Felipe Nasr, Nick Tandy and Laurens Vanthoor have won the 12 Hours of Sebring, the second round of the IMSA Sportscar Championship in 2025, completing a 1-2 for Porsche.
The three, in the #7 Porsche, fought off a fierce, race-long challenge from the #31 Cadillac and their teammates in the sister #6 machine.
Dries Vanthoor started the #24 BMW on pole but very quickly got a drive through penalty for a start procedure infringement. After this, the BMW challenge faded, with the German cars struggling to keep up with their counterparts from Europe.
Jack Aitken started the #31 Cadillac from 13th position but moved through the field rapidly in the opening hour, gaining six positions in 40 minutes. He took the lead through the pitstop cycle for an early full course yellow in the second hour, but managed to retain it and handed the car over to his teammate Frederik Vesti.
Vesti completed much of his first driving stint in the lead, fending off a challenge from IndyCar champion Alex Palou in the #93 Acura. At this point, the Porsches weren’t amongst the leaders, but in endurance racing you can never count Porsche out.
Slowly but surely, the two Porsches worked their way up through the field, until Felipe Nasr took the lead on the cusp of the halfway mark.
From then on, it was a fight between the #31 Cadillac and #7 Porsche, with each leading at certain times in the race.
Cadillac challenge fades, Porsche takes victory
However, the Cadillac challenge faded in the last couple of hours, with the #6 Porsche of Kevin Estre, Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell moved into second.
However, try as they might, the trio could not summon the pace to challenge their teammates in the #7. Tandy handed the car over with two hours to go to Felipe Nasr, who took it to the flag, 2.2 seconds ahead of Jaminet in the #6 car.
Third was the #93 Meyer Shank Acura of Nick Yelloly, Renger van der Zande and Alex Palou, a further 2.7 seconds off the winning #7 Porsche.
Fourth was the #31 Cadillac of Earl Bamber, Frederik Vesti, and Jack Aitken. They challenged early on but weren’t able to maintain the challenge, needing to pit under the final yellow, along with Yelloly’s Acura, whereas the two Porsches had fuel saved earlier and did not need a final splash.
Fifth was Robin Frijns, Sheldon van der Kinde, and Marco Wittmann of the #25 BMW. The German manufacturer promised much but wasn’t truly able to deliver on that promise.
Inter Europol claim LMP2 victory
In LMP2, the #43 Inter Europol Oreca of Tom Dillmann, Jeremy Clarke, and Bijoy Garg took the victory, prevailing after a fierce, race-long fight with the #8 Tower Motorsport Oreca, #11 TDS Racing Oreca, and #04 Crowdstrike by APR Oreca to prevail.
In some ways they were gifted the win by young Malthe Jakobsen, a Peugeot factory driver in the FIA World Endurance Championship, making an error and punting a GTD car late on in the race with just 10- minutes remaining.
As always in IMSA, he copped an incident responsibility penalty for his trouble, and dropped from the lead to sixth, where he’d finish.
Second behind Dillmann, who crossed the line to take the flag in the #43 Inter Europol car, was Sebastien Bourdais in the #8 Tower machine.
They fought hard all race, leading for significant periods, but in the end Bourdais was not able to overcome Dillmann, finishing just over a second behind his countryman.
Third was Mikkel Jensen in the #11 TDS Oreca. Steven Thomas started the car on pole but over the race distance, didn’t quite have the pace to challenge for victory, along with Jensen and Thomas’ teammate Hunter McElrea.
Jensen crossed the line four and a half seconds behind Dillmann, after pushing hard in the final stint.
