IndyCar at the 73rd 12 Hours of Sebring

Today’s theme music: “Bounce” by System of a Down

When it comes to Triple Crown endurance races, the 12 Hours of Sebring might be the shortest of the three, but make no mistake, this is a challenge all its own. Thanks to its signature rough roads and the physical toll they take on cars and drivers alike, this central Florida course has become a vaunted proving ground, and a win here can set the tone for a strong year. As is often the case, several familiar faces from IndyCar hung back in Florida after the season opener, trading the Gulf of Mexico for the Atlantic coast to take part in North America’s oldest active endurance race.

We start by skipping the green-sticker entries and jumping straight to GTD Pro, where our first two subjects await us. Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood returned to the #14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus looking to defend his crown, but his hopes of that quickly went down the drain when teammate Pechito Lopez ran the car into a BMW. After some work behind the wall and attempts to salvage what they could on track, the doomed Lexus bowed out early to wind up 11th in class and 49th overall.

Meanwhile, James Hinchcliffe took another trip out of the IndyCar booth and into the cockpit of the #9 Pfaff Lamborghini. He may have regretted that decision, however, because after one of his stints, Hinch left his foot in the wrong place and got the car dropped on it. Amazingly, with help from the medical staff, Hinchcliffe was able to grind out a double stint later in the day before fully handing off the car, and the plaid Lambo would finish 37th overall and 10th in class, a much-improved result from its disaster at Daytona.

Moving up into the LMP2 class, Irish Indy NXT prospect James Roe and Brazilian ex-RLL man Pierre Fittipaldi hoped for a better day in the #73 Pratt Miller than they’d had at Daytona. They would have no such luck, however, as they wouldn’t even last to the halfway mark of the race, bowing out in a dismal 11th of 12 in class and 53rd out of 56 overall.

However, the three other Orecas relevant to our discussion all had a rather entangled story. Toby Sowery returned to the #04 APR car fresh off signing on as Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s new reserve driver—one of the best such gigs in IndyCar, as recent history tells us he might get a race or two to prove himself late in the season. Sowery and company celebrated that signing by putting on an absurd clinic of domination throughout the daytime. At points, Sowery led the other LMP2s by over a full minute. However, he wasn’t the only ex-Dale Coyne driver who wanted the win, with Hunter McElrea and Sébastien Bourdais both in the hunt. The latter, in particular, had something to prove, as he and the rest of the #8 Tower Motorsports team had their Daytona watches taken away several days after the fact it the car failed a technical inspection.

With less than two hours to go, Sowery and Bourdais had a furious one-on-one battle for the lead, easily the most thrilling one of the day in their class. However, on the final stint of the night, Sowery’s teammate Malthus Jakobsen threw it all away by punting a GT car, earning a penalty that ultimately set the #04 back to 6th in class and 16th overall. This ultimately set Bourdais up to take the silver—not quite what he wanted, but good for an 11th career trip to the podium at Sebring—while McElrea and the #11 TDS filed in behind for 3rd place and the team’s third consecutive podium at this track. 

That finally brings us to the flagship GTP class, where Prema reserve driver Romain Grosjean got to drive the #63 Squadra Corse Lamborghini for the first time this season. The Frenchman even managed to take a very early lead, but once he got caught lacking on a restart, it was all downhill from there. After running around as an anonymous class backmarker for the bulk of the race, the Lamborghini’s poor reliability flared up again, and it would ultimately be the lone car in its class not to reach the checkered flag. Still, the fact they ran most of the race and used all their drivers is technically an improvement from the last race.

For an actual contender in this fight, we turn to the #60 Meyer Shank Acura, where Scott Dixon once again joined Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun. The trio started from the front row, and for most of the race, they ran in or near the lead, looking a threat no matter who was in the car. However, with three hours to go, it all went to pieces on pit row. With much of the field pitting under yellow, the #60 ran right into the adjacent #24 BMW, seriously damaging both cars. Upon returning to the track, the Acura had to serve a penalty for unsafe release, and what could have been a win instead became a 10th place overall finish, three laps down to the much-hyped Aston Martin Valkyrie in that car’s IMSA debut.

Fortunately, MSR’s other Acura, the #93, was just as game to gun for it all. Álex Palou, fresh off his win at St. Petersburg, was as cool and precise in the car as ever, and Dixon’s old teammate Renger van der Zande was blazing fast in his own stints. However, on the final half-hour sprint, it would be Nicholas Yelloly to bring the car home, and though the Brit failed to catch either of the drivers ahead to break up the Porsche 1-2, he still hung on to 3rd with ease. As a result, Palou reached his first ever podium in a major endurance race, adding even more to his absurd momentum as we approach next weekend’s return to IndyCar.

However, this race’s defining performance goes to a man who’s never driven an Indy car, but whose latest achievement is too important not to close with. Just like Daytona, this ended with Felipe Nasr driving the #7 Penske Porsche across the finish line and his teammate, Nick Tandy, officially became the first driver in 15 years to complete endurance racing’s Triple Crown, with two-thirds of it coming in a two-month span. Combined with Daytona giving him the first-ever Grand Slam of 24-hour races, Tandy now holds an unassailable place as one of the greatest sports car drivers of all time.