As the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach celebrates its golden anniversary in April, president and all-around race evangelist Jim Michaelian discusses how this downtown Southern California race became one of the world’s premier street course events.

Fifty years ago, an unlikely new racing event took place in California. The Formula 5000 series raced around the streets of downtown Long Beach on a makeshift course. It was the first major sanctioned street race since a tragic accident in Watkins Glen, New York, that injured a dozen people and killed a child in 1952. However, with careful preparation, the first Long Beach Grand Prix caught the attention of FIA. In 1976, the event featured Formula 1 and was known as the United States Grand Prix West.

Formula 1 remained the feature race for eight years and was followed by several generations of Indy car racing, through CART, ChampCar, and now IndyCar. Today, the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach is among the top tier of racing events in America and a must-see event for hundreds of thousands of fans. Through the entire history of the event, Jim Michaelian has been a driving force in organizing, maintaining, and evangelizing the longest-standing professional street race in America. Michaelian has been involved since the first planning meetings in 1974 and today serves as president and CEO of the Grand Prix. At age 81, he’s still a pivotal force shaping American racing.

PRI: Tell us about your backstory. How did you get here?

Michaelian: I went to UCLA and majored in physics, but it was only because at the time we were in this intense race with Russia for dominance in science. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I had zero interest in that field. Ultimately, I switched over to get my MBA. Then, I always had an interest in racing. I mean, as a kid, I bought a 1960 Chevrolet Impala and took it out to Lions Drag Strip two times, because that was about all I could afford to do at the time.

In 1974, a guy named Chris Pook who lived here in Long Beach was talking to the city about the possibility of bringing a major racing event to the downtown area...

To read the complete article for free, sign up for a digital subscription to PRI Magazine on Zinio here.    

Once you download the "PRI Magazine" mobile app or are logged into PRI Magazine/Zinio on a desktop browser, you will gain immediate access to more than a year's worth of content, including "Industry Insights: Jim Michaelian" here and more PRI Show coverage in the March/April 2025 issue here.