Robby Foley and Patrick Gallagher finish second in Grand Prix of Long Beach
LONG BEACH, Calif. (April 18, 2026) – Turner Motorsport secured its first podium finish of the season with a second-place finish in the Long Beach Grand Prix. Robby Foley and Patrick Gallagher matched their best finish on the street course after finishing second in 2024.
Gallagher started the No. 96 BMW M4 GT3 EVO from fifth in the 18-car GTD field. Despite feeling pressure from behind, Gallagher kept the car out of trouble and brought it in to Foley with just over an hour to go. Team strategist, Don Salama, opted for fuel only, skipping tires during the solo pit stop. After a trio of cautions, Foley was in podium position with a third of the race remaining to battle for the lead. The California traffic was heavy, and the Turner BMW suffered contact from behind and lost some bodywork, but Foley continued to second position. After an intense 100 minutes, the team secured second place and the first podium finish of the season for the GTD team and moves into second in championship points.
The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season completes its of California on May 1-3 in Monterey, California at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.
Robby Foley, Driver of the No. 96 BMW M4 GT4 EVO
It was a great day at Long Beach. We started P5 and fought our way up to P2 and just managed from there. I made a couple moves in traffic. I was P2 or P3 and got hit in the rear just after that. We had some damage, but luckily not enough to affect the car and kept going. Ultimately, it’s just tough to pass at Long Beach. We couldn’t quite catch the leader – we didn’t really have anything for them, so congrats to them. But great points to bring to Laguna.
Patrick Gallagher, Driver of the No. 96 BMW M4 GT4 EVO
It was certainly a good start. I thought I was going to gain one but decided against it because it was a bit too early to be banging fenders. Pumpelly raced me clean. I might have got into him a bit, and he got into me a little bit, but it was all fair, just hard racing. Everyone was saving and then the field took off halfway through the stint, and everyone started pushing. Nobody was really saving as we realized that the cars could stretch their legs.
I rode around in fourth for most of my stint, and the Lexis was just too fast to overcome. I kept one of them behind me and let one go to save the car since they’re not in the points and then saved fuel the rest of the stint to try and leapfrog in the pits. The team made a great call to bring us in when we did to kind of protect us from the yellow and it really helped us.
Robby did a great job. Everyone on the team did a great job. It’s been a while since we’ve had a podium. I think we’re building some momentum going into Laguna and we’re just going to keep showing up and swinging the bat.
Will Turner, Team Owner
It feels great to be back on the podium at Long Beach, especially because this is such a tough track and the competition is fierce this year. You can see by the lap times that everybody is in the window to be able to win the race, but we stayed out of trouble, drove a clean race, and it paid off.
#taco #taco
