The 2017 BUBBA Burger Sports Car Grand Prix was an International Motor Sports Association (IMSA)-sanctioned sports car race held on the Long Beach Street Circuit in California, United States, on April 8, 2017 as part of the Long Beach Grand Prix event weekend. The race was the third of twelve scheduled rounds of the 2017 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, and was held for the Prototype, Grand Touring Le Mans (GTLM) and Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) categories. The race was the shortest of the 2017 WeatherTech Championship calendar.
Jordan Taylor and Ricky Taylor won an incident packed race in their 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R to take their third win in the opening three races of the championship. The Nissan Onroak DPi of Scott Sharp and Ryan Dalziel and the Mazda RT24-P of Tristan Nunez and Jonathan Bomarito completing the podium. Corvette Racing's Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner won in the GTLM class driving a Chevrolet Corvette C7.R while the Riley Motorsports – WeatherTech Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Cooper MacNeil and Gunnar Jeannette won in the GTD category.
Three GTD cars who crashed into the wall on the outside of the turn eleven hairpin on the last lap caused chaos for a number of vehicles as it partially blocked the track. The biggest loser was the No. 3 Chevrolet Corvette of Jan Magnussen and Antonio García. They had been leading the GTLM class but their path through the hairpin was blocked and they dropped from sixth outright and first in class to tenth outright and fifth in class, handing the class win to their teammates. Although the passing had happened under yellow flag conditions, IMSA officials took the view, as they had done earlier in the race when a crash at the hairpin partially blocked the track, that the passing was done to avoid completely blocking the track and no penalties were handed out.
Background
Entry list
Thirty-five cars were officially entered for the BUBBA Burger Sports Car Grand Prix, with the bulk of entries in the two Grand Touring (GT) categories: Grand Touring Le Mans (GTLM) and Grand Touring Daytona (GTD). Since the majority of the remaining rounds of the 2017 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship were sprint races, teams entered their regular driver pairings for the first time this season. Because of the lack of space provided by the Long Beach paddock, International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) only accepted "premium" entrants (teams participating in the whole championship) for this year's race. Seven Daytona Prototype International (DPi) chassis were represented in the Prototype class, including a trio of Cadillac DPi-V.R cars and a duo of Nissan Onroak DPi and Mazda RT24-P vehicles. They were joined by three global-specification Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) cars, represented by three out of the four major chassis: one Oreca 07 entered by JDC-Miller MotorSports, a Ligier JS P217 utilised by PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports and one Riley Mk. 30 operated by VisitFlorida Racing.
With the absence of the Prototype Challenge class from the field, only three racing classes were represented in Long Beach. GTLM was represented by nine entries from manufacturers such as Corvette Racing, Ford Chip Ganassi Racing USA, Porsche, Ferrari (Risi Competizione) and BMW with no major changes in that field. In the list of GTD entrants, sixteen GT3-specification vehicles were represented by eight different manufacturers. The No. 991 The Racer's Group Porsche 911 GT3 R was reinstated to the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship after it was withdrawn following a number of flat tires with the car at the season-opening 24 Hours of Daytona. Although it was listed as an entrant, Dream Racing's No. 27 Lamborghini Huracán did not participate despite their headquarters being within a close proximity to Long Beach. Alegra Motorsports had originally planned to focus solely on the 2017 North American Endurance Cup but the team entered its No. 28 Porsche 991 GT3 R for the Long Beach round.