Derani Leads Opening Hour at Sebring

Pipo Derani led the 72nd running of Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Cadillac with one hour completed, while early drama struck some significant runners in GTD Pro and GTD.

Derani, piloting the No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac V-Series.R, held a lead of 0.689 seconds over the No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing machine of Sebastien Bourdais.

Bourdais moved into second place by passing the No. 40 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06 of Louis Deletraz at the race’s first restart.

The first caution came because of debris on track with some forty minutes completed, before which Derani led from Bourdais in a clean opening phase of the race for the GTP runners.

Both the No. 40 WTRAndretti Acura and the fourth-placed No. 24 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Philipp Eng moved into the top five during the stops after losing some ground early on.

Most notably, Eng pitted after 15 minutes with a slow puncture while Deletraz struggled somewhat in the opening hour and lost a handful of places in quick succession.

The No. 10 WTRAndretti Acura of Ricky Taylor ran fifth ahead of the No. 6 Porsche 963 of Mathieu Jaminet and Proton Competition’s Julien Andlauer.

Connor De Phillippi held eighth for BMW M Team RLL, with Phil Hanson and Felipe Nasr ninth and tenth after losing ground in the pits.

The No. 63 Lamborghini SC63 brought up the rear in class with Matteo Cairoli at the wheel.

In LMP2, the No. 52 Inter Europol by PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports Oreca 07 Gibson of Nick Boulle led from the two United Autosports machine of Ben Keating and Nick Goldburg.

However, Boulle was ordered to serve a drive through penalty for failure to adhere to the minimum full refueling time and is set to drop back.

Jack Hawksworth led GTD Pro from pole aboard the No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 ahead of the No. 23 The Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Mario Farnbacher.

Madison Snow held third in the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3, with fourth place in the hands of the No. 19 Iron Lynx Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 of Jordan Pepper.

There was early drama in the GT ranks when Davide Rigon spun aboard the No. 62 Risi Competizione Ferrari 296 GT3 coming out of Turn 1 on the opening lap.

The Italian veered across the pack twice but no major incident ensued, although there was contact between a pair of McLaren 720S GT3 Evos in the melee.

The No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports car of Oliver Jarvis lost 15 laps as a result of left rear damage, while Inception Racing dropped away as a result of suffering a puncture in the incident.

Elsewhere, the No. 32 Korthoff/Preston Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo succumbed to engine issues after running in the top three in GTD in the opening exchanges.

That class is led by the No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus in the hands of Parker Thompson.