The 12 Hours of Sebring: Fuel by Florida Fresh...Great Race, Horrible Name

As I start typing this article, the 12 Hours of Sebring has ended only a few minutes ago.  Unfortunately, I missed most of the middle of the race because I'm not one of the three people in America who gets Fox Sports 2 with their cable.  I was able to watch the last several hours however via IMSA streaming, and while I'm not sure I would call it a race for the ages, it was an exciting finish.  I'll let the "real"racing news outlets handle the play-by-play commentary, so if you're looking for that stuff, I recommend either RACER or Sportscar 365, but that doesn't mean there aren't some things I want to talk about.

IMSA has confirmed that 2016 will be the last season for the Daytona Prototype class, and the qualifying performance of the P2 cars at Sebring (as well as Daytona) has confirmed that the P2 cars have an amazing potential for speed.  That being said, the actual finishing order for the prototype class at both these races was dominated by DP cars.  The simple reason is that the DP cars were the ones running at the end of the race (at the end of the 12 hours, only the Krohn Racing car was the only P2 still on the track).  We may be seeing the dawn of the P2 cars, as they are able to go toe-to-toe with the DP cars at power tracks, but that doesn't mean 2015 is the twilight of the DP.  If I was Action Express, Wayne Taylor Racing, or Chip Ganassi (i.e., the teams running DP cars), I wouldn't be worried about my championship chances just yet.  The results at Daytona and Sebring suggest that the P2 teams are still stomping out technical gremlins, while the DP cars are pretty much bullet proof.  The next endurance race on the TUSC schedule is the Six Hours of the Glen, and I fully expect the P2 cars to score some wins between now and then, but I expect the better reliability of the DP cars to be an advantage at Watkins Glen and Petite Le Mans.

The Daytona Prototype: the ghost of TUSC prototype past and present

If you'll allow me to wander off like an Alzheimer's patient in the snow for a second, I actually really like the current DP cars.  They don't look half bad with the new Corvette C7 body work, and they make their speed with a big engine, which is just cool.  Yes, the DP's aren't the most technically sophisticated cars in the garage, but that fact that people hate DP's for that reason makes me love them all the more.  The job of a race car is not to be technically innovative, the job of a race car is to be faster then the other race cars, and simply throwing more power at the car (like the DP's do) is a totally valid solution.  That being said, the DP cars need to be replaced.  Wayne Taylor racing earned a Le Mans berth based on their performance at Daytona, but couldn't take the spot because they didn't have a car that was legal for Le Mans.  The top American prototype teams need to have equipment that they can compete in Europe with, and investing in stupid expensive LMP1 cars is not the solution.  So, while I will miss the NASCAR-racer-turned-sports-car that is a Daytona Prototype, I fully support P2 cars as the future of prototype sports car racing in America.

The P2 car: the ghost of TUSC prototype future

On the GT front, as a huge Corvette racing fan, I was extremely excited to see the #3 C7R win the GTLM class.  Considering Corvette took the lead at both Daytona and Sebring because the team they passed for first had a botched final pit stop, you'd think that Pratt and Miller is engaging in an active sabotage campaign.  It does continue to show that the car the wins an endurance race isn't always the fastest car (although the C7R is plenty fast), but the team that makes the least mistakes and keeps the car running.  Likewise, in GTD, the Alex Job Racing 911 that won the race only took the lead in the closing minutes of the race when the leading Riley Viper had an overheating engine.  Last minute swings of fortune like this is probably the reason why sports car racing is my favorite form of racing.  Where else can you have cars racing wheel to wheel for half a day, only to have the race winner decided at the very end.

This time last year, a lot of people where criticizing IMSA over how the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring were run, and rightfully so.  This year, both of these races were extremely exciting. While the normal state of things over at The Racing Nerd is doom and gloom, American sports car racing actually looks like its in a pretty good spot at the moment.