Pipo Derani led the ESM Honda team to victory Saturday at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. The team also won the Rolex 24 At Daytona.
Story and Photos By:IMSA SERIES MEDIA
SEBRING, Fla. —March 21, 2016- It’s awfully early in the sports car season for repeats, but there were two significant ones at the 64th Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida.
Once again, the 22-year-old driver from Brazil, Pipo Derani, passed three cars in the last 10 minutes of the race to take the victory for the No. 2 Tequila Patron ESM Honda HPD Ligier JS P2 — much like he did at the season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona. But unlike Daytona, Sebring threw some extreme weather conditions at the young driver and his team, causing a lengthy delay and some brutal on-track conditions.
Before the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season kickoff at Daytona, Derani, a factory driver for Ligier, was virtually unknown, until he steered the team of Scott Sharp, Johannes van Overbeek and Patrón Spirits CEO Ed Brown to a win.
At Daytona, it seemed Derani could drive to the front at will. That didn’t happen at Sebring until his last couple of stints, but the rough 3.740-mile track is a hard one to master. Plus, it was Derani’s first time here. “It’s a very difficult track to learn, with all the bumps and dips,” he said.
Indeed, it looked like it would be an Action Express Corvette DP one-two finish until near the end, as a late caution period to pick up two crashed cars left just 13 minutes remaining in the race. Derani’s team elected to get new tires and take fuel during the caution period, taking him from the lead to fourth place, as the Action Express cars didn’t get new tires, and therefore had a quicker pit stop.
But with surgical precision, Derani moved to third, then second, then to the lead with just five minutes remaining when Dane Cameron in the No. 31 Action Express Whelen Corvette DP went too wide into Turn 7, leaving room on the inside for Derani. Cameron and co-drivers Eric Curran and Scott Pruett took second, and the team Corvette DP, the No. 5 Mustang Sampling entry with Filipe Albuquerque, Joao Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi was third. Derani won by 2.926 seconds over Cameron.
“It was a tough day, a long day,” Cameron said. “The pit strategy got us to the front, and we just tried to run away and hide. I think we executed well on pit lane, and the team worked together really, really well.”
It’s some consolation that the ESM Patrón team isn’t racing the whole season, and the No. 31 car is, “So it was a good points day for Dane and me,” said Curran. Co-driver Scott Pruett signed on only for Daytona and Sebring.
In the GT Le Mans class, it was déjà vu, too, as the Chevrolet Corvette C7.R team, which also won Daytona, took the victory at Sebring in the No. 4 car, driven by Oliver Gavin, Tommy Milner and Marcel Fassler.
The Corvette’s team car, No. 3, didn’t fare as well, finishing 36 laps down after a crash when driver Jan Magnussen hit the No. 911 Porsche 911 RSR of Kevin Estre in turn one, sending both cars into the fence. It was likely the most serious wreck of the day, but both drivers walked away.
Today, said Gavin, “showed the class and strength of Corvette Racing, dealing with all the different conditions thrown at us. It doesn’t get any better than to win the first two races, but it’s a long championship season.”
Second in GTLM was the pole-winning No. 25 BMW Team RLL M6 GTLM of Bill Auberlen, Bruno Spengler and Dirk Werner, and third was the No. 912 Porsche 911 RSR of Earl Bamber, Michael Christensen and Fred Makowiecki.
In Prototype Challenge, the CORE autosport ORECA-Chevrolet of Colin Braun, Jon Bennett and Mark Wilkins won the class, followed by the No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen car with Tom Kimber-Smith, Robert Alon and Jose Gutierrez and in third, the No. 8 Starworks car with Alex Popow, Renger van der Zande, and David Heinemeier Hansson.
“This race is not easy to win – every time you think a race is going to be a walk in the park, it isn’t,” said Braun.
In the hotly contested GT Daytona class, the pole-sitting No. 63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 488 GT3 of Jeff Segal, Christina Nielsen and Alessandro Balzan finished 2.2 seconds ahead of the Turner Motorsports BMW M6 GT3 of Ashley Freiberg, Bret Curtis and Jens Klingmann. Third was the Daytona-winning No. 44 Magnus Porsche GT3 R of Andy Lally, John Potter and Marco Seefried.
It was the first race for the Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 488 GT3, “and to come away with a win is great in the car’s debut,” Segal said. It was also significant for another reason: With Nielsen’s victory, it is the first class win for a woman at Sebring since 2006, when Liz Halliday won in the P2 class.
Before the halfway mark, weather was a major factor for the teams. The day started with clear skies, but weather front crossing from the west to the east hit the historic Sebring International Raceway around noon, with everything from a drizzle to a downpour, and causing IMSA to stop the race for two hours and 15 minutes due to track conditions and lightning.
The race resumed at 4:08 p.m., and intermittent rain was a factor, but it did not match the earlier storms.
