{"id":278,"date":"2014-04-04T19:29:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-04T19:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/sports\/hollywood-stars-announced-for-long-beach-grand-prix-pro-celebrity-race\/"},"modified":"2014-04-04T19:29:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-04T19:29:00","slug":"hollywood-stars-announced-for-long-beach-grand-prix-pro-celebrity-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/hollywood-stars-announced-for-long-beach-grand-prix-pro-celebrity-race","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood Stars Announced for Long Beach Grand Prix Pro\/Celebrity Race"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Oscar-winning actors, tv show hosts, radio personalities and soap opera stars are among the celebrities who will compete against one-time NASCAR and Indy car drivers at the\u00a0Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach next weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Now in its 23rd year, the Pro\/Celebrity Race held annually on Saturday of the racing weekend, is a charity event that since its inception had raised $2M for\u00a0Racing for Kids, a national program supporting children&#8217;s hospitals. This year&#8217;s crop of participants took to the track Wednesday to practice driving the 210-horsepower Scion FR-S race cars before the race next week, several of whom had never before driven such a souped up vehicle.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Nick Wechsler, who plays Jack Porter on ABC&#8217;s <em>Revenge<\/em>, said he had never driven a manual transmission before he agreed to participate in the race.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was dragging my feet because I didn&#8217;t know if this was going to be my thing,&#8221; Wechsler told the media. &#8220;Now that I have done it, it is my thing &#8230; I love it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Oscar-winner Adrien Brody, Olympic track star Carmelita Jeter and\u00a0Phil Keoghan,\u00a0the host of <em>The Amazing Race <\/em>are some of the other high-profile participants this year who will go up against pro drivers such as former NASCAR racer Kyle Petty, Indy 500 winner Al Unser, Jr. and last year&#8217;s Pro\/Celebrity Race winner Rutledge Wood.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Other participants include: \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Eric Braeden, an Emmy Award-winning daytime star from\u00a0<em>The Young and the Restless<\/em> \u00a0<\/li>\n<li><em>High School Musical<\/em> co-star Corbin Bleu, who was also the first runner-up in the 2013 fall season of<em> Dancing with the Stars<\/em> \u00a0 \u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Brett Davern of MTV&#8217;s <em>Awkward<\/em> \u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Colin Egglesfield, who&#8217;s known for his roles in <em>Rizzoli &amp; Isles<\/em>, <em>The Client List<\/em> and <em>Melrose Place<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Cole Hauser, whose acting credits include <em>Transcendence<\/em>, <em>Olympus Has Fallen<\/em> and <em>A Good Day to Die Hard \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Tricia Helfer of\u00a0<em>Battlestar Galactica<\/em> and <em>Burn Notice \u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Vanessa Marcil, known for her roles on <em>General Hospital<\/em> and <em>Las Vegas<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Lisa Stanley, an entertainment reporter for K-EARTH 101 FM<\/li>\n<li>Max Thieriot of <em>Bates Motel\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Sam Witwer, who portrays vampire Aidan Waite on <em>Being Human<\/em>\u00a0 \u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Tickets to the Toytoa Grand Prix are available at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gplb.com\/.\">gplb.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oscar-winning actors, tv show hosts, radio personalities and soap opera stars are among the celebrities who will compete against one-time NASCAR and Indy car drivers at the\u00a0Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach next weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":16614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[52],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-grand-prix","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}