Newport Beach Drivers Racing Sunday in Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach

James Sofronas drove to what he called a “hometown win” in the Pirelli World Challenge at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach in 2009. The Newport Beach resident believes he has a good shot at adding a second victory at the prestigious event Sunday.

“Our goal is to win and I expect to win,” Sofronas said.

Sofronas, 42, was fourth fastest in his GMG Porsche 911 GTS in practices held Friday and Saturday, with a fast lap that averaged 85.304 mph. Qualifying begins at 8:25 a.m. Sunday and the one-hour race is scheduled to start at 4:15 p.m.

“I feel pretty good,” Sofronas said. “We’ve just been setting up the car to find a nice balance that will work for the race. We’ll make some brake adjustments and a small shock change, but we’re close. Our fastest lap was at the end of the session [Saturday] and it was comfortable.”

Sofronas’ Global Motorsports Group has five cars entered in the World Challenge premier GT class including Brent Holden of Newport Beach. Holden, 54, was 14^th in practice at 82.735 mph. GMG also will have Dino Crescenti and Tomy Drissi in Porsches and Bill Ziegler in a Mitsubushi EVO in GTS.

Sofronas believes he’ll be strongest in runs that aren’t interrupted by cautions. He likes the consistent speed in his car.

“If we’re a green race, we’ll be really strong,”

Sofronas has four career victories in World Challenge. His first win was at New Jersey Motorsports Park in 2008, followed by Long Beach and Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, Calif., in 2009 and Mid-Ohio in 2010. Sofronas was second in the championship in 2009, third in 2010 and fourth in 2008.

The 2011 championship began March 26-27 with a pair of street races at St. Petersburg, Fla. Sofronas finished third in the season-opener and second. He’s second in the points, trailing Patrick Long 322-233. Long won both races at St. Petersburg and is entered at Long Beach.

“It’s [Long Beach] a big race for us,” Sofronas said. “We’ve got clients, local sponsors and family and friends here because of the location.”

Sofronas uses racing as a marketing tool for GMG, a high performance tuning facility in Santa Ana.

 “This was a race we wanted to win for obvious reasons – you want to win in front of the hometown crowd,” Sofronas said in 2009. “We’ve been coming here for the last three years and had top fives every time, but finally getting the win is so gratifying.

“Having GMG right down the street, we’re lucky to have a lot of clients here and a lot of our cars on display. It gave a chance for people to see that we’re not as much a race team as a Porsche prep shop. We do a good amount of racing, but we do a lot more on the street tuning side. The racing is the branding. It gives us the image of racing on Sunday and selling on Monday.”