The sun is shining in Long Beach this morning and the forecast is for temperatures in the mid-60s for today’s Patron ALMS at Long Beach race.

Engineers crave data and drivers thrive on track time, but a frustrating Friday saw rain hit the only practice session and qualifying later abandoned.

There is no Saturday warm-up session. The ALMS teams will rely on prior experience, the limited data, if any, they collected Friday and educated guesses as they plot car set-ups and race strategies.

The starting grid is set based upon ALMS championship points. That means a knock-on hit for cars that encountered trouble at Sebring like the #17 Falken Porsche, # 01 ESM Ferrari, #45 Flying Lizard Porsche, the new #23 Lotus Evora and the #007 Aston Martin GT. They will start in positions 23-27 respectively.

Today’s two-hour race begins at 4:30pm (PDT) with a live broadcast on ESPN2 and live streaming on ESPN3.