Team manager for the Action Express No. 31 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Cadillac DPi seeking first win of the season.
Thirty years ago, Gary Nelson was still celebrating his win of the 1992 Daytona 500 as driver Bobby Allison’s crew chief.
Saturday night, he hopes to be celebrating his second straight win of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach as the team manager for the Action Express No. 31 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Cadillac Daytona Prototype international car.
The 2021 race win, which didn’t take place until September 25 due to COVID concerns, was with Whelen Engineering drivers Pipo Derani and Felipe Nasr. This year, Derani is back but Tristan Vautier has replaced Nasr, who moved over to Porsche to help develop the new-for-2023 GTP car that will replace the DPi beginning with the next Rolex 24 at Daytona.
Gary Nelson
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The team also won the 2021 overall championship, with additional wins at Road America and Watkins Glen.
As for Nelson: He just wants more first-place trophies. So far this season, there haven’t been any for either Action Express cars—the No. 31, and the No. 48 Ally car, which is only running the longer endurance races, meaning Daytona and Sebring and the upcoming Watkins Glen and Petit Le Mans.
“We’ve had better starts to the season,” Nelson told Autoweek, “and we’ve had worse starts, and both those times we won the championship. So I think we’re doing just fine.” The No. 31 finished fourth and the No. 48 finished 11th at Daytona, and at Sebring, the No. 31 was third, and the No. 48 was sixth.
Odds are with a Cadillac to win the Long Beach race, with four of them in the six-car DPi lineup, which includes a pair of Acuras.
Nelson’s experience has played a big part in the success of Action Express, which was founded in 2010 and won its very first race, the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Sports cars were a relatively new thing for Nelson, who started his career on the West Coast, crewing for racer Ivan Baldwin. Nelson moved east to work for the DiGard Racing NASCAR Cup team, rising through the ranks until he became Allison’s crew chief in 1981. The duo won 16 races in the next two years and took the 1983 Cup title.
Team owner Rick Hendrick hired Nelson to create a Cup team for driver Geoff Bodine, and they won the 1986 Daytona 500. Nelson went on to work for NASCAR as Winston Cup director from 1992 to 2001, when—after four driver deaths in one year, the last being Dale Earnhardt at the 2001 Daytona 500—Nelson became vice-president of research and development, tasked with building a new NASCAR tech center and exploring ways to make racing safer. One of the things Nelson is most proud of is the fact that no NASCAR Cup driver has suffered life-threatening injuries since Earnhardt’s death.
In late 2008, Brumos Porsche hired Nelson as a consultant, and the team promptly won Nelson’s first Rolex 24 at Daytona. He joined Action Express the next year.
Nelson continues to do some consulting work for NASCAR, having had input on the new-for-2022 Cup car, as well as helping with the NASCAR-controlled American Flat Track motorcycle racing series.
One thing to watch for at the Long Beach race: The pair of Acuras has received a Balance of Performance weight break from IMSA, lightening the cars by about 22 pounds. “We figure every 10 pounds is a tenth of a second a lap this track, and two-tenths of a second is going to help them out,” Nelson said. “But I think we’ll be alright.”
As he mentioned earlier, bad starts have more than once led to a season championship. Many teams have learned the hard way: Discount Gary Nelson at your own peril.
Qualifying for the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach streams live on IMSA.com at 8:10 p.m. ET Friday, and the race airs live at 5 p.m. Saturday on USA Network and NBC’s Peacock streaming service.
Keyword: Gary Nelson, Cadillac, Out to Overcome Acura's IMSA Balance of Performance Boost at Long Beach