Unfortunate Early End to Heart of Racing’s IMSA Grand Prix of Long Beach

Long Beach, Calif. (22 April 2024) - After showing promising race pace, The Heart of Racing Team was forced to retire early in Saturday’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Grand Prix of Long Beach after contact from another GTD entry forced the Aston Martin to make contact with the wall. 

Roman De Angelis and Spencer Pumpelly teamed up for the first time in the No. 27 Aston Martin Vantage GT3. The duo saw two practice sessions on Friday before a warm afternoon qualifying session. De Angelis qualified the No. 27 Aston Martin Vantage GT4, earning a second row start after setting the fourth fastest lap with a 1:17.725 second lap time. 

De Angelis was first behind the wheel of the No. 27 Heart of Racing GTD entry starting from the second row. De Angelis was able to maintain position for the first 22 laps before making a pass for third on lap 23. Pumpelly took over the No. 27 Aston Martin Vantage 38 minutes into the race, keeping the third place position through the pit stop. 

On lap 52 Pumpelly was pushed from third to seventh due to stopped traffic in Turn 11. Shortly after getting back up to speed, Pumpelly was forced into the wall after another GTD car made contact. This caused the Aston Martin Vantage into the pits for an unplanned stop. Unfortunately a quick inspection by the Heart of Racing crew discovered that the suspension had too much damage to continue, ending the day just 13 laps short of the checkered flag. 

“The weekend started strongly with qualifying fourth,” said De Angelis. “We were able to make our way to third in the race and had a really good pitstop where we ended up coming out in the top three. And then our misfortune kind of started from there, we had some contact early in Spencer’s (Pumpelly) stint. Then after another incident later on, bent suspension ended the day for us. The ending there was not really what we wanted, but we can't seem to have much luck lately in IMSA. The Heart of Racing did a great job as always and we'll just see what we can do the next few race weekends to try to get points back.”

The Heart of Racing IMSA program will be back in action May 10-12 at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. Ahead of the next weekend, the team’s SRO program will be at Sebring International Raceway May 3-5.