Weekend preview: Ferrari line up for the IMSA Sprint, 24H Series and GT WC Asia

Over the weekend of the Italian leg of the FIA WEC at Imola, Maranello cars will also be on the track for the opening rounds of the season in the IMSA Sprint Cup at Long Beach and the GT World Challenge Asia at Sepang. Additionally, Ferrari will be on the starting line for the second round of the 24H Series to tackle the 12 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps. 

IMSA Sprint Cup. Ferrari returns to fulltime IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship competition this weekend with Saturday’s Grand Prix of Long Beach. The traditional Southern California weekend is America’s longest-running street course event with a history that stretches back through the decades. 

Conquest Racing fields the No. 34 Ferrari 296 GT3 for effort for Alberto Costa and Manny Franco, running in the opening event of the IMSA Sprint Cup after joining four other Ferrari teams in the season-opening endurance classics at Daytona and Sebring.

Costa and Franco currently rank fourth in the GT Daytona standings with 545 points. They opened the season with a third-place finish in the Daytona 24 Hours. The team led the 12 Hours of Sebring at the midway point and was fourth with two hours remaining, but was shuffled back to 11th at the finish.

This will be Ferrari’s first race at Long Beach since 2021, when Daniel Mancinelli and Colin Braun finished 10th in GTD sharing the No. 63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo. Braun ran in the top five throughout the latter half of the race, but needed a pit stop for fuel with only two minutes remaining.

Ferrari’s history at Long Beach dates all the way back to the first Formula 1 U.S. Grand Prix West in 1976, when Clay Regazzoni won driving a Ferrari 312 T. Ferrari also won in 1978, with Carlos Reutemann in a Ferrari 312 T3, and in 1979, with Gilles Villeneuve in a 312 T4. After debuting with a Formula 5000 race in 1975, Long Beach hosted the premier Formula 1 division for eight years before moving to Indy cars.

The 2024 event opens with a pair of practice sessions on Friday, followed by GTD qualifying at 5 p.m. (all times CT). The 100-minute race begins at 1:35 p.m. on Saturday. 

24H Series. Following the Mugello round at the end of March, the championship heads to Belgium for the 12 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, where Kessel Racing will represent Ferrari. The Swiss team will assign the number 5 296 GT3 to Fran Rueda, Andrew Gilbert, Fons Scheltema and Nicolò Rosi in the Am class. The first two drivers are fresh from their second place last weekend with Kessel Racing in Barcelona in the Michelin Le Mans Cup, finishing behind another Maranello car driven by AF Corse. Scheltema and Rosi bring with them a wealth of racing experience from the Ferrari Challenge Europe, with the Dutch driver a seasoned veteran of the single-marque series. Meanwhile, the young Swiss driver clinched victory in the Bronze class at Le Castellet earlier this month during the first Endurance Cup leg of the GT World Challenge Europe. Rosi competed on that occasion in the Kessel Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 alongside David Fumanelli and Niccolò Schirò.

Following Friday's qualifying session, the first part of the race will commence at 12.50 p.m. on Saturday and conclude at 5:50 p.m. The subsequent seven hours of racing is scheduled to begin on Sunday at 10:50 a.m.

GT World Challenge Asia. Four Ferrari 296 GT3s are among the 33 entries in the first round of the championship, set to take place over the weekend at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia. Absolute Corse, an offshoot of Absolute Racing, will field the number 296 with André Canard and Finn Gehrsitz, both newcomers to the series and to Prancing Horse cars. Despite being just 19 years old, the German driver Gehrsitz boasts substantial experience from numerous championships. Joining him is the Filipino driver Canard, classified as a Bronze driver, enabling the Hong Kong team to participate in the Silver/Am class. 

The Chinese pairing of Luo Kailuo and Liang Jiatong will represent Harmony Racing on the track, aboard the number 77 car in the Silver class. LMcorsa's Japanese entry in the same category, the car number 60, will feature the pair Shigekazu Wakisaka and Ryo Ogawa at the steering wheel, both from the Rising Sun. Finally, in the Am class, the Garage75 team will see David Tjiptobiantoro and Italian Christian Colombo in the number 75.

Following Friday's tests, the Sepang event will feature two qualifying sessions on Saturday 20 April, at 10.30 a.m. and 10.52 a.m. respectively. Race-1 will commence at 2.45 p.m. spanning a duration of 60 minutes. The second race, also lasting 60 minutes, is scheduled for Sunday 21 April, starting at 11.30 a.m. (All times are local).