We’re down to the final couple of hours in the 76th running of the 12 Hours of Sebring, and it’s still to close to call! The most competitive GTP class ever amidst a 50+ car entry list is showing this up to be a fantastic finale to America’s oldest endurance race!

Going into the final two hours, Porsche lead with Nick Tandy while in GTD the battle between the #12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus and Winward Racing’s #57 was under a second while Toby Sowery was being reeled in by Rasmus Lindh in the #22 United Autosports LMP2. The #24 car returned from behind the wall after the controversial contact with the #60 in the pitstops under FCY after repairs were completed as they approached the penultimate pitstops.

Both works Porsches pitted together, but they were caught out by a hard charging #31 of Earl Bamber who beat Matt Campbell’s #6 in the stops and split the two works cars as the #14 GTD Pro Lexus slowed momentarily on the back straight before continuing, threatening a full course yellow. Nasr led Bamber by just over a second now, with Matt Campbell one and a half seconds back from second. These three were the favourites going into the final moments of the race.

In LMP2 meanwhile there was a more pressing battle for the lead. Toby Sowery had taken over the #04 Crowdstrike car, but now Sebastian Bourdais was challenging his lead and the two were neck-and-neck for laps on end, matching each others pace with utter precision as they fought for the LMP2 lead with just 90 minutes left to go.

Heading into the final stops it was #7 ahead of #6 for the overall lead battle, while GTD proved the closest class. Phillip Ellis was determined to defend his Sebring victory from 2024 but to do so he’d have to get past the #12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus of Jack Hawksworth, the gap less than a second. Meanwhile Tower Motorsports had finally moved ahead of the Crowdstrike #04 car, but Toby Sowery still pushed hard to get past Bourdais. Everything truly was going down to the wire.

And when Scott Andrews pulled his Lone Star Mercedes #80 to a halt after suffering a huge puncture on his front right tyre, a FCY was called ensuring we’d get a grandstand finish. A brutal ending to Lone Star’s race, though they’d get back to the pits and wouldn’t lose to much time. It affected the Crowdstrike #04 massively, they never got the chance to get a free pitstop before the FCY was called as Tower Motorsports did. In GTP, Cadillac and BMW both pitted a lap after the pits reopened, with both taking fresh tyres to the end. Crowdstrike and Inter Europol pitted from the LMP2 lead battle, with the #04 getting out ahead of its rival. LMP2 ran with Malthe Jakobsen as the class leader ahead of Inter Europol and Tower Motorsports’ Sebastian Bourdais while GTP remained in the hands of Porsche.

On the restart, Porsche led unchanged ahead of the #93 Acura while in the background the #22 was thumped into the barriers by Paul Diresta thanks to an unwitting help from the #11 TDS Racing LMP2, with the former’s race wrecked but proceedings stayed green. The battle in LMP2 was now between Malthe Jakobsen’s #04 Crowdstrike and Inter Europol’s #43 of Tom Dillman while Laurin Heinrich lead GTD Pro with Rexy and set multiple fastest laps on his monumental charge to stay ahead of the #48 BMW. Then, Phillip Ellis muscled his way up the inside of Jack Hawksworth’s Lexus for the lead of GTD and made off like a stabbed rat, opening up a gap of nearly 2 seconds within a lap.

And then in LMP2 Tom Dillman got past Malthe Jakobsen to take the lead of LMP2 with just over 10 minutes left in a dramatic twist in the LMP2 tail, after the latter got into the rear of AWA’s #13 Corvette and dropped to third with a drive though swiftly awarded to the #04 car that had been looking so strong all day. The battle wasn’t over though, Bourdais was now catching Dillman and the gap was roughly half a second. Then, Nick Yelloly set a personal best in the #93 in his attempt to catch the Porsches. Jakobsen fell even further back from the drive through and now ran sixth in class.

But in the end it was Nick Tandy, Laurens Vanthoor and Felipe Nasr who would win the 76th running of the 12 Hours of Sebring for Porsche, who took their first win since 2008, for Tandy it was yet another famous victory to add to his seemingly endless collection. He also became the first winner of the Triple Crown of Endurance Racing for fifteen years, the last being Timo Bernhard in 2010. A hectic LMP2 class was in the end won by Inter Europol thanks to the heroics of Tom Dillman, Bijoy Garg and Jeremy Clarke though Malthe Jakobsen will no doubt be wondering where it all went wrong for his #04 team. GTD Pro was another win for Rexy and Laurin Heinrich, Klaus Bachler and Alessio Picariello and the class that seemingly never had a simple hour of racing without some sort of drama, GTD. It was eventually won by the #57 Winward Racing machine of defending GTD class and Michelin Endurance Cup Champions Phillip Ellis, Russel Ward and Indy Dontje.

It’s been a fantastic edition of the 12 Hours of Sebring and a joy to bring it to you with these bi-hourly updates. It’s a long break for the top class of endurance racing, with the next WEC round at the end of April at Imola but until then there’s the return of F1 to keep us entertained on Sundays, not to mention the VLN and a host of GT racing.

See you for the 6 Hours of Imola!

Thomas.

thumbnail image credit – Rick Flores from USA, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons