{"id":270652,"date":"2026-04-16T12:08:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T12:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/270652\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T12:08:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T12:08:16","slug":"king-looking-to-hit-the-ground-running-in-long-beach-debut-sportscar365","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/270652\/","title":{"rendered":"King Looking to \u201cHit the Ground Running\u201d in Long Beach Debut \u2013 Sportscar365"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Photo: Porsche<\/p>\n

Harry King says he\u2019s looking to \u201chit the ground running\u201d when he takes on the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach for the first time this weekend.<\/p>\n

King will share AO Racing\u2019s Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo with FIA Silver-rated driver Mikkel Pedersen in a one-off appearance in the GTD category for the team.<\/p>\n

The Porsche-contracted driver has never raced at the Long Beach circuit before.<\/p>\n

He said he has \u201cdone a lot of work on simulators\u201d to prepare for the event, aiming to \u201celiminate those few extra laps in Free Practice at the start of the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m keen. I enjoy street circuits,\u201d he told Sportscar365. \u201cI feel like I deliver better on them than I do on normal race circuits.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the strategy and the driver changes, it\u2019s very rare that you get an endurance race on a street circuit, so it\u2019s one that\u2019s very special.\u201d<\/p>\n

King is still relatively new to the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, having made his debut at the Rolex 24 at Daytona in January, sharing AO\u2019s full season GTD Pro Porsche with Nick Tandy for the season and\u00a0Alessio Picariello for the endurance races.<\/p>\n

As rated Gold by the FIA, King\u2019s Long Beach debut will be the first time that he is the highest rated driver in the team\u2019s lineup.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt changes your aspect [in the team],\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re there to support the Silver and bring them on as much as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen his [Mikkel\u2019s] performance, and I know his previous results, and he\u2019s a guy I know I can trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

AO won its class in Long Beach last year with another one-off GTD appearance driven by Laurens Vanthoor and Jonny Edgar.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know the car well but it\u2019s just the circuits,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you know the car well it makes it a little bit easier.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got a very good support network over there [at AO] with guys who are dedicated to bringing me on as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

King Looking to \u201cAchieve the Maximum\u201d in GTD Pro<\/p>\n

Looking ahead to the rest of his GTD Pro season, King said: \u201cWe have to try to achieve the maximum that we can.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that means taking victories, great. If that means collecting points, we\u2019ll just have to do that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s motivating to see the turnover that we produced after Daytona. The team really did work incredibly hard, and I saw that with my own eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team finished ninth in class at the Rolex 24, before missing out on a Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring class victory by just 1.4 seconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a driver when you see the extra effort put in, it pushes you to go that little bit more, and we certainly delivered on every front during the Sebring weekend,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

King admitted that, while he was \u201crelatively satisfied\u201d with AO\u2019s result in Sebring, \u201cthe racing driver inside of you is always wanting a bit more.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Finlay Ringer is a freelance motorsport journalist covering the 24H Series for Sportscar365. He is also a journalism student at City St George’s, University of London, and has contributed to publications such as The Race and Autocar.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Porsche Harry King says he\u2019s looking to \u201chit the ground running\u201d when he takes on the Acura…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-270652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270652","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=270652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}