Sebring Hour 11: Laurens Vanthoor And Pfaff Motorsports In The Lead Coming Into The Last Hour
SUNENERGY 1 RACING BACK ON THE LEAD LAP AND THE HEART OF RACING IN SECOND PLACE
11 hours into the race and still plenty of on-track action and fast lap being recorded.
During a full course yellow, the #14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus passed the #9 Porsche Motorsports Porsche by completing a quicker stop. Zach Robichon leaving the driving duties to Laurens Vanthoor to bring the Motul Plaid Porsche to the checkered flag.
Upon the restart, Vanthoor stayed second but kept a close gap to the Lexus until an incident occurred as both were under braking into corner 7. The #14 Lexus, getting passed by a prototype had to slow down abruptly and Vanthoor tried to slow down enough but could not avoid to make contact with the rear right of the Lexus. The damages caused the Lexus to make a pit stop for repair.
Vanthoor kept going without damage and built a lead of about 4 seconds to then second place #23 Heart of Racing. Third was a charging Patrick Long in the #16 Wright Motorsports Porsche. At the end of the eleventh hour, Long had made the pass on the Aston Martin for second place.
SunEnergy 1 Racing has been very busy on the strategy side all race long and, with the last full course caution, were able to get back on the lead lap. Mikaël Grenier had done a fantastic couple of stints to gain time on track and then handed the car over to Maro Engel for the last stints of the race. Engel has been driving 110% to close the gap to fifth place #44 Acura NSX GT3 with Andy Lally at the wheel. Shown some 55 seconds behind at first, Engel has been putting incredible lap times to cut the gap to 35 seconds by the 11th hour.
Hour 11 results here
Image courtesy IMSA
