Considering Frederik Vesti\u2019s recent travel schedule \u2013 both intended itineraries and otherwise \u2013 the talented Danish racer\u2019s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach debut in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship may seem relatively straightforward.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old will make his second sprint start in IMSA\u2019s premier Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) ranks, climbing back into the No. 31 Cadillac Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R he helped drive to podium finishes at both the season\u2019s opening endurance events, the Rolex 24 At Daytona and more recently, the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.<\/p>\n
With an already busy schedule handling all the sim work as the Formula 1 Mercedes-AMG Petronas team\u2019s reserve driver, Vesti will spend this rare down time between F1 races co-driving the Whelen Cadillac prototype with Jack Aitken in the April 17-18 IMSA weekend at the famed Long Beach street circuit. Vesti will fill in for Cadillac Whelen team driver Earl Bamber, who is driving a Cadillac in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) Hypercar class race the same weekend.<\/p>\n
Vesti\u2019s raced at some of the world\u2019s most iconic street circuits in his junior open-wheel career such as Monaco and Macau and can\u2019t wait to add Long Beach to his record.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting to race in Long Beach is actually quite awesome to me,\u201d Vesti said. \u201cObviously the long races are very cool and are some very big endurance races, but this is sort of the next step.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did Laguna [Seca] last year, but I have big ambitions for Long Beach and I\u2019m quite excited to experience a new track. It\u2019s very challenging, especially when you haven\u2019t been there before.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the experienced guys will have a little advantage especially in the first practices but it\u2019s a track I know from iRacing since I was 10 years old, so I\u2019m quite familiar with the track. It will be interesting to get a first look in FP1.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
As noted, Vesti\u2019s only other IMSA sprint start came at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey last year, when he and Aitken finished sixth overall. Vesti, Aitken and Bamber would go on to claim wins in both the six-hour TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks and 10-hour season finale, Motul Petit Le Mans, at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.<\/p>\n
The opportunity in Long Beach further enhances Vesti\u2019s expanding resume \u2013 racing commitments stateside that have at times required some complex navigation. And patience.<\/p>\n
As the Mercedes team\u2019s third driver he is at every F1 race globally. So, the start of his season included not only the two IMSA races in Florida, but also challenging global travel with the F1 world championship races starting in March in Australia then on to China and then to Japan.<\/p>\n
A pre-season tire test in Bahrain proved especially challenging, as the same military conflict in the Middle East that has since cancelled the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia F1 races greatly impacted Vesti\u2019s travels. That\u2019s included long airport delays and unpredictable schedules, including impromptu hours-long bus trips. He figures he\u2019s already accumulated 100,000 kilometers in airplane travel alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cApril seems easy now,\u201d Vesti allowed with a smile.<\/p>\n
Certainly, Mercedes\u2019 success has also been an upside. Team drivers George Russell and 19-year-old Kimi Antonelli have won the three races this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing to see,\u201d Vesti said. \u201cI\u2019ve been working on this car. I\u2019ve driven it more than anyone in the simulator.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s 2,000 people working on these cars and it\u2019s been amazing to see the commitment in the factory and then go to Melbourne and be very competitive and get a one-two [finish] and then again in Shanghai. You can only dream of those starts to a season, even though we worked hard, everyone worked hard in the F1 paddock, so very pleased with the start of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
And he\u2019d love to continue that trajectory. The IMSA Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach provides a welcome challenge for Vesti, who as his 2026 success with the team indicates, has already proven himself very much up for it.<\/p>\n
Not only do he and Aitken present as a hugely capable pairing, but also, their Cadillac has been strong in the early-season endurance tests. That provides genuine optimism for the sprint race portion of the IMSA schedule.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s definitely taken a step forward,\u201d Vesti said of the car, which like most in the GTP field took on a degree of \u201cevo\u201d updates for 2026. \u201cI\u2019m quite impressed by Cadillac Racing and how much they have improved since last year, not only in the car but also as a team and how the engineers are working.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re making progress all the time. And when you make progress with both the car and the team, I think those are steps forward. I\u2019m expecting a strong season and looking forward to challenging for wins.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vesti will go for his third IMSA win, and first in a sprint race, on Saturday, April 18 in Long Beach. Live race coverage starts at 4 p.m. ET on network NBC, also streaming on Peacock and internationally via IMSA\u2019s Official YouTube channel.<\/p>\n
IMSA Wire Service PR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Considering Frederik Vesti\u2019s recent travel schedule \u2013 both intended itineraries and otherwise \u2013 the talented Danish racer\u2019s Acura…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[113301,8815,113302,38639,113303,131,133,132,2971,9027,113304,425,14614],"class_list":{"0":"post-255959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-battle-on-the-bricks","9":"tag-channel","10":"tag-daytona","11":"tag-imsa","12":"tag-iracing","13":"tag-long-beach","14":"tag-long-beach-headlines","15":"tag-long-beach-news","16":"tag-nbc","17":"tag-racing","18":"tag-rolex-24","19":"tag-series","20":"tag-sprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}