I’ve been to Sebring twice so far, and it is a truly magical place. As some who have seen the spectacle have been known to say “I went to a Spring Break party, and Audi won”. Well, for the first time in a long time, Audi’s LMP isn’t even there, due to the rule changes that make up the United Sports Car Championship. For this year, the battle will be between the LMP2 cars and the Daytona prototypes.

The track at Sebring is just one of those places that has history, like Daytona, Indianapolis, Watkins Glen, Le Mans, Spa, or Monza, you can feel the weight of the past bearing down on your shoulders as soon as you drive into the track.

Leading up to the race, there were 66 cars entered. In night practice, the #18 Porsche GTD car of Muehlner Motorsport suffered a heavy crash, and the team chose to withdraw the car from the race, bringing that total down to 65.

The second Park Place motorsports car ran into some issues with IMSA issuing new driver classifications, 

In qualifying, the Turner Motorsports BMW Z4 GT3 had secured the GTD pole. In preparation for morning warm ups, the Turner boys were a few minutes late getting their car out to grid, and as such, suffered a penalty that forced them to start from the pit lane. This promoted Leh Keen in the Alex Job Porsche to the GTD lead at the drop of the green. Exacerbating issues for Turner, they also earned an infraction (presumably excessive speed in the pit lane) on their first lap, and were given a drive-through penalty at the end of lap 1.

At the start of the race, the #3 Corvette suffered from a bit of jockeying for position, and crunched its front bumper. The driver’s side fender was pushed back into the door just a bit, and the team was worried about possible issues with driver changes. 

From there, things were relatively quiet for a while until an LMPC car spun and caught its splitter on a curb with his rear wheels in the Florida sand, quietly spinning to no avail. This brought out a full-course caution about 20 minutes in.

At around the 1 Hour mark, things started heating up… Literally.  Ben Keating’s GTD SRT Viper GT3 suffered a fuel leak which ignited a fire. Thankfully Keating was relatively quick in extricating himself from the car, only to watch it burn to the ground. As the car owner, he’ll have until the next GTD race at Laguna Seca to get things ready with a new chassis.

From the yellow, going back to green, it was Andy Meyrick in the Deltawing leading the field back to the flag. The car was a bit slow getting off the final turn, and bunched the field coming to green. He held his own against the other prototypes, but was eventually repassed. With a little bit of luck, and some good fuel/tire management strategy, the D-wing could place very well here today.

The GTLM battle has, so far, been absolutely phenomenal. Prior to the caution for the fire, Patrick Long’s #912 Porsche GTLM car led from the pole. Since everyone had pitted under caution, there has been a thrust and parry battle between the Porsches, BMWs, the Risi Ferrari, and the #4 Corvette. 

The Mazda prototypes are still struggling. They, so far, have not suffered the failures they did at Daytona, but they are not much quicker. So far, the faster of the two cars has managed a 2:05 fastest lap, while most GTLM cars are sub-2:00, and even the top half of the GTD field is faster than them. The average prototype 1:54 to 1:55 range. Mazda, I like you, man, but if you’re going to speed things up, you need to stop worrying about using “stock road car components” in your engines, and make something that allows your prototype to keep up with the field. The engine is said to be 70% stock components. Slow and unreliable is not the image you want to place in the consumers’ minds when they thing “Skyactiv Diesel”.

During the second round of pit stops, the #56 BMW suffered an issue with the door during a driver change, and was forced to pit again. While that was going on, the #911 Porsche was collected in a Prototype Challenge spin, gaining some right front damage that caused tire rub, pitting again to fix that. The GTLM Porsche damage has required a new front fascia and inner fender liner. The car was in the pits for several laps, and has fallen well down the order.

In that same period, the second placed GTD AF Corsa Ferrari spun into the outside barrier at the final turn, getting away without too much issue, a TRG Aston Martin spun without contact, and two other PC cars pirouetted. It didn’t appear to be fluids or debris on the track, as all of the spins were at different corners. The issue, it is presumed, was that these cars were on cold tires with new drivers behind the wheel.

The Honda Turbo Daytona Prototype of Starworks retired at about an hour and a half into the race with severe overheating issues.

 

After suffering a massive wreck at Daytona, the Risi Competizione rallied like crazy to prepare for the 12 Hours of Sebring. Lots of long nights, expensive shipping bills, a new chassis from Michelotto, and a ton of work had them with a brand new (untested) car for the Sebring 12 Hours. They weren’t ever really prepared for a victory with unprepared equipment, but you never know until you know. Matteo Malucelli, at Daytona, was absolutely run over by a Daytona Prototype, and that incident can’t really be called his fault. At Sebring, Malucelli was again involved in an incident, and this one was 100% his fault.

After suffering a spin into the barriers, Matteo chose a VERY poor moment to rejoin the track, jumping out in front of a pair of GTD cars. One car split to his right, and the other car, the MOMO NGT Porsche of Christina Nielsen tried to split out to the Ferrari’s left. Unfortunately, Malucelli swung out wide and caught the rear wheel of Nielsen’s Porsche, tearing the rear suspension out from the car’s right hand side. It was an ugly incident that could easily have been avoided.

 The #56 BMW was also caught up in this incident and crunched the front of its car heavily. They have been running in and out of the pits trying to stay in touch with the class, but the damage even affected the exhaust headers and takes the car down and out.  They are now several laps down. There is still time to make it up, but it is highly unlikely that things will be fixed well enough in pit lane to get them back on pace.

Max Angelelli in the #10 Daytona Prototype pitted at a yellow flag period with the lane closed.  As such, he was issued a “Stop and hold 30 seconds” penalty by IMSA.

Leaders at the 4 hour mark are eligible for points in the North American Endurance Championship.  Those points went to the 02 Chip Ganassi Racing Daytona Prototype, the 52 PR1 LMPC, the #91 Viper in GTLM, and the resurgent Turner Motorsport BMW Z4 in GTD.

About 7 minutes after winning those points in PC, the PR1 car ran headlong into a crash already in progress and was knocked out of the race. The #38 PC car of Performance Tech Motorsports ran wide coming out onto the start/finish straight and ran into the grey, sliding the car into the tire barrier with the left side. The tires bounced the 38 back into the path of the following #52. A red flag period ensued stopping the field on the Ulmann straight, but luckily both drivers were A-okay. It seems like the PC class is trying to destroy itself. From the debris of the crash, the #3 picked up debris and suffered a left rear puncture from 7th in class.

 After nearly an hour under yellow/red/yellow conditions, coming back to green, three GTD cars were involved in an incident at Turn 17 involving the GB Autosport Porsche, the Fall Line Audi, and a Spirit of Racing Ferrari.  All three cars pulled away, but the GB car lost another lap while stationary.  Cold tires, fatigued drivers, and a bit of oil-dri down there probably had something to do with it.

The 8Star Motorsports LMPC car spun on its own and was sitting stationary with traffic feeding through on both sides of it facing the wrong way. As the driver attempted to get the car moving again, it moved right into the path of the Turner BMW. Bad luck BMW clipped the 8Star car, and both drove straight to the pits for repairs. There are now only 3 LMPC cars that have not suffered major damage, and have maintained the lead lap in class.

Just before the 5 hour mark, with Mike Rockenfeller behind the wheel, the #90 Spirit of Daytona DP engine stopped on the Ulmann straight and ground to a halt just a few hundred yards from pit-lane, bringing out the 7th full-course yellow. The issue was stated to be with the throttle position sensor. During the yellow period, the #07 Mazda prototype suffered a rear wheel nut/axle failure, and was towed behind the wall.

Just before the 6 hour mark, two more PC cars were obliterated in another stupid move.  The leader in LMPC at the time, Alex Tagliani came around the corner and ran full speed and headlong into one of the Bar1 PC cars.  The Bar1 car had spun at the entry to the Ulmann straight, and re-entered the racing surface by spinning to get pointed in the right direction.  He spun the car too far, and ended up perpendicular to the flow of traffic right as Tags came around the corner. The resulting damage has taken both cars completely out of the race, and left the CORE Autosport car as the only PC car still in decent shape.

The result of the wreck caused the leading #10 Daytona Prototype to run wide into the grass and the second placed LMP2 of Ryan Dalziel moved into the lead as the yellow flag came out.  The 10 then had to pit to remove the grass from his radiator grille.

In 2013, only 4 yellow periods were run at Sebring, and this is among the highest this race has ever seen, and there are still 7 hours to go. 39 total laps in the first half of the race were run under yellow. That accounts for just about 1/3rd of the distance, but more than half of the time (3 hours and 16 minutes).

Leaders at the 6 hour mark –

 Prototype – #5 Extreme Speed Motorsports HPD ARX-03b – Ryan Dalziel (1st overall)

GT Le Mans – #912 Porsche North America Racing 911 RSR – Joerg Bergmeister (10th overall)

Prototype Challenge – #54 CORE Autosport Oreca FLM09 – Colin Braun (12th overall)

GT Daytona – #63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 458 Italia – Jeff Westphal (26th overall)

 

TL;DR version – This is a good race that has been plagued by caution. You really should watch the remaining 6 hours. Hopefully they’ll find a rhythm and the yellows will dissipate!

We’ll be back with a 12 hour update just after the finish around 10:15 PM ET.

Photos provided by IMSA.com

Bradley C. Brownell is an Editor with Hooniverse.com, but he also contributes to his own site “BavarianDrive“. Head over there for more of his work.