SEBRING, FL – The 62nd Mobil 1 12 Hours of
Sebring endurance race was a different race this year with nearly half the race
run under a yellow flag. At the top of
heap was the Ganassi No. 01 Riley-Ford of Franchitti/Pruett/Rojas with a
Roush-Yates Eco-Boost engine. Franchitti clinched the victory when the Tequila
Patron HPD ARX-03B/Honda into pit row for a final service with 40 minutes
remaining – though the margin of victory was only 4.682 sec over the HPD, the
tightest in Sebring history. The Ganassi win also gives Chip and company
the first team to win Sebring, The Rolex 24, the Indy 500 and the Daytona
500. Quite an impressive feat! “It’s incredible,” Pruett said. “After all
those victories you hope to get, this was still one on my bucket list. I’ve won
here in class but never won overall. It’s even more exciting to win it overall,
and to win it for Ford both times. I can’t say enough about the Ganassi group.
We all worked together as a team and kept digging.”
The Action Express DP Corvette of
Barbosa/Fittipaldi/Bourdais started at the podium and finished third in a
strong debut at Sebring. The Corvette
led nearly 1/3 of the race, which is pretty impressive with 11 lead changes in
the race. The team was set for a victory
as they were able to conserve fuel allowing them to run one less pit stop than
their competitors, but a misplaced caution period dashed their hopes. "Just before that last caution we were
feeling pretty good about our chances,” said Team Manager Gary Nelson. "We
were running second and had been saving fuel for several hours… That yellow
would not have changed things for us had it come out one lap sooner or 3 laps
later. It just hit at the worst time for us. When you don't get the breaks and
still finish on the podium it shows Action Express is a great team. We
congratulate Chip Ganassi and his 01 team for their historic win.”
The GTD category was won by the Magnus Racing no.44 Porsche
911GT America from the 10th starting position. This was a hard fought victory with the
Magnus team having to overcome a series of obstacles. The first was contact made with the No. 94
Turner BMW of Dane Cameron which sent the Porsche spinning into the dirt damaging
the left rear and right-front grill.
They were able to make some initial repairs to the grill, but it was to
remain to be a problem, but with all the cautions, they were able to baby it
through the race. Then, during Andy
Lally’s stint, the air compressor for the transmission failed. The team was able to execute repairs only
losing one lap, but with 5 hours left, the team was confident they were still
in the running for a win. “I still can’t
believe it. We won Sebring,” stated Lally. “I just don’t have the words to
describe it, what a team effort. Everyone on this team was just perfect.
Perfect job by John and Marco, perfect pit stops, fast repairs, and a brilliant
call at the end. Sebring has always been the one that escaped me, and we
finally, finally did it. I can’t thank everyone at Magnus, and everyone at
Flex-Box, enough for making this a reality.”
One of the more exciting moments of the race was experienced
by Ben Keating when his No 33 SRT Viper GT3 caught fire when the Viper broke a
drive shaft yoke. The driveshaft
apparently severed a fuel line, causing two flaming tire streaks from behind
the Viper. We’ve got a solid bulkhead for situations like this so I have a
rearview camera,” Keating said. “I looked in my rearview mirror and it was like
Back to the Future! I saw the two streaks of flames coming out of the back of
the car in the camera before there was any smoke. So I got on the radio and
said, ‘guys I’m on fire. I’m getting out.’ I hit the fire button, hopped out,
but there was no flames or smoke inside the car when I got out. No smoke
inhalation, no burns, no issues other than a melted car.”
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