Gears will shift at Long Beach

Both by design and happenstance, the 34th Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach on Sunday will symbolize the past, present and future of American open-wheel auto racing.

The race through the city’s downtown streets will be the last sanctioned by the Champ Car World Series, which made the dramatic decision this year to reunite with the Indy Racing League after a 12-year split.

The newly merged series will continue under the IRL’s IndyCar Series banner and already has held two races. But a scheduling conflict this weekend -- the IndyCar Series had committed to race in Japan -- forced the two to separate one final time.

So this year’s Long Beach race will celebrate its years in Champ Car and its predecessor, Championship Auto Racing teams, or CART, which is what that series was called when the two sides parted. Long Beach winners over those years included such legendary drivers as Mario Andretti and Al Unser Jr., along with four-time winner Paul Tracy and Sebastien Bourdais, who won the last three races before moving this season to Formula One.

But this year’s event isn’t just about nostalgia. It’s also a key race in the championship ambitions of those Champ Car drivers who have migrated to the IRL, because they’ll still earn IndyCar Series points based on their Long Beach finishes.

They include 19-year-old Graham Rahal, who stunned the sport two weeks ago by becoming the youngest winner in U.S. open-wheel racing history with a victory on another street course, in St. Petersburg, Fla. Rahal, the son of 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal, now wants to add a victory in Long Beach, where his father finished second four times but never won.

“It is possible that we could leave [Long Beach] leading points,” said Graham Rahal, who drives for the Newman-Haas-Lanigan team co-owned by actor Paul Newman. “It’s important to get a good finish.”

Coincidentally, Bobby Rahal -- who co-owns his own IndyCar Series team with television’s David Letterman -- is grand marshal of Sunday’s race.

It will be a busy weekend for the elder Rahal. Bobby Rahal’s IndyCar team will race in Japan on Saturday (tonight, Pacific time), and then he will fly back to Long Beach.

The Long Beach circuit is on the 1.97-mile, 11-turn course on the city’s seaside streets that includes a long stretch of Shoreline Drive.

The Rahals represent the future of open-wheel racing. After Sunday, they will be racing in the same series, which will return to Long Beach next year with other IndyCar drivers such as Dan Wheldon, Helio Castroneves, Tony Kanaan, Danica Patrick and Marco Andretti.

“There is a chance now that [the series] is going to get back and be a big series like it used to be” before the Champ Car-IRL split, said Bruno Junqueira, who drives for Dale Coyne Racing. “We’re back to the future.”

But this year, Long Beach will be decided by a field of about 20 drivers from the Champ Car side alone, including some who aren’t moving to the IndyCar Series, such as Alex Tagliani of Walker Racing and David Martinez of Forsythe-Pettit Racing.

“There are definitely mixed feelings competing for the last time; it’s nice to be racing, but with regret,” Tagliani said.

Another driver is Jimmy Vasser, who won Long Beach (and the series title) in 1996 before retiring to become a team owner. He’s coming out of retirement to drive this race for KV Racing Technology, the team he co-owns.

Long Beach uses a two-day qualifying format for the grand prix. The driver with the fastest lap today is at least assured a spot on the two-car front row, and Saturday’s second round determines the pole-sitter. The weekend also includes several support series that race on the same course, and all start practicing and/or qualifying today.

Saturday features a race between celebrities and racers driving identical Toyota Scions, a drifting challenge and a race of the American Le Mans Series. Drivers in the celebrity race include former NBA player John Salley and NHRA drag racer Tony Pedregon. The ALMS has four classes, including two with exotic prototype cars from Audi, Porsche and Acura, and two others with cars such as the Ferrari F430 and Chevrolet Corvette.

Sunday includes not only the Champ Car race at 1 p.m., but also the Atlantic open-wheel series, another drifting challenge and an SCCA Speed GT sports-car race.

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james.peltz@latimes.com