What a great race in Sebring! The Floridian track always produces the goods, and this year was no different.
While Porsche won — as I predicted in both the pre-race analysis, and in OE predicts — and made it look easy, taking a 1-2, it really wasn't all that simple.
They had competition from all three of their manufacturer competitors, with Cadillac providing, perhaps surprisingly based on practice pace and qualifying, the stoutest challenge.
Firstly: if you look at the overall race pace average, calculated by taking each car's top 20% lap times in each hour, finding an hourly average, and then averaging out each hourly average into a single value, the #31 Cadillac was actually the quickest car over the 12 hours.
Okay, yes, it was mere tenths between the Cadillacs and the two Porsches. And in reality, average lap times often don't matter, because of all the variables which don't affect the average (traffic, out laps, tyre wear, etc).
But it does show that Cadillac definitely had the pace to win. So the question: did Action Express and Cadillac let a win slip through their fingers?
Porsche's fuel saving masterclass
While Cadillac may have had the pace, they didn't get the strategy right, like Porsche and team operator Penske did.
Porsche's fuel saving eliminated the need to make a 13th pitstop in the final hour, for a splash of fuel.
Cadillac were handed a lifeline in the final caution period, but after the race went green for the final half hour, could not make up the time to the leading Porsches and the Acura of Nick Yelloly.
''Unfortunately, we were just a little bit off sequence to the leading Porsches and it just caught us out a bit at the end when we had to take a splash,' said Jack Aitken.
Earl Bamber, in the car for the final stint, dropped back to fifth when he pitted for the final time, behind Neel Jani in the #5 Proton Porsche. He was stuck behind his former Porsche teammate for about 15 minutes, overtaking him with just over 10 minutes to go. But, he couldn't catch Yelloly or the Porsches to get on the podium.
'We had to come in for a splash with about 40 minutes left and we tried to take the alternate tire strategy, but we thought it might work but the dirty air was just too much,' said Bamber.
'We just didn’t make our way forward. The car was good, so it is bittersweet that we didn’t get a podium. We’ll just have to roll into Long Beach.'
Look at the average lap times, and the top 20% average, in that final half hour. Bamber was just a small amount off Yelloly, Jaminet and Nasr — mere hundredths.
'I think when they night came around, we didn’t have that extra gear that the others did,' Aitken said.
Update: Action Express team members have got in touch to give us more info that wasn't immediately obvious, for the reasons why the team went off sequence and had to take the extra pit stop for a splash of fuel at the end. We will be writing another article to present this side of things. Stay tuned!
Ups and downs for Cadillac
Our pre-race analysis found that Cadillac were lacking pace in the long runs in practice, compared to the long runs Porsche, Acura and BMW were doing.
This, quite clearly, was not the case in the race. The #31 led 131 laps, 37.1% of the race. Despite this, though, they didn't finish on the podium.
'IMSA just keeps impressing me with how chaotic and crazy it is to race this year,' said Frederik Vesti, Action Express and Cadillac's endurance racing rookie.
'I really enjoyed my time in the car today. I left everything out on the track and it’s painful not to get the podium.
'I really felt like we had the car to win or be on the podium today. Really proud of Cadillac Whelen. Having the issue in quali starting out, I think Jack did a great job in stint one to get us in the lead.
'I enjoyed lots of laps in the lead today and I had a lot of restarts from the lead, which is fun and I learned a lot. We’ll be back. I’m already looking forward to Laguna.'
While the Wayne Taylor Racing-run Cadillacs struggled throughout, with issues ranging from a faulty throttle linkage, which Cadillac told Only Endurance was fixed after Ricky Taylor's #10 car dropped back early on.
However, he then made contact with the #023 Triarsi Ferrari, blaming throttle problems, and the team later lost laps fixing the issue for good in the pits. They received a 60-second stop/go penalty for their trouble, adding to their woes.
Brendon Hartley then crashed the other car a few hours in at Sunset Bend, also adding to Wayne Taylor's dismay.
'That is probably the most disappointing Sebring 12 Hour I have been to,' said the team owner, father of drivers Jordan and Ricky, both of whom race for the team.
'It is sad because we have such great support from Cadillac and DEX. The team worked so hard, and the drivers did such a good job. As we weren’t that competitive in Qualifying, we decided to build a race car for the race.
'And now that the race is over, even though we didn’t get the result we wanted, we were running the same times as the top cars.'
But, despite these issues, there are reasons to be cheerful. As Taylor says, both cars weren't too far off the pace of the #31 Action Express-run, Whelen-sponsored machine, a few tenths a lap on average when looking at the top 20% overall average lap time.
Porsche, and Penske, perfect
If the #31 Cadillac led 131 laps in total, the #7 Porsche led 161 — 45.6% of the race.
Like at Daytona, the #7 was the superior Porsche in Sebring — the #6 never even led a lap, although it spent 84 laps in second (the #31 spent 120 laps in second, for context).
But, all things considered, it really was a perfect race from Porsche. The only time they came unstuck was the race control mishap in the first round of pitstops under caution, where race control failed to open the pits for the leading Porsches and Acuras, but did open it for the other cars in GTP.
But they bounced back from this to take a solid 1-2.
As an example of their pace domination, in the second half of the race, the two factory Porsches were always in the top five fastest cars when looking at top 20% hourly averages. They were consistently amongst the quickest three or four cars in the field for the last half, with the #7 quickest overall in hours 6 and 12.
'Victory at Daytona, and now Sebring: We’ve won the 36 Hours of Florida,” said Urs Kuratle, director of factory LMDh motorsport at Porsche.
'That was one of our most outstanding races, absolutely flawless. I’m ecstatic. All the drivers and the entire team put in an incredibly strong effort: pit stops, strategy, car – everything went perfectly.'
Feature image: Jacob Saddler
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