LONG BEACH, California – Team Penske’s Helio Castroneves and Juan Pablo Montoya were forever immortalized at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach on Thursday.

The Indy car greats, each a past winner of the popular street race, had plaques commemorating their winning history added to the Long Beach Motorsports Walk of Fame. Both drivers are competing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship this weekend for Team Penske on the 1.968-mile temporary street course.

Castroneves raced Indy car 13 times at Long Beach between 1998 and 2017, scoring a victory in 2001 and sitting on the pole three straight times from 2015-17. The 42-year-old Brazilian holds the track lap record of 1 minute, 6.2254 seconds (106.980 mph) set last year in Verizon P1 Award qualifying.

“It’s an honor, no question,” said Castroneves, the three-time Indianapolis 500 winner who will return to the Verizon IndyCar Series next month for the two races at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “Just seeing the names of people who are already a part of the Wall of Fame, it just blows my mind away. In 1996, when I came over here in Indy Lights, my first race ever (was at Long Beach). I wasn’t even thinking about it and, all of a sudden, I’m being inducted and being a part of amazing sport legends.”

Montoya won the 1999 Long Beach race – his first of 15 Indy car wins – on his way to the CART season championship. The two-time Indianapolis 500 winner drove in five Indy car races at Long Beach.

The 42-year-old from Bogota, Colombia, enjoyed following his boss, team owner Roger Penske, who was added to the Walk of Fame in 2016.

“It’s unbelievable,” Montoya said. “I came here two years ago to see Roger get inducted. It was huge, huge names here. You don’t realize when you race and you win races, you never do it to be here. To get recognized for everything that you’ve done, it’s amazing.”

Hinchcliffe aiming to become first Long Beach repeat winner since 2007

James Hinchcliffe is riding a wave of momentum heading into the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach crown. The defending race winner heads into the weekend sixth in the standings, finishing fourth and sixth in this season’s opening two races.

“The whole team is running high after how we’ve run the first two rounds,” Hinchcliffe said Thursday at the Long Beach media luncheon. “Phoenix we had marked on our schedule as a race that we would just suffer through because it’s not been good for us historically at SPM. To have the performance that we’ve had there was a huge boost for everybody there.

"We’re back at a street course and everything went well for us at St. Pete. We’re just going to keep plugging away, keep doing what we’re doing.”

While he is the defending winner, Hinchcliffe acknowledged that this year is another race and his goal is to keep pushing hard.

“Last year is last year, it doesn’t really mean anything now, especially given the change in the car,” he said. “We’re just going to ride on what we’ve been doing this year and just try and keep pushing. Everybody’s going to keep learning and get better as the year goes on and we can’t be any different.”

Long Beach race president likes INDYCAR direction.

Jim Michaelian has many reasons to be excited this weekend.

The president and CEO of the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach noted that ticket sales are trending to break last year’s attendance of 183,000 people. Those numbers rank Long Beach as the most successful street race on the calendar.

“We are on a roll here,” Michaelian said. “The last four years have shown steady increases. We had our biggest crowd in the modern era here last year at 183,000. If that trend continues, we could be well above that this year.”

Michaelian, who has worked with the grand prix since its inception in 1975, sees growth within INDYCAR as well. He feels that the series’ latest TV deal with NBC Sports, along with the universal body kit on all cars this season, have brought new life.

“There is a lot of momentum behind it,” he said. “We’ll see what the distribution is with the network package behind it and the new NBC programs. It will be beneficial to be all on one network. The new car has proven to be really competitive and, most importantly, it requires a lot of drivability. The race driver is back in charge.”