The second round of the IMSA Weather Sportscar Championship will be soon upon us next weekend as the whole grid swap the Daytona International Speedway for that of the Sebring International Raceway for another elongated endurance race.
With a twenty-four-hour race already under their belts, the combined class entries of forty-five cars will compete at the 12 Hours of Sebring around the infamous bumps of the former wartime airfield-based circuit.
Unlike the opening round to the season at the Rolex 24, this around we will not be seeing the #44 Magnus Racing Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 but will be having back the two full season entries from the Heart of Racing team plus the Van Der Steur AMR as contestants within the Endurance Cup.
The #23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Valkyrie of Ross Gunn, Roman de Angelis and Alex Riberas will certainly be hoping for better fortune this time around after technical issues during the Rolex 24 put them many laps down to their peers but for Sebring, the Valkyrie does benefit from the greatest advances from IMSA’s latest round of balance of performance changes.
Whilst the #19 Van Der Steur AMR GTD of Rory Van Der Steur, Valentin Hasse-Clot and Sebastian Baud (with Carl Bennett) suffered at the end of the Rolex with a lowly track position at the end despite their encouraging run through the middle of the fog affected race (P11 in class), the #27 HoRT AMR GTD of Mattia Drudi, Eduardo Barchello, Zacharie Robichon (with Tom Gamble) completed the Daytona GTD podium behind that of the Magnus Racing team as they completed the opening round to the season P2 and P3 in class.
Obviously, all will be looking to either improve or replicate those class finishes at Sebring as the ultra-competitive nature of the topflight GTP class (for the #23) and the GTD class for all the AMR Vantage runners do not allow to too much of a points deficit before championship aspirations are soon compromised.
Track action will begin on Thursday morning with the first Free Practice session before moving onto Qualifying on Friday with the start to the 12-Hours of Sebring starting at 10:10 hrs local on Saturday morning.
Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media