Daytona? Check. Sebring? Check. 36 Hours of Florida? Conquered. Triple Crown for an all-time legend? Complete. Porsche Penske Motorsport continued to put its stamp on the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with a win at the 73rd annual Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.
It was a seesaw battle for most of the race between the #7 Penske Porsche 963 and the #31 Cadillac Whelen V-Series.R, but ultimately it went the way of the same three drivers who stood victorious after January’s Rolex 24 At Daytona: Felipe Nasr, Laurens Vanthoor, and Nick Tandy.
Nasr’s first-lap dash from third to second on the grid set the table early on after the # 24 BMW of polesitter Dries Vanthoor got a penalty for a false start. The only adversity the factory Porsche team faced along the way was during an early Full Course Yellow at the end of the first hour: Both Penske Porsches planned to come into the pits, and were rudely greeted by a “Pit Entry Closed” sign instead, leaving them out of position.
Nasr would eventually grab control back, overtaking the #31 Whelen Cadillac just before half distance. The Cadillac got the lead back after a long green flag run came to an end during pit stops, but then with two hours and six minutes left, this time it was Tandy who lunged up the inside of Cadillac Whelen’s rookie Frederik Vesti at Sunset Bend to grab a lead that neither he nor Nasr would relinquish.
AJ Foyt, Hans Herrmann, Jackie Oliver, Hurley Haywood, Al Holbert, Andy Wallace, Mauro Baldi, Marco Werner, Timo Bernhard…and now Tandy becomes the tenth driver to win the 24 Hours of Daytona, the 12 Hours of Sebring, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans overall in their careers. (Phil Hill, Dan Gurney, and Jacky Ickx each won Daytona back when the race was shorter than 24 hours.)
Another win eluded the #6 Porsche Penske crew of Mathieu Jaminet, Matt Campbell, and Kevin Estre – but at least unlike Daytona, they could complete a Porsche 1-2 after finishing second, just 2.2 seconds off the win. Both teams drove flawlessly on the way to an incredible result – the perfect pick-me-up after Porsche lagged behind its standard in the WEC opener in Qatar. They lead all the championships, that much is a given.
Sebring was a race that felt like any one of four manufacturers could win it: Acura, BMW, and Cadillac all challenged too, but fell just short.
The #93 Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06 had good timing to enter the pits with the two factory Porsches before a final Full Course Yellow was called due to a tyre carcass lying on the Ullmann Straight. Renger van der Zande, Nick Yelloly, and Alex Palou were able to grab the final podium position, after coming back from a penalty for a crew member leaving a tyre lying around where it shouldn’t have been.
That saved face for MSR, whose #60 car had any hopes of a podium dashed when Tom Blomqvist collided with BMW M Team RLL’s Philipp Eng. The blue Acura lost laps to repair its damaged steering while the pole-winning BMW lost even more ground with suspension damage.
What happened to the #31 Whelen Cadillac? Earl Bamber, Jack Aitken, and Frederik Vesti could only manage fourth place after a combination of being disadvantaged on strategy, and losing the punching power they had in the searing heat of the daytime once the sun set.
But they’ll take it in contrast to what was another tough day for Wayne Taylor Racing: A seventh-place finish for the #10 flattered the team after Ricky Taylor picked up a huge penalty for colliding with GTD driver Charles Scardina and sending his Ferrari straight into a concrete barrier. The #40, which crashed at Sunset Bend on its own, quietly retired in the final hour when they couldn’t gain any more positions.
BMW didn’t get the 50th Anniversary gift that it hoped for in the end but in contrast to the #24, a fifth-place finish for the #25 of Marco Wittmann, Sheldon van der Linde, and Robin Frijns was a solid return after sliding in and out of the top five at times in the day.
Commiserations are due to Proton Competition: The privateer Mustang Sampling #5 Porsche made a gamble for a fourth-place finish but had to pit in the final minutes and took sixth, ahead of the #85 JDC-Miller MotorSports 963 in eighth.
A lot of the buildup to Sebring concerned how the new Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR-LMH would fare, in its first IMSA race, at Sebring, and days removed from a miserable debut at Qatar. All things considered? Ninth place overall, only two laps down, and showing competent pace throughout the day was a huge win for Aston Martin THOR Team, and drivers Ross Gunn, Roman de Angelis, and Alex Riberas.
The would-be ‘best in show’ at Sebring with its V12-powered symphony proved that it has competitive potential waiting to be tapped. No fears of an AMR-One repeat.
The good news was that Automobili Lamborghini Squadra Corse lasted longer, much longer at Sebring than at Daytona – but floor damage still brought an early end to the #63 Lamborghini SC63’s day, once again unlucky and now due to wait three months for another chance at redemption.
LMP2 had a lot of early carnage, and a fair bit of late-race carnage – so of course, a team with a substitute Bronze driver still learning the ropes in LMP2 won. Fair to say that Inter Europol Competition is loving life as an independent IMSA team.
It’s the first IMSA win for the Polish bakers since they established their own US operations base after a successful one-year collaboration with PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports. Jeremy Clarke did well enough to fill in for Jon Field, and did his time at the wheel with minimal mistakes, setting the table for Bijoy Garg and Tom Dillmann to succeed.
It shouldn’t have ended this way: The final Full Course Yellow should have disadvantaged both Inter Europol and CrowdStrike Racing by APR – they were the two leading LMP2 teams that didn’t have the chance to pit.
Both Dillmann and Malthe Jakobsen were still able to stay ahead but Jakobsen was certain to close out the win – until the young Dane punted the AWA Corvette at Sunset Bend, opening the door for Dillmann to slip through.
It’s a good start to Clarke’s IMSA career – one WeatherTech Championship start, one win, and the newest Bronze on the block also confirmed he’ll be around for the rest of the Michelin Endurance Cup at Inter Europol.
A bitter disappointment for Jakobsen, George Kurtz, and Toby Sowery who did almost everything perfectly, opened up a dominating advantage in the middle stages, and even when their lead was erased, maybe should have won it still. They came away in sixth, not what their form should have yielded after leading more than half the race.
Tower Motorsports should have won the jackpot with the final caution but ended up in second. John Farano, Sebastian Alvarez, and Sebastien Bourdais will take it though, it won’t make up for losing the Daytona 24 Hours the way that they did, flunking post-race tech and losing the win and the watches, but it will get their 2025 season back on track.
‘Rexy the GT3 Rawr’ left Daytona with cracked teeth, and AO Racing left feeling unfulfilled, knowing a win may have gotten away from them. At Sebring, Rexy had braces fitted, and AO got its win at Sebring – to celebrate Rexy’s second birthday since he hatched in this race two years ago.
GTD PRO was action-packed from start to finish: Tense duels for the lead, eight-car lead trains, and three-wide scenes – and in the end, Laurin Heinrich, Alessio Picariello, and Klaus Bachler prevailed in the #77 Porsche. It was the first Sebring win for Porsche’s new young dynamo Heinrich, and for Picariello who’s made his name in Asia.
For Bachler, it was his second in three years, though admittedly more straightforward than the mad late-race economy runs he and Pfaff Motorsports used to win in 2023.
Heinrich had to pump in record-setting pace to overhaul the likes of the Paul Miller Racing BMWs and keep the #48 BMW M4 GT3 EVO in the rear-view. He did just that in the late game, as Heinrich sailed past his young compatriot Max Hesse with less than an hour and 15 minutes left.
Hesse, Dan Harper, and Jesse Krohn’s second-place finish for Paul Miller better suited what they might have achieved at Daytona before being caught up in the race’s Saturday night ‘big one’ and before their race was clouded in the controversy of the BMW vs Corvette beef on Sunday morning. The #1 Paul Miller BMW completed the podium in third.
Speaking of Corvette Racing, Pratt Miller Motorsports’ Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs certainly had the pace to win at stages, but were wrought with bad luck. The #3’s charge was halted by a suspension problem, and the #4 also lost precious time trying to solve a faulty scrutineering logger.
The pole-winning #81 DragonSpeed Ferrari 296 GT3 would finish a quiet but comfortable fourth, ahead of the two Ford Multimatic Mustang GT3s in fifth and sixth, a decent day after a tough qualifying session the day before. That’ll be enough for the #65 Ford to keep the points lead after its win at Daytona.
Winward Racing’s making a habit of winning GTD at Sebring these days, but Philip Ellis had to race hard to deliver the team a second consecutive win at the 12 Hours.
The result is the same: Ellis, Russell Ward, and Indy Dontje winning in the #57 Winward Mercedes-AMG GT3. They executed their race and their strategy perfectly to enter the mix and assert themselves as favourites once the pole-winning #21 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 dropped out with an engine failure – headlining a bad day for a lot of Ferrari’s GTD customer fleet.
But for most of the final hour, it looked like Jack Hawksworth would drive a Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 to victory in back-to-back years, this time in the GTD #12 car with Parker Thompson and Frankie Montecalvo. Ellis didn’t let Hawksworth out of his sight, Hawksworth raced hard, Ellis matched that intensity. A NASCAR-style ‘bump and run’ – harsh, but fair – made the difference as Ellis muscled his rival out of the way to take the win.
Winward Racing kickstarts its defence of its GTD titles, following a Daytona 24 Hours littered with adversities, with a reasonably straightforward Sebring win and taking the points lead with it. The Vasser Sullivan Lexus was second, fighting off any chatter of the car finally showing its age.
The third place looked like it would go to the #34 Conquest Racing Ferrari until Daniel Serra pitted on the final lap, handing third place to the #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3, and fourth to the # 70 Inception Racing Ferrari. Inception Racing overcame a lot including Brendon Iribe’s practice accident earlier in the week and a collision with AWA’s Orey Fidani in the first laps of the race.
Wright Motorsports’ #120 Porsche was thwarted by multiple pit work infringements that kept them from finishing any higher than fifth on the day.
Sebring had its moments of chaos but also delivered long, satisfying stretches of clean racing worthy of such a prestigious event. Now that the hardest two endurance races are in the books, the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship will shift towards all-out sprints beginning with its annual West Coast trips to Long Beach and Laguna Seca, starting in April.
Images © Porsche, IMSA, Jack Webster / Dailysportscar
