Louis Deletraz, Jordan Taylor and Colton Herta have won the 12 Hours of Sebring, after a race-long fight with their GTP competition, Cadillac, Porsche and BMW.
However, for much of the race, the #31 Action Express Cadillac V-Series.R of Pipo Derani, Jack Aitken and Tom Blomqvist led, and looked set to take a second successive win. Derani started the car from pole and for two-thirds of the race, the red Cadillac was never far from the lead amid pitstop strategy and full course yellows, battling with the sister #01 Chip Ganassi Cadillac, the two WTRAndrettis and the Porsches.
Early in the second hour, Bourdais passed Derani at turn 1, with no resistance offered by the Brazilian. The two continued line astern to pull a gap on Brendon Hartley in the #10 WTRAndretti Acura ARX-06, but Bourdais pitted to hand Derani the lead back.
When Derani pitted, teammate Aitken, now at the wheel, came back out in the lead, but Scott Dixon, who’d replaced Bourdais in the #01 Cadillac, passed the Brit in the red Cadillac.
This order continued for some time, Dixon leading Aitken, with the #7 Porsche 963, with Dane Cameron at the wheel, having moved into third. At the next full course yellow Cameron and Porsche were able to move into the lead through pitstop strategy, with Aitken then fighting the American for the lead of the race when the green flag fell once again.
The Brit eventually got by the Porsche with a slightly aggressive move at Sunset Bend, the two making light, minor contact.
At the end of the six hour mark, halfway through the race, Derani was back in the car and still leading. However, mid way through the seventh hour, Cameron’s teammate in the #7 Porsche, Felipe Nasr, was able to use traffic to his advantage to take the lead off his countryman.
The two then battled for the lead, with Derani pushing to find a way past Nasr, but there was nothing doing. When the pitstop cycle came around, Nasr pitted first from the lead with Derani following a lap later. The Cadillac emerged with a lead of 5 seconds, and Derani continued to open this further, to 8 seconds.
Behind Nasr in second was Bourdais, defending from the two Acuras, Ricky Taylor in the #10 followed by Louis Deletraz in the #40. Bourdais was defending hard from Taylor, but with all three together on track, Deletraz pounced and overtook both of them to take third, with Bourdais demoted down behind both.
However, drama was incoming. As Derani, who until now had been looking calm and composed at the head of the field, passed the #21 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 of Miguel Molina, he clipped the Spaniard’s car. This sent Derani’s Cadillac spearing off into the tyre barriers, with a heavy impact distributing tyres everywhere and flipping the Cadillac, with it coming to rest upside down on the barrier, with the nose, destroyed, pointing up and the rear wing resting on the grass.
After the marshals and safety crew lifted the car, Derani got out under his own steam, but it was clear the car would be an instant retirement, as well as a lengthy full course yellow and safety car period.
This blew the race for the overall win wide open. BMW were 1-2 at the restart thanks to quick work in the pits, although Jesse Krohn almost immediately slipped back to fifth in the #24 BMW M Hybrid V8. Maxime Martin, though, in the sister #25 BMW, managed to maintain this lead, with Mathieu Jaminet in second in the #6 Porsche.
Behind Jaminet was Ricky Taylor in the #10 Acura, teammate Deletraz in the #40 Acura, and the #01 Cadillac, with Renger van der Zande at the wheel. Taylor subsequently passed Jaminet for second and began to hunt down Martin in the lead.
It wasn’t long before Taylor, more experienced than Martin in racing prototypes, found a way through into the lead by utilising the traffic, putting the two three wide with one of the GTD Lexuses.
However, the car was smoking from the right-hand side exhaust, although once passed Martin he pulled a 4 second gap. When he pitted, the team repressurised the oil in the car, but soon after it had to pit again, with the team removing the rear deck to make repairs, dropping the car a lap down.
Going into the final two hours and it was clear the battle for the win was between the #40 Acura, the #7 Porsche, and the #01 Cadillac. The final hour had two full course cautions. Deletraz started the hour 3rd in the #40 Acura, but managed to pass Nasr in the #7 Porsche into Sunset Bend to take second, and begin chasing down Bourdais in the lead.
And that he did, once the race went green for the final time after the last full course yellow for debris. With just tenths of a second separating the two, they pulled out a gap to Nasr in third. Deletraz was darting this way and that behind the Cadillac, looking for a way past the veteran Frenchman, but Bourdais was defending well, placing his car just where it needed to be.
However, the Acura clearly had pace and grip. With 5 minutes to go, while both were mired in GTD traffic, Deletraz sent it down the inside of Bourdais in a brave attempt to take the lead. As the Swiss racer had braked so late, he went wide and Bourdais used the undercut, with the two exiting the corner side by side.
Deletraz, though, had the speed, and try as he might Bourdais was helpless as Deletraz edged past and into the lead, with Bourdais making minor contact with the rear quarter of the Acura as he saw the lead, and the win, slip away.
And that was how they finished, Deletraz crossing the line 0.891 ahead of Bourdais after 12 hours of racing. Felipe Nasr was third in the #7 Porsche 963, almost 9 seconds back from Deletraz, with Connor de Phillippi, in the #25 BMW, fourth and Filipe Albuquerque fifth in the sister #10 WTRAndretti Acura.
