DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — In the early stages of his first IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship campaign, Eduardo “Dudu” Barrichello is embracing all the new that comes with it.
The son of 11-time Formula 1 Grand Prix winner and four-time Rolex 24 At Daytona starter Rubens Barrichello is flying the flag not only for his home country of Brazil in the U.S., but also for Heart of Racing Team as its only full-time Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) driver in 2026.
The quirks of the global sports car calendar and Heart of Racing Team’s globetrotting pursuit across multiple series, continents and types of cars – both Aston Martin’s venerable Vantage GT3 Evo in GTD and the new, striking Valkyrie in its second season in Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) – means its drivers are spread far and wide, and only able to race in one place at a time.
Barrichello, though, has quickly taken to IMSA like a duck to water. With a pair of podiums and his first Motul Pole Award achieved at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, Barrichello enters this week’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach (Saturday, April 18, 4 p.m. ET, NBC) atop the GTD standings.
He’ll leave the event on a solo points total as co-drivers Tom Gamble and Zacharie Robichon are racing in Imola, split there between a Valkyrie (Gamble) and Vantage (Robichon) apiece.
Spencer Pumpelly reprises his Heart of Racing Team fill-in role from 2024, where he raced with the team multiple times – including at Long Beach – and won with Roman De Angelis at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. Pumpelly is one of IMSA’s most experienced drivers, nearing 250 career starts in a career dating to 1998, three years before Barrichello was born.
“Leading the championship is not something I thought would happen on my debut season, especially because all the tracks are new for me,” said Barrichello, who will make his fourth WeatherTech Championship start this weekend at Long Beach.
He made his IMSA debut at last year’s TireRack.com Battle On The Bricks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in a van der Steur Racing Aston Martin. That marked one of the few IMSA circuits he has had North American racing experience, as he’d won there in a USF2000 car in 2020.
Long Beach presents a unique challenge for Barrichello. He’s raced at street circuits before in his junior open-wheel formula career, but the unforgiving nature of Long Beach ensures he’ll need to be inch-perfect against the always lurking concrete barriers.
“I’m super excited for Long Beach,” he said. “I’ve done it on the sim; it seems quite challenging. Seems like it’s difficult to overtake as well. So, I think qualifying will be a big part of it.
“I’ve never driven a GT car in a street track, so it’ll be the first time for me. In iRacing, you know, the track seems to be quite similar to real life. I have spoken a little bit with Spencer as well. He’s got some experience from the tracks. So, I think we’ll see, but I think everybody’s been doing such a good job that I’m super confident to just get there and hit the ground running.”
The corner he called out as a particularly tricky challenge is the notorious final hairpin, Turn 11, one of the slowest corners on the IMSA calendar.
“I think the last corner is really tight; I’ve never done something that tight,” he laughed.
Qualifying has been a big part of Heart of Racing Team’s early season success. Robichon and Barrichello have gone back-to-back to win GTD poles to start 2026. With 2025 driver Casper Stevenson also winning the pole at Indianapolis last year, the team has three poles in the last four races.
And qualifying is, as Barrichello noted, incredibly important at Long Beach. The last five GTD races at Long Beach since 2021, the winning entry has started either first (2021, 2022, 2024), second (2025), or third (2023). GTD’s first Long Beach run in 2017 produced an outlier as the winning entry started 13th.
Barrichello is another of the Heart of Racing Team family who will be split himself, as he’ll also run non-conflicting FIA World Endurance Championship events. One of those rounds is at Sao Paulo, Brazil, his home race where he starred in 2025. But CTMP, where he is scheduled to be that weekend in July, has been a good hunting ground for the team with a pair of wins.
“The Plan A was always to do the full IMSA championship,” he said. “I’m really focused on that, especially because I’m the only guy who’s doing the full championship. So, if I miss some of the IMSA rounds, I wouldn’t be able to win the championship.
“So, if we if we do a good job, I think I’ll be missing Brazil. So, yeah, that’s how it’s going to work this year.”
