The ALMS teams and drivers are shooting blind in trying to plan car set-ups and strategies for today’s race on the 11 turn, 1.968-mile circuit through the streets of downtown Long Beach.

Pre-race track time was always going to be at premium for the second stop on the 2012 ALMS season with a single practice session scheduled early Friday morning, an afternoon qualifying session and no pre-race warm up on the schedule. Rain limited track time on Friday morning and then qualifying was abandoned due to rain.

Many of the cars had just a few laps of wet running on Friday and some drivers, including a few newcomers, will start the race without ever having taken a dry lap of the circuit

Experience is always a great help, but the data from past races at Long Beach may be of limited value as many teams, including the pre-race co-favorite Muscle Milk Honda and #16 Dyson Lola Mazda LMP 1 class prototypes are new cars for 2012.

Virtually the entire GT class is also running new cars and many, including the Flying Lizard Porsches, Corvette, and Extreme Speed Ferraris are on taller new 2012 tires.

One team strategist, who asked to remain anonymous said, “Our original race plan went out the window with the rain. We have our prior Long Beach data, but the fact is we are all going to be winging it a bit.”

The only teams that may have a bit of a data edge are the BMW Team RLL and Derrick Walker’s Falken Porsche. Bobby Rahal’s Rahal Letterman Lanigan IndyCar team and Ed Carpenter Racing’s IndyCar run by Walker may be able to offer a few bits of information from today’s IndyCar dry track sessions.