Photo: Mike Levitt/IMSA
***Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti scored its first victory of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTP era in Saturday’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Cadillac, breaking an 11-race winless streak dating back to Road America 2022.
***It marked the team’s first WeatherTech Championship win since forming its partnership with Andretti Global. The victory for the No. 40 Acura ARX-06 of Louis Deletraz, Jordan Taylor and Colton Herta was additionally the team’s 50th in top-series IMSA competition.
***Wayne Taylor returned to victory lane at Sebring for the first time since the team’s one and only other previous win in 2017. “The most amazing part was that it was such a team effort,” he said. “You could see it at the beginning of the race, the middle of the race and then, at the end of the race, especially, you saw the blue car, the red car and everyone hugging each other. It was really one unit.”
***It was the first overall Sebring win for the Acura nameplate but second for Honda Racing Corporation USA (formerly Honda Performance Development) following Tequila Patron ESM’s triumph in the 2016 race with a Honda-powered Ligier JS P2 LMP2 car.
***Nine of the 11 GTP entries led laps in the race, with all cars except the No. 24 Team RLL BMW M Hybrid V8 and WeatherTech Championship debuting No. 63 Iron Lynx Lamborghini SC63 enjoying time out front. The No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V-Series led a race-high 97 laps.
***Porsche Penske Motorsport saw its win streak in international endurance racing competition end, with its Rolex 24 at Daytona-winning No. 7 Porsche 963 of Felipe Nasr, Dane Cameron and Matt Campbell finishing third despite having suspected late-race suspension issues.
***The No. 7 Porsche had to complete a full power cycle on its first pit stop because of an issue with its data logger, while the No. 6 entry finished two laps behind in ninth when Nick Tandy sustained left-rear damage after colliding with a GT car in the sixth hour. It was followed by a left-rear puncture by Fred Makowiecki after previous contact with the No. 66 Gradient Racing Acura NSX GT3 Evo22 of Katherine Legge.
***Porsche LMDh factory director Urs Kuratle said: “It was definitely a difficult race for us. Initially, we were hampered by minor setbacks but we systematically fought our way back. Then tire damage threw our No. 6 a long way back. No. 7 at least finished on the podium – that was good. Others, however, did better still. Our customer teams put in strong drives but unfortunately were not rewarded correspondingly.”
***Julien Andlauer in the No. 5 Proton Competition Porsche challenged for third with Nasr on the final restart before driving off-course. The Frenchman had a second off-track moment that relegated the customer entry to eighth. “We were in fourth place and even fighting for the podium,” he said. “But then there was contact with a GT in lapped traffic. After that, I struggled to bring the Porsche home. Attacking was unfortunately out of the question.”
***The Proton Porsche was forced to serve a drive-through penalty for exceeding powertrain parameters. It came after two previous warnings.
***JDC-Miller Motorsports’ Porsche, meanwhile, retired in the sixth hour following a left-side driveshaft issue.
***WTRAndretti’s No. 10 Acura salvaged a fifth place finish after initially going a lap down to fix an oil leak while under the race’s ninth full course caution. Filipe Albuquerque moved the car into the lead when the right bank of the exhaust was smoking, with the issue not appearing to have affected performance.
***Ricky Taylor said: “I think we would have definitely been fighting for the win. It just wasn’t our day with that oil leak. Had we had the oil leak earlier in the race, we would have been able to recover. But that late in the race, with all the pro drivers in the car, there wasn’t a chance to get a yellow to bounce back.”
***Matteo Cairoli, who made his Twelve Hours of Sebring debut after previously starting in the 1000 Miles of Sebring three times, called the intensity of the WeatherTech Championship event “way worse” in comparison. “The traffic gets completely mad and you have to really look as much as possible around you because anything can happen at any time,” he told Sportscar365.
***The No. 40 WTRAndretti and No. 7 Porsche Penske crews are now tied for the lead of the GTP drivers’ championship entering next month’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. Acura, Porsche and Cadillac, meanwhile, are remarkably all tied on 710 points at the head of the manufacturers’ standings.
***Era Motorsport became the first team since the Grand-Am/American Le Mans Series merger to win both the Rolex 24 and Sebring in LMP2 class in the same year.
***Ryan Dalziel, Dwight Merriman and Connor Zilisch hold a commanding 127-point lead in the LMP2 drivers’ championship entering the next round of the season at Watkins Glen International in June.
***The No. 33 Sean Creech Motorsport Ligier JS P217 Gibson of Joao Barbosa, Lance Willsey and Jonny Edgar recorded a fourth place class finish, having capitalized on late-race contact for the No. 04 CrowdStrike by APR and No. 74 Riley Oreca 07 Gibsons, among other dramas.
***Team owner Sean Creech said: “We were two laps down but at no time did a single team member back off the gas. We have a huge amount of information to sort through from this entire weekend but today, we definitely placed a good number of positives into the information database going forward. We set laps close to the Orecas around us, so we know we are moving in the right direction.”
***The No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 has now won three of the four existing Michelin Endurance Cup events, following its GTD Pro class victories at Petit Le Mans 2022 and Watkins Glen 2023. A fifth event, a six-hour race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, has been added to this year’s calendar.
***Jack Hawksworth, Ben Barnicoat and Kyle Kirkwood overcame a drive-through penalty on the car’s first stop after Hawksworth slightly brushed one of his crew members.
***Kirkwood later said he had “never been so nervous in his life” watching the conclusion of the battle in GTD Pro. “It got to the point where Ben and I would literally have to walk off the stand and not watch because of how nerve-wracking it was, watching Jack absolutely send it on every single car that was out there,” he said.
***Paul Miller Racing’s Bryan Sellers and Madison Snow effectively hold the lead of the season-long GTD Pro standings, with Risi Competitione’s Daniel Serra, Davide Rigon and James Calado only set to contest the five Endurance Cup races. Sellers and Snow are seven points ahead of the Vasser Sullivan duo of Hawksworth and Barnicoat.
***Winward Racing’s Philip Ellis and Russell Ward are 180 points clear of their nearest full-season competitors in GTD, meanwhile, after sweeping the so-called ’36 Hours of Florida in their No. 57 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.
***It marked the fourth consecutive GTD Pro and/or GTD victory for Mercedes-AMG, dating back to Indianapolis 2023, with Winward having won three of the four in GTD.
***The No. 65 Multimatic Motorsports Ford Mustang GT3 of Joey Hand, Dirk Mueller and Fred Vervisch was handed two mechanical black flags for tire operational requirements in the closing stages of the race, requiring additional pit stops for tire changes.
***The factory Mustang GT3s finished seventh and eighth in class, ahead of both Corvette Racing with Pratt Miller Motorsports Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs, which were caught up in multiple late-race incidents, including contact that knocked the No. 3 car of Dani Juncadella out of a likely podium result.
***Juncadella was climatically challenged during his triple stint, which took place in the heat of the afternoon. “The A/C was broken in the car, no drinks bottle in the beginning of that triple, so I’ve never been that dehydrated after,” Juncadella told Sportscar365.
***The Spaniard added that he wasn’t originally planned to take over the No. 3 Corvette to the flag, but was called upon late to take over from Antonio Garcia for the final stages. “I got a little massage, I was having dinner,” he recalled. “I was already relaxed to watch my teammates go at it at the end and then I got a call, ‘We want you in the car for the last two hours.’ Thank god I didn’t have a beer.”
***The No. 17 AWA Corvette was the race’s first retirement, after just two laps, due to alternator issues.
***Lars Kern revealed on social media that his No. 13 AWA Corvette suffered numerous mechanical issues during the race, including both the front and rear sway bars becoming disconnected, as revealed by post-race technical inspection. The team also encountered a malfunctioning air conditioning system during the race.
***All four Corvettes were allowed to start the race with “additional diffuser reinforcement” that initially resulted in the entries losing all of its qualifying times due to non-compliance of the the car’s homologation.
***Brazilian video game developer Reiza Studios announced a partnership with IMSA on Saturday, allowing for the use licensed content for racing simulation title Automobilista 2. Three of the current GTP class cars (Porsche 963, BMW M Hybrid V8 and Cadillac V-Series.R) have been available in the game since December.
***IMSA President John Doonan revealed during a mid-race interview on IMSA Radio that Saturday’s race reached an all-time attendance record. Per NASCAR/IMSA policy, attendance figures are not published. It marks the second consecutive event with record attendance following January’s season-opening Rolex 24.
Davey Euwema & Jonathan Grace contributed to this report
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