Bamber "made a meal" of run to Sebring 12 Hours win

The New Zealander revealed that he vowed to himself that he wasn’t going to lose victory in round two of the IMSA series together with Alex Lynn and Neel Jani after dropping back as the result of a drive-through with just over an hour to go. 

“After the drive-through, I said to myself there was no way I was going to lose the win,” Bamber told Motorsport.com. “I caught the #5 [JDC-Miller] Cadillac, got back in the lead, and three corners later I had the incident with the Ferrari and spun around.

“I did some of my best driving and some of my worst driving in the space of two stints today.

“I made a meal of it to be honest, because we should have won by 30 or 35s - I made life difficult for myself.”

Bamber stormed into a clear lead in the #02 Cadillac DPi-V.R during the ninth hour of the race after taking the car over from Jani, who came in as a late replacement for Kevin Magnussen after the Dane’s return to Formula 1 with Haas. 

Lynn handed the #02 Caddy back to Bamber for the run to the flag with an advantage of 25s. 

That was wiped out when Bamber tagged the AWA Duqueine LMP3 car at Turn 3 on his out-lap, which resulted in the drive-through. 

“I expected that he would slow down more, but he carried good speed into the corner and was right there at the apex,” explained Bamber. “It was my fault.”

Bamber returned to the track after taking the penalty with a deficit of nearly five seconds to Richard Westbrook in the JDC-Miller Caddy, but closed down the gap in the space of six laps. 

He passed the Briton at Turn 10, before clipping the GT Daytona class AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evo further around the lap at Turn 16. 

“I thought I’d cleared him: I left a gap, but it obviously wasn’t enough,” said Bamber. “We were lucky not to get some damage, but when you have a such a good car, it’s easy to come back.”

 

The winning Cadillac resumed with a six-second deficit to the JDC-Miller car, but was back in the lead within six laps after Westbrook was baulked in Turn 16 and outdragged down the back straight with 45 minutes left on the clock. 

Bamber retained the lead after the final round of pitstops, but faced a late challenge from Tristan Vautier who had taken over the JDC-Miller car. 

The Frenchman briefly got within three seconds of the leader before taking the chequered flag 6.4s in arrears of Bamber.