The 2012 Long Beach Grand Prix got off to an auspicious start, with Josef Newgarden crashing into the boards on the first turn of the race. Since then there have been three more yellow flag cautions involving Sebastian Bourdais, Marco Andretti, and Katherine Legge ending up in the tires and a Scott Dixon technical issue. On the second and third yellow flag cautions drivers were allowed to pit, giving opportunity to all sorts of strategies.
The second full course yellow of the day came when Bourdais simply lost control of his car flying into the tires. Justin Wilson was leading at the time, and came in to pit. Going back into green the leader was Takuma Sato with Dario Franchitti right behind him. This green lasted about two minutes before the next incident.
Marco Andretti driving the #26 RC Cola car had a death defying experience when trying to pass Graham Rahal. Rahal used what Andretti described as a chop to stop Andretti from passing, which lifted Andretti's left tires six feet off the ground and his whole car into a tailspin. Both drivers were penalized with Andretti taking the bigger penalty. Rahal's tail spoiler was taken off by Andretti's car.
Katherine Legge ended up in the tires at a different portion of the track. After these two incidents were cleared and the race went back to green, it immediately went to yellow again as Scott Dixon's car stalled on the track. Dixon is number two in the Driver's Championship standings, now out of the race with a technical issue.