Although his St. Petersburg race was foiled by a miscommunication, look for Mike Conway and Ed Carpenter Racing to rebound this weekend in the Verizon IndyCar Series’ Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.
Conway enters the weekend in the No. 20 Fuzzy’s Vodka Chevrolet as one of seven past Long Beach winners, and additionally one of five drivers who scored their first career win on the historic streets in one of the 39 prior editions of the race.
His 2011 win for Andretti Autosport was something of a surprise, but it marked his territory as a future star to watch in IndyCar and also put his name in the record books for North America’s most prestigious street race.
“I had heard about the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach as I was growing up in England but I didn’t know the magnitude of the event,” Conway said in the team’s pre-race release. “I was on the top of the podium after my win and I looked down at the names in victory lane who had won there. And I said, ‘Bloody hell, there was a great list of drivers who have won at Long Beach.'”
A year ago, he was drafted into Long Beach as a last-minute third car for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, then promptly was quick in Friday practice and stuck the car in the Firestone Fast Six for qualifying on Saturday. That performance turned heads considering he had opted to end a full-time IndyCar career to focus solely on road and street courses, and quit ovals.
For Conway, this weekend starts a crazy stretch of action across continents as he balances his IndyCar commitments with ECR along with his duties in an LMP2 class ORECA 03 Nissan for Millennium Racing in the FIA World Endurance Championship over each of the next five weeks. Conway will share the No. 23 Millennium car with ex-F1 shoes Stefan Johansson and Shinji Nakano.
Conway races at Long Beach this weekend, then heads to his home country to race the FIA WEC curtain-raiser in Silverstone on April 20. April 27 is back to the ECR IndyCar at Barber Motorsports Park, in what will be his first natural terrain road course race in an IndyCar since Sonoma 2012 (all his 2013 and the first two 2014 races were on street courses). Then it’s back to the WEC for Spa on May 4, and then the five-week stretch concludes May 10 with the ECR IndyCar in the inaugural Grand Prix of Indianapolis.
In those five races, expect Conway to get at least one win, perhaps an additional podium finish or two and a heck of a lot of frequent flier miles. A Long Beach repeat of his 2011 triumph would not be a bad place to start.