
How did the Long Beach Grand Prix history begin?
Pook was a former travel agent from England who had watched the Monaco Grand Prix and decided that the same idea could work in Southern California. He picked Long Beach, about 25 miles (40 km) south of downtown Los Angeles, and laid out a waterfront circuit on city streets near the Port of Long Beach. At the time the city was mostly a depressed industrial port, yet the first event, a Formula 5000 race in September 1975, drew 30,000 fans.
The step up came in 1976, when the race became the United States Grand Prix West and moved to March or April. For a while America had two grands prix a year, because the eastern race at Watkins Glen was sliding. Long Beach gained a reputation for being demanding and hard on equipment, but it rose quickly all the same, helped by pleasant weather, a picturesque setting and the closeness of Los Angeles and Hollywood. When Watkins Glen left the Formula One calendar after 1980, Long Beach carried even more weight.
The money never worked, though. The races were good and the crowds strong, but the budget was too heavy for the margin, and Pook persuaded city leaders to back a switch to CART Indy cars beginning in 1984. The change worked. The event grew in prestige on the Indy car circuit and is credited with sparking the city's revival, with dilapidated and condemned buildings giving way to high-rise hotels and tourist attractions.
| Era | Years | Series | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beginning | 1975 | Formula 5000 | September race, 30,000 fans |
| Formula One | 1976 to 1983 | United States Grand Prix West | Rough on equipment, financially shaky |
| CART and Champ Car | 1984 to 2008 | CART, then Champ Car World Series | 2008 was the last Champ Car race |
| IndyCar | 2009 onward | Unified IndyCar Series | Usually held in April |
One poor weekend could have bankrupted the event.
What happened in the early Long Beach Indy car races?
The first CART race, in 1984, belonged to Mario Andretti, the 1977 winner. He took pole, led from the start and was in front for all 112 laps, with only Geoff Brabham finishing on the lead lap, second, on seven cylinders. Emerson Fittipaldi, a two-time world champion, made his CART debut and finished fourth.
A year later Andretti tried to make the race on a single pit stop. He built a lead of more than ten seconds, pitted on lap 44 and turned down his turbo boost to save fuel. Danny Sullivan, who had stopped on lap 37, charged through traffic, took the lead on lap 59 and pulled out a 15-second gap. Then Sullivan ran out of fuel on lap 79, coasted into the pits and handed the lead back. Andretti won his second straight Long Beach race, while Sullivan ran dry again on the last lap and finished third.
The 1986 race gave the Andretti family another winner. Michael Andretti took his first CART victory, beating Al Unser Jr. by 0.380 seconds after a frantic final 25 laps. On lap 80 the pair came up on the lapped car of Roberto Moreno, and as Michael tried to pass it at the end of the back stretch he locked his brakes, the cars almost touching wheels, while Unser dived below both. Michael held on into the hairpin and the cars stayed nose to tail to the flag.
Mario led all 95 laps in 1987 for his third CART win there, and the victory was the first for the Ilmor-Chevy Indy V-8 engine in Indy car racing. Fittipaldi, his only real rival, retired on lap 52 with a burned piston after wastegate trouble. In 1988 Unser Jr. finally broke the family run. A cross-threaded lug nut dropped him to sixth at his first stop, but he took the lead for good on lap 42 and led 72 of the 95 laps. The next year he again led 72 of the first 74 laps before Mario Andretti came out of the final stops in front on lap 78, with Unser second and Michael a distant third, as the lapped Tom Sneva came into view.
The race has been a place to start a career. First Indy or Champ Car wins at Long Beach went to Michael Andretti, Paul Tracy, Juan Pablo Montoya, Mike Conway, Takuma Sato and Kyle Kirkwood. Michael Andretti's first win came there in 1986, and his 42nd and last followed in 2002. James Hinchcliffe won his first Indy Lights race at Long Beach in 2010 and an IndyCar race in 2017. Katherine Legge won the 2005 Atlantic support race at her first attempt in the series, the first woman to take a developmental open-wheel victory in North America.
How did the Long Beach Grand Prix survive the split, the pandemic and a sale?
The 2008 race sits at the end of a long argument. As Champ Car and the IRL IndyCar Series negotiated unification, a date clash arose between Twin Ring Motegi on 19 April and Long Beach on 20 April, and neither side could move. The compromise was a split weekend: existing IRL teams raced in Japan and the former Champ Car teams stayed at Long Beach, with equal points for the 2008 championship. The Long Beach field ran Panoz DP01 cars and the race was billed as the final Champ Car event. From 2009 it was a normal IndyCar round.
The event is also a rare long-term sponsor story. Toyota backed the race from its first year and was title sponsor from 1980 to 2018, a stretch believed to be the longest unbroken sports sponsorship in the United States. Acura has held the naming rights since 2019. By the 2017 race the event had reached its 43rd running and its 34th in a row as an IndyCar event.
COVID-19 broke the run. The 2020 race was cancelled when the city banned events of more than 250 people, and in 2021 it moved from April to 26 September as the season finale. The Delta variant raised fears that it would be cancelled or capped, but the promoters and the city agreed safety measures and rapid testing, and it went ahead at full capacity. The race went back to April for 2022.
Ownership shifted in 2024. On 28 March it was announced that Gerald Forsythe, a former Champ Car owner, would buy the 50% stake in the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach held by the estate of Kevin Kalkhoven, giving him full ownership. Later that year Penske Entertainment, the owner of the IndyCar Series, acquired the race from Forsythe.
There have been alternatives along the way. In 2014 the city signed a contract through 2018, with options to 2020, and in 2016 the city council issued a request for proposals that opened the door to a return to Formula One as early as 2019. After a study, the switch was rejected in August 2017, and the council voted unanimously to stay with the IndyCar Series.
What else has Long Beach hosted besides Indy cars?
The support card has been broad. Pirelli World Challenge, Trans-Am, Formula D and Stadium Super Trucks have all appeared, alongside Indy Lights, IMSA, Atlantics and the Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race. Drifting arrived in 2005 as a Formula D demonstration, and since 2006 the series has run the first round of its pro season on Turns 9 to 11 the weekend before the Grand Prix. The Motegi Super Drift Challenge joined in 2013 on the same corners, and it is the only event of the Grand Prix weekend run at night, under floodlights.
The 1997 North American Touring Car Championship opened at Long Beach, with Neil Crompton winning in a Honda Accord. Formula E raced on a modified track, 2.1 km (1.3 mi) with seven turns, and the first event had free admission. It returned in 2016 and was not renewed for the third season in 2017. The weekend regularly draws 200,000 people or more, making it the single largest event in the city, and a Long Beach Motorsports Walk of Fame, created in 2006, honours past winners and key contributors.
Circuit Trois-Rivieres: a street race through a fairground gate
Trois-Rivieres, in Quebec, takes a very different shape. The Circuit Trois-Rivieres has been home to the annual Grand Prix de Trois-Rivieres, known as GP3R, since 1967, and it is billed as the continent's oldest running street race. Two longevity claims therefore sit side by side: Long Beach holds the title among major street circuits, while Trois-Rivieres is billed as the longest-running street race of any kind on the continent.
The track is laid out on the Terrain de l'Exposition, the town's fairgrounds, and it does something unusual at turn 3: it squeezes through Porte Duplessis, a tight concrete gate at the edge of the fairgrounds. That single pinch point gives the circuit much of its identity.
Its list of visitors is long. Trois-Rivieres has welcomed sports cars, touring cars and open-wheelers alike, among them Trans-Am, Can-Am, Indy Lights, Formula Atlantic, the American Le Mans Series and the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series. Can-Am raced there from 1977 to 1984, the Atlantic Championship appeared on and off from 1974 to 2009, and Indy Lights came in 1996 to 1998 and again in 2011 and 2012. Trans-Am has a particularly long history, with seasons between 1976 and 2011, and it is listed again for 2027. The American Le Mans Series visited in 2002 and 2003. Closer to home, the Canadian Touring Car Championship raced there from 2007 to 2019 and again in 2021, IMSA GT3 Cup Challenge Canada from 2013 to 2018, Pro Mazda from 2005 to 2013 and Sports Car Championship Canada from 2022 to 2024. The Mazda MX-5 Cup came for three seasons, 2006 to 2008, and Speed World Challenge ran there from 1993 to 1999 and in 2002.
The headline act has been the NASCAR Canada Series since 2007, apart from 2020. From 2014 to 2019 the event stretched to two weekends, when the FIA World Rallycross Championship came along with its World RX of Canada round. The current August programme includes NASCAR Canada, the Super Production Challenge, F1600 Canada and the Radical Cup Canada.
Penske owns Long Beach and Trois-Rivieres lists 2027 races
The listings for Trois-Rivieres already show Formula Regional Americas Championship and Trans-Am entries for 2027. At Long Beach the biggest recent change is who owns it: Penske Entertainment, which also owns the IndyCar Series, bought the race in 2024, and the Grand Prix remains an April fixture on the IndyCar calendar.
For anyone who drives, the lesson from both circuits is how much of a street race is borrowed from the town around it. A Long Beach waterfront became a stage for Indy cars, and a Quebec fairground gate became a corner that tourers, sports cars and stock cars have all had to thread.
