Sebring 12h: Hour 2 – Curran clings on to lead as Mazda crashes

Prototype

The hour began under yellow, as Joel Miller’s #70 Mazda lost its right-rear brake approaching the final corner, Turn 17, making hard enough contact with the tire barrier to shift the concrete behind it back a few inches.

On the restart, Curran, who’d taken over the #31 Action Express Cadillac from Dane Cameron, pulled some bold moves in traffic to stay ahead of teammate Christian Fittipaldi in the #5, who started coming under pressure from the Visit Florida Racing Multimatic Riley driven hard by Renger van der Zande.

Polesitter and initial leader Neel Jani was catching back up in the Rebellion Oreca, with Alex Lynn fifth in the Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac, and Jose Gutierrez sixth for PR1/Mathiasen Motorsprot.

Jani passed van der Zande for third on lap 45 and then hunted down the AXR cars, as Curran appeared to be holding up Fittipaldi on a clear track but more decisive through traffic.

However, there was a disaster for Rebellion as Sebastien Buemi took over from Jani and couldn’t restart, and the Action Express Cadillacs pitted together.

Curran resumed ahead of the #5 car, now driven by Filipe Albuquerque, while the Wayne Taylor car went a lap longer.  

GT Le Mans

Dirk Muller’s #66 Ford GT continued to lead following the restart but came under increasing pressure from Antonio Garcia’s #3 Corvette, with Dirk Werner’s #912 Porsche, Toni Vilander in the Risi Competizione Ferrari 488 in fourth, Stefan Mucke in the #68 Ford in fifth, Alexander Sims in the #25 BMW M6 in sixth.

Ryan Briscoe was doing a decent job of recovering from his start disaster, with seventh ahead of the #912 Porsche 911 RSR now driven by Richard Leitz.

The #4 Corvette of Tommy Milner, Oliver Gavin and Marcel Fassler, defending Sebring winners, had suffered a long early pitstop, and in this hour went behind the wall with overheating issues.  

GT Daytona

Connor De Phillippi’s Land-Motorsport Audi R8 continued to lead into the second hour but Corey Lewis’ Lamborghini Huracan of Change Racing was hassling hard, with Rolf Ineichen in the #11 Grasser Racing Lambo third, ahead of the Lexus pair of Scott Pruett and Robert Alon.

However, on their 45^th lap, Mario Farnbacher moved the Riley Motorsports Mercedes passed Alon for fifth and four laps later demoted Pruett, too.

Meanwhile, polesitter Tristan Vautier continued to charge and climbed to seventh in the SunEnergy1 Racing Mercedes.

In Prototype Challenge, Mazda Road To Indy star Pato O’Ward had the #38 Performance Tech Motorsports in the lead, ahead of Don Yount who’d taken over the BAR1 Motorsports entry from early leader Gustavo Yacaman.