High-tech autos that usually roar along race tracks and street courses were silently parked on Saturday morning near Cottonwood Church in Los Alamitos. Wreaths, flowers and photos mirrored the abundance of love and appreciation that family, friends, local leaders and the racing community felt for Jim Michaelian.
Loved ones, business partners and community members attended the celebration of life for the late president and CEO of the Long Beach Grand Prix Association.
Michaelian, high-profile helmsman of the iconic race for a quarter-century, died suddenly on Saturday, March 21, just a few weeks away from the final event he planned to oversee before his scheduled retirement.
The memorial began with gospel music and words from Pastor Eric Nelson. The more than 200 guests in attendance listened attentively, including Michaelian’s wife, Mary, and two sons, Bob and Mike.
Bob and Mike Michaelain shared personal stories and experiences with their father and outlined some of the core principles that shaped who he was to them and to many others he helped throughout his life and career.
Those principles included his willingness to go above and beyond to help others; his love, energy and passion for family, friends and the racing community; his physical toughness and mental fortitude during times of distress; and his deep, enduring faith.
“Dad, you are an incredible father for me and a friend to many here, and you will be greatly missed,” Mike Michaelian said. “You were humble about your many accomplishments, and you lived a full life of passion, energy, and love. Your legacy is witnessed by all of us who admired and loved you in return.”
Both sons shared memories about Michaelian’s love for the family’s Sunday dinners. For 56 years, the family came together every Sunday night to share a meal and talk about current events, politics, religion, the business of racing, and the small and big things in their lives.
“In the last few years, Dad said something that I think stayed with us. He said the most important accomplishment in his life was Sunday dinners,” Bob Michaelian said. “This is the man who helped create the Grand Prix, founded a television production company, ran a F1 race in the Caesar’s Palace parking lot, who took the reins of the race during the times it was most turbulent, and pulled it forward, and at the end of his life, when you asked him what mattered most, the answer was Sunday dinner.”
“Sunday dinners were just an analogy for the family that he and Mom had built,” Bob Michaelian added, “that was the most precious thing to him.”
Both sons also spoke about the legacy their father has left on the racing world and the Long Beach community.
Last year, Michaelian celebrated the landmark 50th anniversary of the race, now dubbed the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. Michaelian’s last day as president and CEO was scheduled to be June 30.
Michaelian had been involved in the race since its inception in 1975. He saw it grow from a modest curiosity — with some people initially calling founder Chris Pook’s idea for a downtown street race “crazy” — to a defining motorsports event that draws around 200,000 people annually.
It is widely considered the second-most prestigious IndyCar Series race, behind only the beloved Indianapolis 500.
Shortly before the IndyCar Series drivers started their engines for the 51st Grand Prix in April, race officials and local leaders honored Michaelian during a public tribute near the familiar street course.
“I first met Jim in June of 1975 on an elevator at the Port of Long Beach, where we were headed for a dreaded Coastal Commission hearing,” Grand Prix founder Chris Pook said during the event, with Michaelian’s wife, Mary, and children Mike and Bob standing behind him. “He had heard about a Monte Carlo-style street race being proposed for Long Beach and wanted to get involved.”
“He led the company successfully through the IndyCar wars,” Pook said. “He earned yours, the city’s and the sponsors’ respect and rebuilt the attendance only to be knocked down again by the COVID pandemic from 2019 to 2020. And, once again, he rebuilt the company as witnessed by your presence here today in what seem to me to be record numbers.”
Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson concluded April’s pre-race ceremony, emphasizing the impact Michaelian and the race he helmed has had on the city. “As our dear friend Jim Michaelian would say,” the mayor said, “‘there’s nowhere in the world where you will find a 200-mile-an-hour beach party, but here at the Long Beach Grand Prix.’”
Under his leadership, the Grand Prix became Long Beach’s biggest annual party, enjoyable for everyone from casual fans to hardcore motorsports lovers — and even the competitors. He also led the event through some challenging times, notably the COVID-19 pandemic.
He got to celebrate his accomplishments last year during the 50th anniversary, when, on the eve of the event, he was inducted into the Motorsports Walk of Fame outside the Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center.
Michaelian’s tireless efforts to promote, and sometimes defend, the annual event truly paid off, with the Grand Prix’s audience continuing to build over the years. For the past several years since the pandemic, the event’s attendance numbers have increased annually — with the 2025 weekend bringing in a record 197,000 visitors.
The race, since its founding, has also become a crucial cornerstone of the local and regional economy. In 2024, the event generated about $100 million worth of economic impact in Southern California.
Related: Here are some key moments from Jim Michaelian’s Grand Prix of Long Beach career
After the 2026 Grand Prix, Michaelian was scheduled to transition into a new role with Penske Entertainment, which acquired the Long Beach street race in November 2024 from its longtime owner, Gerald R. Forsythe. His death cut short that transition, but officials said he was a huge help to his hand-picked successor, Jim Liaw, the former general manager of Performance Racing Industry and a pioneer in the popular Drift racing promotion.
“It’s definitely not easy shoes to fill,” Liaw said during this year’s Grand Prix prep, adding that he spent many weeks with Michaelian going over the operation of this year’s race before his death. “I wanted to learn as much as I could from Jim,” Liaw said. “We went over everything from operations to reaching out into the community to promote the race.”
Liaw said his predecessor had built a strong staff to operate the race. “I am very fortunate to have that staff to lean on and learn from,” he said.
Truly a household name in Long Beach, Michaelian was well known for his passion for auto racing, a love he stoked ever since he was a child, learning how to drive a car on the backroads of his grandmother’s vineyard in Fresno during summers.
As a teenager back at his home in Alhambra, he graduated to driving hot rods. His love of fast cars brought with it speeding tickets through his college days at UCLA and his early years working at different jobs.
“Driving around Southern California, I got my fair share of tickets,” Michaelian told Press-Telegram columnist Rich Archbold in an interview a few years ago.
In fact, instead of driving a car to a key meeting in 1975 to hear about a proposal to start a Formula 1 Grand Prix race on Long Beach streets, Michaelian, then 32, rode a bike. It’s not that he didn’t want to drive a car to the meeting at the Port of Long Beach. He couldn’t. His license had been suspended — because of the speeding tickets.
But nothing was going to keep him from hearing about this proposed race, the brainchild of Pook, an Englishman who had come to the United States and was running a travel agency in downtown Long Beach.
In a book by Gordon Kirby, “Chris Pook & the History of the Long Beach GP,” Pook rode up with two colleagues in an elevator to the sixth floor of the port building for a meeting of the Coastal Commission.
“They were joined at the last minute by a short man with long dark hair,” Kirby wrote. “He arrived on his bicycle and stood it up on its rear wheel as he joined them in the elevator.”
That man with a bike was Michaelian, who didn’t know Pook then, but he interviewed with him two days later. During that interview, Michaelian asked Pook if there was anything he could do to help the race project move forward.
Michaelian had a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s degree in business administration. It was a time when many young men were going into engineering because of the U.S. space race with the Soviet Union, which had launched Sputnik, the first satellite put in orbit by humans.
But Michaelian decided he wasn’t cut out to save the world as a space engineer. He tried different jobs, including working for a motor supplier and operating some bookstores.
Nothing really interested him until he heard about Pook’s Grand Prix proposal. Pook was looking for a chief financial officer to manage the financial operations of the hoped-for first Grand Prix.
Michaelian eventually became CEO and president when Pook left to take a racing job in Indianapolis.
During an interview earlier this year, Michaelian acknowledged the impact the race has had on the city over five decades.
“Looking back, the race changed the image of Long Beach,” he said. “Back then, as a Navy town, it was in the shadow of Los Angeles. The Grand Prix created a new vitality in the city, which has grown where we had more than 200,000 attendants last year.”
Michaelian was fiercely proud of the event and how it evolved.
“We wanted to provide an exciting racing event,” he said earlier this year, “and one that was also entertaining and safe for everyone.
“It’s been a genuine thrill to have this opportunity I’ve had,” Michaelian continued. “It was the opportunity of a lifetime. I have no regrets.”
Staff writer Rich Archbold contributed to this report.