Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, and Jose Maria Lopez won the 2023 FIA World Endurance Championship season-opening 1000 Miles of Sebring, in a solid showing for Toyota amid the new competition.
Brendon Hartley crossed the line in second in the sister #8 Toyota, 2.168 seconds behind the sister car, with Hartley and his teammates Sebastien Buemi and Ryo Hirakawa unable to best their Toyota stablemates.
The highly-anticipated Ferrari 499P, which took pole position on Thursday with Antonio Fuoco in the #50 Ferrari 499P, could only manage third, with that same car, driven by Fuoco, Nicklas Nielsen, and Miguel Molina, finishing two laps behind the winning Toyota.
While there was much hype around Ferrari being potentially able to match Toyota’s race pace, in the end, it wasn’t to be, with Toyota having the edge in the race. The Toyotas were also able to extend their fuel stints compared to Ferrari, plus the LMDh-rules Hypercars from Porsche and Cadillac, which helped the Japanese-German machines spend less time in the pits.
The #50 Ferrari, with Fuoco starting the car, led the race from pole, but with the early safety car caused by a crash for Luis Perez Companc in the #83 Richard Mille AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evo, Ferrari pitted both cars — Fuoco from the led and teammate Alessandro Pier Guidi in the sister #51.
With Toyota’s advantage on fuel consumption this turned out to be the wrong strategy. Fuoco and his teammates also had to contend with a drive-through penalty for overtaking before the safety car line at the race restart, and then had five seconds added to the car’s next stop after a pitstop infraction.
Pier Guidi and his teammates, James Calado and Antonio Giovinazzi, meanwhile, didn’t quite have the pace of the teamcar. However, with a couple of hours to go, Pier Guidi came unstuck when he got into a tangle while overtaking GTE-Am cars, which caused a left rear puncture and necessitated a trip to the garage for the damage caused by the shredded tyre to be repaired. The car eventually finished 15th overall.
With Toyota 1-2 and Ferrari third, the best of the LMDh-rules cars was the #2 Cadillac V-Series.R of Alex Lynn, Richard Westbrook and Earl Bamber, finishing around eight seconds behind the third-placed Ferrari.
The Cadillac never truly had the pace of the Ferrari, let alone the Toyota. This was proven through the race when the #50 Ferrari came back from its penalties to catch and overtake the Cadillac, but in the end it was close between the two after eight hours of racing.
The two Porsches finished fifth and sixth, with the #5 Porsche 963 of Fred Makowiecki, Michael Christensen and Dane Cameron four laps in total off the Toyotas, and two off the fourth-placed Cadillac. The #6 Porsche, driven by Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Andre Lotterer, finished 24 seconds behind its sister car.
Much like in Daytona, where the Cadillac and Porsche made their debuts, the Porsches weren’t far away on pace from the Cadillac at Sebring, but the Cadillac built the gap slowly but surely over the two white-and-red Penske-run cars. In a positive for Porsche, though, the car had no reliability issues, after the gamut of problems the team faced with its 963s at Daytona in January.
The #4 Vanwall Vandervell 680 of Tom Dillmann, Jacques Villeneuve and Esteban Guerrieri finished the race 30th overall. The car ran well for the first half of the race, ahead of both factory Peugeots and the LMP2s. It was looking like a good day for the team formerly known as ByKolles, but the second half of the race dealt a blow.
Firstly, as a full course yellow period started to recover debris, the car got rear-ended by Mikkel Jensen in the #94 Peugeot, causing significant damage to the rear bodywork. Guerrieri duly pitted and the car was taken to the garage and repaired, but dropped from its top 10 position to amongst the LMP2 cars.
Then, later on, Villeneuve spun the car at the exit of the final corner, Sunset Bend. Although he didn’t hit anything, the right rear suspension had broken, causing the car to visibly bounce — more than normal — over the Sebring bumps.
The Canadian pitted the car but repair work dropped it down the field to 30th, where it finished.
The two Peugeots finished the race behind the Vanwall, with both cars facing multiple reliability issues and problems for the French squad, in yet again another tough race for the still-new 9X8.
The #708 Glickenhaus 007 retired mid race after stopping, off the racing line, at Sunset Bend. Driver Romain Dumas could not get it going again, which marked the car as an official retirement. Regardless, it did not have the pace to challenge the frontrunners, and was battling at times with LMP2s.
Will Stevens, David Beckmann, and Yiefi Ye won LMP2, after a hard fought battle with their competition.
The #22 United Autosports Oreca 07-Gibson started on pole, but after running well in the opening stages, the car stopped on track, with Phil Hanson on board, and later had to be towed behind the barriers, meaning it had to retire. The problem was later confirmed by the team to be caused by a faulty on-board camera installation which was not installed by the team.
Regardless, LMP2 came to a head in the last hour as it emerged the leading cars, of Stevens, Mirko Bortolotti in the #63 Prema Oreca 07-Gibson, and Filipe Albuquerque in the #23 United Autosports Oreca 07-Gibson, may need a fuel splash to make it to the end of the race.
Stevens pitted the #48 JOTA for fuel with around 40 minutes left, but it was clear the car would not make it to the finish without a splash-and-dash fuel stop. Stevens, then, began building a gap to Bortolotti and Albuquerque behind, growing the gap to over 1 minute 25 seconds to the Italian driver in the Prema machine, with Albuquerque a further 10 seconds behind.
When his fuel ran out, the Briton then pitted, emerging from the pitlane just three seconds behind Bortolotti in what was looking liking a nailbiting finish. However, Bortolotti stopped with just three minutes to go, the Italian unable to make it to the end without a very short fuel splash.
He exited the pitlane in third, just under 30 seconds behind Albuquerque, who was now just 2.863 seconds away from Stevens, but there wasn’t enough time for the Portuguese driver to catch the JOTA car — and that’s how it ended up, with Stevens taking the win from Albuquerque and Bortolotti.
In GTE-Am, Nicolas Varrone, Ben Keating, and Nicky Catsburg took the victory in the #33 Corvette C8.R, two laps to the good over the #77 Dempsey-Proton Porsche 911 RSR-19 of Julien Andlauer, Christian Reid and Mikkel Pedersen.
The Corvette crew was initially set to have a race-long battle with the #85 Iron Dames Porsche 911 RSR-19 of Sarah Bovy, Rahel Frey, and Michelle Gatting. However, midway into the race Frey got the pink Porsche on the grass, losing the rear diffuser bodywork. This required the Iron Dames car to pit to have the bodywork replaced — a time loss they never recovered from.
From then on, the Keating, Varrone and Catsburg built the gap to the competition, staying out of trouble and leading the race at the top of every hour.
With the Dempsey-Proton car second, third in class fell to the #57 Kessel Racing Ferrari 488 GTE Evo of Daniel Serra, Scott Huffaker and Takeshi Kimura, a further 14.5 seconds off the Dempsey-Proton Porsche.
