Expand<\/a><\/p>\nEndurance motorsport races occur over multiple hours and test the car\u2019s reliability and the driving team\u2019s stamina. Well-known events include the 24-hour races in Daytona, Florida, and in Le Mans, France, which was first run in 1923 and holds the record as the oldest of the endurance races.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad found endurance racing to be super exciting,\u201d said Bob Michaelian, the older of Jim\u2019s two sons. \u201cMy brother Mike and I became avid racing car fans because of him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bob Michaelian said his father raced for 33 years, starting in 1991 and ending in 2024. His last race was in Monza, Italy.<\/p>\n
His father raced at tracks in the United States in Daytona and Sebring, Florida; Watkins Glen, New York; and in Europe in Le Mans, France and Nurburgring, Germany, among other places.<\/p>\n
The younger Michaelian is an auto endurance racer himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI raced with him in Daytona and other tracks,\u201d he said. \u201cThey were amazingly special opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n
As children, he and his brother Mike delivered the Press-Telegram on their bikes. But when it rained, he said, his father would put them in his car and drive them on their routes to deliver the paper.<\/p>\n
He said his father\u2019s loss of his left eye because of cancer more than 20 years ago \u201cdid not slow him down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had to compensate for the loss of his eye,\u201d the younger Michaelian said, \u201cbut he kept racing. He was a fearless driver.\u201d<\/p>\n
John Doonan, president of the International Motor Sports Association, called Jim \u201ca racer\u2019s racer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve McNeely, who lives in Pasadena, was another auto endurance racer \u2014 who drove in races with the elder Michaelian.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was Jim\u2019s co-driver when he did his first IMSA race in Sebring in the early 1990s,\u201d McNeely said last week. \u201cWe did endure and drove to the end, finishing around 20th.\u201d<\/p>\n
That race, McNeely said, was the beginning of a \u201cvery enduring friendship\u201d with Michaelian on and off the track.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also helped Jim do driver training for the Long Beach Grand Prix pro\/celebrity races, and I did many of Jim\u2019s legendary \u2018walkabouts\u2019 on race weekend,\u201d McNeely said. \u201cJim was always excited about driving. He had loads of enthusiasm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bob Michaelian said his father loved auto endurance racing, but he was \u201csuper passionate\u201d about the Grand Prix of Long Beach, which he ran for so many years.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad loved the city of Long Beach,\u201d the younger Michaelian said, \u201cand the positive impact the race had on the city.\u201d<\/p>\n
Funeral plans<\/p>\n
Jim Michaelian\u2019s funeral is scheduled to take place from noon to 2 p.m. June 13, a Saturday, at Cottonwood Church, 4505 Katella Ave., Los Alamitos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jim Michaelian\u2019s love of auto racing began when he was 12 or so, when he learned to drive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7,131,28942,133,132,137,100],"class_list":["post-275614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-california","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-grand-prix","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-los-angeles-county","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275614","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=275614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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