LONG BEACH, Calif. – Youth was not only served, but it was also showcased in the NTT IndyCar Series season finale – the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.
Twenty-one-year-old Colton Herta scored back-to-back victories in his home state with a victory Sunday afternoon on the streets of Long Beach. It came one week after his victory in the Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. He was joined in celebration by Alex Palou, who secured his first NTT IndyCar Series title.
Three of his six NTT IndyCar Series victories have come in California.
RESULTS: Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach
“This is the biggest race for me outside of Indy,” admitted the Andretti/Curb-Agajanian driver. “I said previously that this is the first race I ever was able to come to, being from Santa Clarita. I was two weeks old when I first came to Long Beach. My father was driving in 2000. It was the only race I could go to because I was so young, and I couldn’t fly yet. Lucky enough that it came around.
“I remember growing up around here, coming to this race every year when I was five, six, seven, all the way up until I was racing in IndyCar in 2019.
“I can’t believe I won it on my second try. I’m super happy. This is a big one for me.”
Herta won the race by 0.5883 seconds ahead of Newgarden. Six-time NTT IndyCar Series champion Scott Dixon was third in the No. 9 PNC Bank Honda followed by Palou, the season champion with three wins, eight podiums and one pole.
Herta knew he had the fastest car throughout the weekend. He was fastest in Friday’s practice and the speediest in Saturday’s session, but made an error in Saturday’s qualifying session when he ran too many laps on a set of Firestone Blacks and did not advance during knockout qualifications.
But that gave Herta one more set of faster Firestone Reds for the race.
“It was perfect,” Herta said after leading the most laps in the race with 43. “Without the muff-up in qualifying, I think we could have had a great shot at pole, have another dominant race. It was fun to come from the back. A little bit more stressful, but it was a lot of fun.
“I was pretty focused the whole time. Not really stressed, just focused, and trying to nail corner by corner, just focusing to the next one. It was a big ask to keep guys like Scott and Josef behind when they’re on new reds. I guess Josef was on used, but Scott was on new.
“I knew it was going to be tough. I thought when the yellow came out it was kind of game over for us and we were going to be swallowed on the restart being on the blacks, but it worked. I think it just shows how good the car was. We were kind of all in tune, in one, fast on blacks, fast on reds, didn’t matter. We were just fast.”
Herta started 14th, but quickly raced his way through the field until he was finally in the lead. Once he was there, nobody was going to pass the California Kid.
“I think we kind of proved that long today,” Herta said. “If you have a great start, you start in the back, you can pass here. We were one of the cars that was trimmed, we were able to brake pretty less, which was a big thing for us. It was a lot of fun, too. I was kind of surprised how quick we were at the start. I was very surprised when we were able to keep going after hitting Ryan Hunter-Reay in the year after Jones spun Pato. We had a little bit of damage to the right front, but luckily it wasn’t enough to kind of take us out, we could keep running around and be quick.”
Palou is this year’s champion. What will it take for Herta to claim a championship in 2022?
“I just need to clean it up a little bit,” Herta said. “We’ve been so close. I think there have been three or four other times we should have won, and we didn’t for different reasons.
“I’m not too worried about that right now. I think give a month and then look at it afterwards, kind of into the off-season, debriefing on 2021, what we need to do better to kind of be in Alex’s position coming into the final round in 2022.”