By Matt Beer Sunday, March 18th 2007, 02:12 GMT
Marco Werner, Frank Biela and Emanuele Pirro clinched an ultimately dominant Sebring 12 Hours win after the chasing Andretti-Green Acura hit late mechanical dramas.
The new Acura ran without problems until the final 90 minutes of the race, when transmission and electrical issues forced a series of long pit stops and left Bryan Herta lapping up to 20 seconds off the pace.
AGR's tribulations removed the last semblance of pressure from the no.2 Audi, which had lost two laps early on with a puncture but recovered strongly and then took charge of the race when the no.1 Audi became stuck in the pits with ignition problems after five hours.
"The car was perfect, just a little bit of a long brake pedal, but I brought the baby to the end," said Werner.
Although some early evening full course yellows brought AGR right onto the Audi's tail with four hours to go, Werner eventually took the chequered flag six laps clear as the Herta/Dario Franchitti/Tony Kanaan Acura limped home for second overall and LMP2 victory.
"I think I've aged about 100 years in that last hour," said Franchitti. "It was just an awesome job from everybody."
The Fernandez Lola-Acura nearly managed to snatch class honours from the hobbled AGR car but could not quite capitalise on Herta's problems. Although the Mexican-crewed car ran mostly reliably, it did not have the pace of the LMP2 frontrunners in the morning and was seven laps behind AGR before the latter hit trouble.
The delayed Tom Kristensen/Allan McNish/Rinaldo Capello Audi came back through to fourth, ahead of the Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas and Helio Castroneves Penske Porsche that had been Audi's main challenger on sheer speed. Unfortunately for Porsche, a series of electrical problems left the car 14 laps down by the end of the race.
Oliver Gavin eased away from Corvette teammate Jan Magnussen in the final stint to win GT1 for himself and teammates Olivier Beretta and Max Papis. The Modena Aston Martin - Corvette's only class rival - did not have the pace to challenge the C6-Rs and ended the race 10 laps adrift.
The extraordinarily close GT2 class battle came down to a grandstand finish between Flying Lizard Porsche and Risi Ferrari. The two cars had been nose to tail for much of the race, but the final pit stops seemed to hand Risi the advantage, as they chose to leave Jamie Melo in the car and make a splash-and-dash fuel stop, whilst Flying Lizard carried out driver and tyre changes for a final push.
Then a penalty for a pit violation delayed the Ferrari enough for the Porsche and its fresher tyres to mount a last minute charge. The cars were absolutely together starting the final lap, with Jorg Bergmeister repeatedly getting alongside the Ferrari only for Melo to vigorously defend the place.
They made contact several times in the last few corners before Melo took the class victory by just 0.202 seconds after 12 hours of absolutely flat-out racing.
Sebring 12 Hours leading results:
Pos Cl Driver Make Laps/gap
1. P1 Werner/Biela/Pirro Audi 364 laps
2. P2 Herta/Franchitti/Kanaan AGR Acura + 6 laps
3. P2 Fernandez/Diaz Fernandez Lola-Acura + 8 laps
4. P1 Kristensen/McNish/Capello Audi + 11 laps
5. P2 Bernhard/Dumas/Castroneves Penske Porsche + 13 laps
6. P2 Brabham/Johansson/Dayton Highcroft Acura + 18 laps
7. GT1 Gavin/Beretta/Papis Corvette + 23 laps
8. GT1 Magnussen/O'Connell/Fellows Corvette + 23 laps
9. P2 Wallace/Leitzinger/Lally Dyson Porsche + 24 laps
10. P2 Smith/Dyson Dyson Porsche + 31 laps
