2014 Sebring Race Broadcast - Part 1

welcome live to sebring florida and the revival of a sports car racing tradition like no others the sebring 12 hours it may not be the longest race in motorsports but it is certainly the toughest sebring one of the most famous circuits in the world just a mention of the historic track brings back memories of more than 60 years of racing legends of the past like fangio gurney andretti and phil hill were some of the first to conquer one of the toughest tracks in all of motorsport but sebring is more than a race it's an annual pilgrimage for race fans to bask in racing's rich past and embrace the future different eras have had their champions ferrari porsche audi and corvette have all claimed dominance under the florida sun but today brings the beginning of a new world order at sebring the year began with the rolex 24 at daytona and now the tudor united sports car championship the unification of the grand am rolex sports car series and the american le mans series presented by tequila patrol brings the future of sports car racing to sebring for race number two in this historic season four classes of prototypes and touring cars will crowd the track and fight the blinding sun and empty blackness of night the men behind the wheel and behind the wall fighting exhaustion throughout who will be left standing when the clock runs out and the checkered flag waves where the smoke clears you will be crowned champion of this new era find out now as the 62nd running of the mobile one 12 hours of sebring begins on fox sports 1. 2014 marks the 62nd running of the mobile 1 12 hours of sebring presented by fresh from florida back on new year's eve in 1950 no one could have predicted that hendricks army airfield hosting its first sports car race would become one of the true iconic events and tracks in all the world of motorsports over the years hendricks field became sebring international raceway in that first six hour race on new year's eve became the world renowned 12 hours now ready for its 60 second running once again all of the greatest sports car drivers and teams in north america and some from abroad are here as well to earn one of the greatest honors that you can in sports car racing hi everybody i'm bob partial welcome live here on fox sports our story is something old and something new let's start with the new this is round two of the new for 2014 tudor united sports car championship it's also round two of the series within the series the tequila patron north american endurance cup which offers big prizes to the top performing teams in the four longest races on the schedule a total of 52 hours and of course you'll see them all here on fox as for the old well look around you sebring international raceway is a living museum of motorsports the hunter the airfield circuits the concrete racetrack that the drivers first took to in 1950 remain so when you come here to race at sebring you are truly running in the tire tracks of all the greatest names in motorsports joining me to bring you the action are my season-long colleagues calvin fish and dorsey schrader let's start with what's old about sebring calvin i think porsche factory driver patrick long said it best what you hate about sebring is what you love about sebring this place is an all-day sucker absolutely bob and over the years the racetrack layout has changed a handful of times but one thing remains the same the backbone and character of sebring will weigh you down it is rough it is tough it is the most brutal 12 hours of motorsports in anywhere in this world now for the teams their preparation needs to be spot on for the cars durability will always be the big question mark and for the drivers you simply have to be patient there's a lot of traffic to deal with and certainly during the course of this race a race car that may have seemed perfect in qualifying or practice suddenly in the heat of the day it gets away from you you've got to wait for those cool evening hours and wait for that sweet bot to come back to you and dorsey if you can do that and get to victory lane it is the ultimate satisfaction well i agree totally sebring is the very toughest of all the endurance debates in the world it's because of the roughness we talk about there's bumps out there so severe it knocks the wind out of you you come out of this whether you win or lose like you've been in a fight you're sore everywhere and if you had a bad weekend it's easy to hate this place and that's why we keep coming back year after year no question about it it is also the biggest party in motorsports now as for picking a winner well start with the winners of the season opener in daytona the number five corvette from action express an international driver lineup they will start on pole here in round two at sebring chris neville is with the man who put the car on pole yeah bob actually expressed trying to pick up right where they left off at daytona become the first team to win the rolex 24 and sebring in the same year since 1998. sebastian bourdain got the poll yesterday got the win at the rolex 24 sebastian both races very challenging some say this racetrack the most challenging in the world how do these races compare they're very hard to compare i mean you go to daytona where you have a lot of rest on the oval and very smooth racetrack and not so many corners here you come in there's no rest it's super bumpy different track conditions different pavement very bumpy and it's going to get hot so tough place well for more on these teams on the front row andrew marriott but only one point just point one of a second behind is the oak racing nissan olivier player put down a great lap he's already in the car i'm with a fine young second generation driver alex brondell now you're in this lightweight european car how does it compare where are your strong points compared to the dps well obviously off the start ollie's got a hell of a job on his hands uh to keep the row of dps that he's got behind him behind see us potentially struggling a little bit in the early laps we generate tire temperature a little bit more slowly so again early laps might be a problem straight line speed is the massive thing the dps have more straight line speed than us where we're strong high speed corners 17 1 this early phase of the lap around the pit straight area is is potentially where we're going to be able to pull out a bit of an advantage thanks very much then i'll throw it back to the booth all right thanks very much gentlemen the field is 64 car strong split into four categories the pure racing prototypes the spec car prototype challenge and the gt categories the busiest classes in the tudor united sports car championship the gt le man car and the gt daytona class it'll be busy it will be difficult there will be lots of traffic in fact since 2000 the size of the field for this event rarely broke 40 cars we have more than 20 more than that here today so you can imagine what it's going to be like in fact every driver you speak to up and down the pit lane will tell you in addition to the difficulty of the race track there is the difficulty of getting around and even coexisting with your competitors through a long day of racing we have perfect weather as you look at our onboard cameras drivers in the office as it were ready to go to work we expect temperatures of about 80 degrees the track will be in bright sunshine all day it will be hot it will be slick and it will be an awful lot of fun now it's time to get things started so let's go down to the start finish straight away to hear the most famous words in motorsports from the mobile one global motorsports manager mr ardis brown you can see the count it's on you drivers start your engines that is engines are fired the cars will shortly be on track we'll take a break when we return you'll meet the rest of our fox sports team here at sebring and we'll get one of the greatest races on the planet underway stay with us sebring is is that kind of places that seems to escape time it's hot it's bumpy it's mixed conditions it's very hard it's very physical it's very strong hot and exciting it's only a 12 hour race compared to 24 hours but it's as hard on drivers and cars as probably a 36 hour 48 hour race welcome back to the mobile 112 hours of sebring the 60-second running of this great event and just a few moments away from the drop of the green flag i'm brian till along with tommy kendall and justin bell part of your broadcast crew we'll be bringing you the action now the guys talked about prototype cars a little bit earlier but three other classes also running here at sea bringing in every tudor united sports car challenge event and that is the prototype challenge those are a spec category it's another prototype car all the chassis is the same same power plant same tires the gt categories that's where the interest comes in because that's where the manufacturers really are gt daytona though tommy we think about the rolex 24 maybe we should have called it the rolex 28 for the gt gt daytona category took a little while to get that one sorted out well when we went off the air there they had just uh promoted the flying lizard audi into victory lane because of a on track incident it since got reversed and the turner motorsports car was restored the wind so it was not terribly elegant but elegance not a word that people usually use to describe racers so the key takeaway though was it was an unbelievable finish and i think most people think they got it right in the end so that's what i think people remember going forward uh packed field and gt daytona expect more the same here yeah level five took the victory in the ferrari but gt lamar both of you guys have been factory race car drivers you know what it means to support that factory and go to war it's going to be a war in gt le mans here today justin absolutely i think all week i've described it as a battle of the giants because i mean rear engine mid engine front engine you've got corvettes you've got ben w got viper it's quite extraordinary remember each car just capable just as capable of a fast lap round here but they get there in slightly different ways and the fastest gt le man category car at the rolex 24 the one who took the checkered flag was porsha and it's been a while since porsche has stood on the top of the victory podium here at sebring in the gt category it was the last one in 2008 in gt but michael christensen has put his 911 rsr on pole here and porsche looking to make it two for two in 2014 with a win here at sebring for more chris neville is with our poll sitter in gt le mans well that's right brian between the rolex 24 and sebring porsche has racked up 143 victories and yesterday in qualifying it was sebring rookie michael christensen that put push on pole and michael one thing we hear with endurance racing is it's always take your time with these races make sure you have a car underneath you but we're searing a little bit more of a sense of urgency this year because of the traffic is this race going to this race gonna be very difficult you know it's a lot of traffic there's gonna be a really tight uh fight in the end of the race all of all of the gt lm cars is very uh close together so obviously it's not gonna be that patient as it used to be i guess because we're so tight we need to need to take the chances on the right time but also we need to be clever and not to do some damage to the car porsche hoping for back to back victories in the first two rounds of the tudor championship for more on gtd andrew marriott well this drama for the gtt pole sitter here because i'm with dale cameron and uh we're in the pit lane so you're not going to make the start going to start from pit lane what's happened yeah we had a small little mechanical issue and warm up it's all resolved now no problem but it's a really tight turnaround between warm up and getting out of pit lane in time for the recon and we missed that by about five seconds so uh yeah not a nice feeling to to give it away when you work so hard to stick it on pole but so we'll start from pit lane long race 12 hours got a great team and turner motorsports some good co-drivers and a great bmw z4 so we'll be fine yeah well that means you've got a lot of work to do so we'll watch how that bmw carves through the field and let's go now to darren law who's take part in 12 of these sebring 12 hours but now he's in the pit lane for us hey guys first off i want to say hi to mamo gidley back home i know he's watching the broadcast he was my teammate at daytona this year had a very scary crash and uh we're cheering for you buddy have a good recovery i'm here with duncan andy who is the teammate to bruno john carra they qualified on pole with a very very fast time duncan you guys have been fast every single session top three every session bruno went out and this is a really tight class and he put it on pole by eight tenths of a second were you surprised at that absolutely everybody was surprised about that you haven't seen a lot of gaps like that in any class let alone the spec class normally it's really tight fought really really close between us between colin between ringer there's the driving talent out there is immense but bruno just threw down yesterday and i haven't seen like anything like that in a long time oh he did a great job these guys qualified second last year and finished fourth they know how to get it done definitely a contender for this weekend all right thanks very much darren sebring is the kind of racetrack that can give up that kind of a performance to a particularly inspired driver back in the 1980s when han stuck took bob akin's porsche 962 around this place and took pole by four seconds don't see that much anymore no you do not the balance of performance has certainly been tightened up even since daytona has been some adjustments to try and get all of these cars on a level playing field and really hats off to the series done a great job under very difficult circumstances with the merger since last year with two different very different series there's a look at some of the onboard cameras we'll be showing you during the day we have a lot of them here too so that's going to be some good viewing throughout this 12 hour the great thing is you'll see we talked about the rough nature of this racetrack you'll see it from inside the cockpit for sure a record crowd is expected as they come down the back straightaway named for alec ullman the florida businessman whose idea it was to create a racetrack out of an army training base here in the citrus groves of florida you see the various class starting grids and our continental scroll across the top of your screen we expect the corvette safety car to pull off and we'll begin the race across the front row the perfect example of what the tudor united sports car championship is all about with a representative of the former american le mans series prototype division and a grand am rolex series daytona prototype and now the hammer comes down the green flag is in the air and we're underway at sabring welboza takes the lead look at ricky taylor in the velocity worldwide machines he stuffs it down the inside of olivier platt this side by side through turn one ricky taylor really timed that perfectly got to the inside he knows this track very well and now the track narrows down you would expect these daytona prototype configuration cars the cars that currently won two they're heavier their ties should come in a little bit quicker than the lightweight p2 cars dorsey that's a very good point calvin with that extra weight to do come in quicker the lighter weight cars take about another apple lap longer before they can really get maximum grip through gurney bend and down towards one of the signature quarters here at sebring international the hairpin right now you just want to keep it clean you want to get those tires pressures up temperatures up there we see a little bit of side by side action i think that's pruitt going through first gear hair pin down there you come all the way up through into fourth gear right here they break for turn 10. we'll see a lot of overtaking into this corner during the 12 hour scott dixon looking pretty racy in the 0-2 car two chip ganassi racing entries here once again just like we saw at daytona it was a rough road at daytona for the chip ganassi squad running that no new ford ecoboost engine but they've come back strong look very good in practice here this week trying to stretch a lead now make it a little more comfortable for himself nobody breathing down his neck into the lamar corner very important because it sends you on to that long back straightaway good idea right there a good view of how rough this racetrack is that's all concrete that was laid in 1942 yep it's a little bumpy long back stretch down into turn 17. this is the bumpiest corner on the racetrack and one of the highest speed you just bucket through here it's tough to find the line even when you get it right you still think i left a little bit on the table when you try and go quicker you'll end up in the wall i just figured you got it right if you make it onto the front straightaway barbosa for action express the hottest team in the tudor united championship right now leads them through lap one it's not to say you can grab a championship by the scruff of the neck but they've certainly done it so far that turn one is so fast it's so difficult because it's totally blind the walls are taller than the car so you can't see where the landing zone is if you want to call it that where it goes back and narrows down onto the new pavement that was put in some years back good to see the 10 car running strong right now got a text from wayne taylor about 20 minutes ago saying we've got some electrical issues seems like they've got those sorted out hopefully this racetrack will sort it out if it doesn't it is punishing dorsey i mean it will really dive deeply into that race car and find any weak link the p2 cars are the lighter weight machines but they have experience here over 12 hours the daytona prototype do you think they're more robust but this is a very different nature racetrack a certain oscillation they may not have experienced before can give you problems during the course of these 12 hours and with the extra weight of those cars and with the shock load of coming off the ground with the wheel and slamming back down axles rear gears things like that differentials brake here at sebring things that never break anywhere else well it'll break here on board the porsche factory 911 rsr leader in gt le mans but there's that bright yellow corvette right on the gearbox menacing i would call that ollie gavin right there corvettes didn't show the outright speed in qualifying very tight qualifying field i think five cars were set right by just over two tenths in the gtlm field porsche on the pole and two bmws then the corvettes it's going to be a fascinating battle guys being really tender with the curbs they're not running all over the curbs right now remember those curbs are just adding more vibration more bumps to what is already a really bumpy enough track and we talk about the difficulty of this racetrack the irony of sebring international is that's the reason teams love to come here and test this is one of the busiest race tracks in the country despite the modest spectator amenities and those for the teams for that matter it's wide open it is brutal and this is the place you come to test because if you could survive sebring you could survive anything it's the ultimate test bed even audi and porsche were here just last week testing in preparation for lamar they feel you can survive 12 hours here you can probably do 48 hours anywhere else because it'll just really wear the equipment down it tests the drivers too because if you're not in 100 physical shape little show here you know you do an hour stint here and you'll see guys coming out of the race car looking like they've just been beaten i mean absolutely drenched in sweat and then you're going to see really athletic guys that come out and haven't even broken a sweat yet this is the place that makes man for sure british driver nick tandy are on board with him chasing the number 56 bmw of dirk mueller two gtlm class cars oh look at tandy down the inside this is tight quarter racing early in the going this is where you could throw it all away you can have a little bit of damage in that first hour will come back and haunt you later in the event but tandy certainly making his intentions known that's for third in class meanwhile the 94 gt daytona class bmw hits the pit lane brilliant pole by dan cameron yesterday just squeaked it by a hundredth of a second over lee keane but problems in the warm-up and hopefully they're not continuing right now no obvious damage as far as flat tires or normal things oh penalty box penalty box he's been called through he's got to drive through it's got to be something from the start where he uh improved his position or popped out of line or something he's getting the drive through for just got to stay calm though it it's uh not easy but you can get laps back with the safety car caution periods there's a procedure that we'll dig into as this race progresses but um it's not over you think oh my boy you know we're a lap down or whatever as the leaders now come down the front straightaway but just got to stay cool dorsey absolutely right i think the year i won this race we were at 1.2 laps down but doesn't mean a thing there's a long way to go westbrook down the inside at the start works entry good clean pass there he let his intentions known early that's what you should do so the other driver knows that you're going to make an attempt too early to be you know messing up right now in a 12-hour race on board a p2 configuration prototype scott pruitt multiple time champion in the rolex series in the daytona prototype let's see how they stack up as they accelerate down towards the hairpin we've seen throughout the weekend there's a new bump down there on the entrance to the hairpin you may have your opponent all lined up then all of a sudden your world goes off the rails we'll take a break and return live to sebring welcome back to the mobile 112 hours of sebring here on fox sports there you see the race and championship leader the number five corvette from action express in the hands of brazilian uh portuguese driver joao who took it to the checkered flag in daytona seven long weeks ago well we talked about sebring international the racing surface basically unmolested since 1950 the track itself though the configuration has changed dorsey well the town of sebring florida in the racetrack is exactly in the middle of florida right north of lake okeechobee sits the old airport and still active on some of the runways the unique thing about this of course is it's a this is the eighth configuration 17 turns 13.74 miles but all of this part of the racetrack is concrete that was laid in 1942. in fact in the original configuration of about five miles the cars would go all the way out to the actual airport runways the place would shut down for the weekend that's the reason that the track originally changed configuration was so that airplanes could fly in and out an absolutely calendar perfect day here at sebring temperature about 63 expected to gain about perhaps 15 degrees under bright shiny sunny skies and a light florida breeze yeah you couldn't ask for better it's good for the drivers nice cool wind today the engines will be making good horsepower let's have a look at our rolex keys to victory not that those guys in the five car need to know cal well bumps in the road bob that can mean the rough surface that you're gonna deal with and also any problems can you recover from those play nice traffic four classes 63 cars is going to be tough out there today and the unknown how will the dp and the p2 stack up here this weekend with the balance of performance changes and will let dp configuration car survive 12 hours here at sebring that is the key to the tudor united sports car championship for all the cars in the former grand am rolex series they have not raced here so all of the information they're gathering is brand new to chris neville well we've got 60 drivers going toe to toe on the racetrack and another 120 down here in pit lane enjoying the broadcast tony kanaan down here trying to get some rest some relaxation you guys didn't have the daytona that you were hoping to brought the new ford ecoboost engine out didn't go the way that it typically does for ganassi but you guys have had some time to test now you guys ready for this race oh for sure i think you know uh just just the team and four they did a lot of work since since then you know it's a new engine and uh i think we're ready we're ready to do it the car is much better here i think and uh you know the field though it's so much tighter than it was in daytona i think it's gonna be a great race yeah it seems like at daytona none of the drivers were really happy with how the car was performing have you guys kind of finally got the car tuned up the way you want it well we're always going to complain about something but i think here we have a you know a better car that we had at the agenda for sure we have there's a lot more downforce in these cars we have with the you know the undertrail and the the different knows so i'm happier here that i was in daytona for sure and you're also feeling a little bit under the weather you're gonna be okay to drive you know the good part about when you're sick is when you get in the car that goes away so i'll be fine all right get some rest hopefully that's all to go away when he gets in the car tony always has the high downforce nose on himself that 3.5 liter ford ecoboost twin turbo six cylinder engine is quite the project it's fun to go by the two teams that are running it the ganassi boys and the mike shank racing with kerb agen they have been working relentlessly on that uh package the engine bay changes with every race yeah it's not the engine itself i mean there's a lot of cooling issues that go along with the chronic package that in the back in one of these cars there's not a lot of air going in the back side of one of these cars boy to bear if you will and the engine suffers it gets hot from all that checking the action to the gt daytona class there's the double 007 trg amr aston martin vantage qualified fourth and james davis and certainly making a statement here for himself and trg and that aston martin v12 varnish i mean kevin felt he had a really good car they showed their pace early in the week and everyone said what are you doing because there's always the threat of a balance of a performance change but uh he knew what they had and eventually everyone puts their cards on the table come qualifying and it was very very tight in gtd here we're on board with lee keen and the weathertech porsche here the drivetrain wine typical porsche noise there down into the hairpin see the number on the side of the car that was lit up there the number three that's something that's new it's really cool too because tonight no matter if you can see the car not you'll see that number three it means that the car is running third in its class at this point in the race all the cars carry those numbers in different colors depending upon which class the car runs in it's called the leader light system it's a great innovation for all the fans around the racetrack right now it shows third but timing and scoring shows that car second perhaps it'll adjust when he gets around to start finish and not far behind is ben keating in the one gtd class viper in the field ben keating one of the biggest viper dealers in the world and there it is from riley technologies this is a tremendous performance by ben keating two of the classes out there today gtd and lmpc are what we call pro amp categories where half your driver lineup at least has to be made up about what we call a silver grading or bronze grading which these are guys who typically aren't making their living from driving race cars ben is one of those guys but he's certainly been through the ranks had great success in vipers and was really itching to get in this series driving a viper he went to riley they built this car and the fact that he as a pro-am driver is running up in the top three really is showing when you get blinking poland behind the wheel what is that car's potential getting a two-time champion in the spec viper series here in the united states so don't confuse a non-professional with a non-skilled driver battle for the lead here in pc and these are a couple professional grade drivers bruno genkira tom kimber smith giving him a good run this is pretty cool junkier what a lap he lay down in qualifying typically we see the field split by hundreds he was seven eight tenths clearer the rest of the field in alan pc he found something found the sweet spot just the ties came in perfectly and bruno as we know is so talented we've watched it for many years on the verge of an f1 career bob and a great success in the champ car series but when you look at him being out there that really shows the class of this category in terms of the drivers that it attracts former pole sitter for the indianapolis 500 closest battle on the racetrack in class right now and that's no surprise prototype challenge is a spec series all the cars are the same chassis engine and tires now here's a dilemma this is exactly what i'm talking about look at the back of that you've got the prototype cars much faster who have caught a gaggle of gt cars different classes there and this is what you have to deal with you cannot pass them because there's nowhere to go there's too many you'll lose a handful of seconds barbosa the leader is clear look he's all the way down in the hairpin and ricky taylor is right in the middle of this mess and right behind him comes olivier pla and then one of the extreme motorsport i think a scott sharp there right in the mix as well this is playing well together calvin what you were talking about right there it'd be very easy to get over anxious and start bumping and banging and knocking off some of the bits of your car that you don't want to do that this early in the 12-hour race you can't do it and you've got to think about the big picture there will be a reset when you get a caution everyone comes back to the leader so there's no point we see a quick spin there coming out of turn four really slippery right there the eight car there diving right david chang just gotta be careful even when you get back on the racetrack don't break a half shaft by giving it too much welly here just try and ease back on the track this is usually caused by jumping on the throttle a little too hard which i think is exactly what's about to happen yeah breaks the rear end free when he got it oh he got tagged a little bit there by the wheel and dp barely got it that's covered by a local yellow he'll get that going and that's no real big drama for anyone but it's a wake-up call and it's another element of the whole traffic situation if you do have to go off for some reason it can be tough to find a hole in the traffic to get back on well there's sand it it's in florida after a while you know you go off the race track and there's sand and some of those sand pits are deep and you're not going to get out of there without a tow truck look at those carbon brakes on the prototype machines how deep they can go in the brake zones are really really short talking to mama rojas who co-drives with scott pruitt i said what is the race ability he said it's tough it's tough to pass because the brake zones are now so much shorter the carbon brakes performance just minimizes when you have to get on the brake until the apex of the corner oh this is not good he could have high sided himself here that's the other thing i was going to say you have to watch out for those curbs if you get on that top of that curb with the chassis it'll lift the wheels off the ground and you will not be going anywhere i suspect that's the case yeah if he's stuck so we have a local yellow right now turn marshals will call in see if he spins the rear wheels trying to get it back on it'd be better to try to go backwards well i was just thinking that reverse and take a good run at it well one way or another if he cannot move for whatever reason i just stole the engine ball because i don't see anything oh there we go again now he's stuck well so much for reverse it's not even beginning to try to rock the front wheel here's our full course and here it comes our first full course caution of the 12 hours field to be neutralized we'll see who decides to take a pit stop we're just getting started here at the 60 second running of the mobile 112 hours of sebring as you could see a huge crowd on hand they all have their favorites if they're paying attention at all well the sebring is one of the toughest tracks though anywhere in the world it's a challenging track 17 corners you really have to push yourself to run quickly there it's a sprint race it became a sprint race even so it's 12 hour and it's a tough one it's rough it's bumpy it's quick it's uh challenging it's that kind of race that everybody wants to win because it's been going on for a very long time and it's a pretty mystic place a mystic place it's a great way to describe sebring international raceway there you see the time of day on the rolex clock at trackside will be open for 12 hours a rumble machine that just went through the shot looks like a mystic pizza i mean the color scheme is something else somebody's bad dream it's great great these guys involved though had so much success in uh multi sports car challenge series there you go i think there was more than rum involved in that paint job david chang back on track so we'll get reorganized and get ready for a green flag this guy's going to be tough here today got great driver line up the plum brothers madison snow great young talent and jan halen he's certainly shown his speed in porsches over the last few years you can never count that car out i mean it might be long you know lounging around in the middle of the field from half the race but toward the end watch where it goes what you're seeing here everyone at home saying why are these cars passing under caution is a procedure here if you're trapped between your class leader and the pace car and the overall leader you essentially get a wave by to get you back on the same lap as your class leader so that will happen it's very orchestrated and that communication is given by the race steward over the radio that's a good thing too because it enables you to be able to get a lap back if you get in trouble for some reason get split from your lead in your class while we have a moment and we're under caution let's take the opportunity to explore the four classes involved in today's race beginning with the prototype category the fastest cars of all combining grand am daytona prototypes alm sp2 and delta wing cars the prototype class features the fastest and most technologically advanced cars in north america the cars use red number panels number plates and leader lights among the many to watch seven-time rolex sports car series champions chip ganassi racing with sabatos led by scott pruitt both the 01 and o2 had trouble in the rolex 24 at daytona but the team is looking to bounce back with a strong finish here at sebring alms p1 champion muscle milk picket racing is fielding a nissan powered orica for just the second race team is led by its two champion drivers klaus graf and lucas lore who alone has won more races than anyone else in alms history 2013 grand mdp driver champs jordan taylor and max angelelli and a normally aspirated corvette dp are joined by ricky taylor they finished second overall in the rolex 24 and are looking to improve here in sebring extreme speed motorsports uses honda horsepower and features a strong driving team with scott sharp ryan dial and david brabham leading their two-car assault and mazda bravely enters the prototype ranks this year with a pair of unique designs powered by its production based skyactiv clean diesel race engine the only diesel-powered race car in the tudor championship and don't forget your rolex 24 winners action express corvette driver zhao barbosa christian fidapaldi and sebastian bourdai hope to start the season with two straight endurance wins there's a look out the back of the little red corvette the beautiful c7 stingray that is the pace car for this 12 hours of sebring with an added spoiler for brand identification that little baby straight off the showroom floor could compete just about anywhere just over 25 minutes into this opening stint the daytona prototypes talking to the crews as much information as they'll give you say they'll go about 43 to 46 minutes on fuel so they're about halfway through that fuel load so be interesting to see who stays out maybe trying to gain some track position early in the going and get a little bit off schedule with the rest of the groups it's always nice to get a look at the tires and everything and if you need to make any adjustments on board there with uh westy richard westbrook look at him bounce around they're not even at speed i mean just just driving around here pummels you westbrook won here last year driving as the third driver in the corvette squad they'll drive a corvette at le mans this year but full time in the prototypes time now to open the pit lane for service if you wanted we begin with the prototypes who have their own lap to pit the gt cars will have their own lap to follow on board with oz negri brazilian by birth oz is going to go back and race in the most popular form of motorsports in his native country stock car racing and i was amazed to find out it'll be the first time in 23 years that oz has raced back in brazil that's going to be really cool he's very excited about that and just had a few problems over the course this weekend it's been a rough road for mike shank and the boys but they really grind hard they're digging deep and they're going to come good here i know at this season i think they're going to climb the winner's roster before this season is out it's going to be prototypes and lmpc cars allowed in on this pit stop sequence the reason they do that is just with so many cars it just enables the teams to operate and not be in such tight confines that any problems may occur it keeps the flow going this is on board those seven mazda skyactiv diesel we talked about before we expect to see everybody come in and take advantage of this service uh the only downside to doing this of course is it makes the yellow flag caution laps uh very long because it's a 3.7 miles around this racetrack and that's got to happen three times to get everybody accommodated see cars weaving around i'd suggest maybe they're some of the cars that may not be coming in even so if they come in they may decide to keep on that same rubber so you just want to keep those marbles around the edge of the racetrack particularly driving slowly you will pick up little balls of rubber and when you try and get back up to speed the grip level is not there so it's important whatever you're doing try and keep those tires cleaned look at that lineup of cars everybody bright and shiny it won't look like that a little over 11 hours from now and here they come halfway through a fuel load so this will be a quickie should only be about 12 to 15 seconds of fuel and if you're going to put tires on that's going to cost you some time you can't get a tire change done in that amount of time without it being absolutely perfect so maybe just top them up with fuel and send them again let's see if anyone changes that strategy scott pruitt and scott dixon coming to stop in pit lane here going to be fuel and tires four continental tires for both cars checked in with both teams don't anticipate any chassis changes on this top when we look at these cars back at daytona they were running low downforce here at sebring they're high down horse configuration so you when you look at these fords you see these four big dive planes on the front and talk to these teams they say the drivers really have to take care of those dive planes very easy to lose those if they get into some traffic andrew more of the chevy v8 is the big car going out so yeah secondly actually express as well they didn't take any tires they just topped up with fuel and uh yes some drink went into yamaboza as well he just took a quick sip of the drink model and i think i just got out of the corner of my eye that actually his rest was beaten away by one of the lmp2 cars well you could see there with the chip ganassi cars they had a problem not a problem but by changing all four tires the refueling because it wasn't a full fuel it was done way earlier so there is a slight delay there andrew draven's trying to get the dempsey racing porsche back up to speed yeah he had a problem out on the course i don't know if the car shut off and he's recycled or gone to a big ignition but in any event he's got it back going he'll be sharing that car with joe foster norbert seidler terrific sports car driver from austria and patrick dempsey the team co-owner and you all know who he is on this next lap it'll be gtlm and gtd will be making their pit stops next up for pit stop service will be the gt class let's take a closer look at what the gtlm category is all about the alms gt division recognized as the best gt competition in the world continues this year as the gt le mans class a true proving ground for leading manufacturers gtlm features open competition among tire manufacturers all cars bear red number panels number plates and leader lights corvette racing which won the lms gt team and driver championships last year with jan magnusson and antonio garcia returned to sebring where they'll drive their ninth class win since 2002. last year srt viper finished fifth here at sebring this year they look to build on a third place finish at the rolex 24. bmw team rll co-owned by bobby ray hall david letterman and mike lanigan started strong in daytona with two cars in the gt top five aston martin and ferrari are also in this category but watch out for rolex 24 class winners porsche north america to once again be strong here at sebring still waiting for the gt field to make its way around as you take a look at one of those beautiful corvettes yeah do you see the three nose has got some damage guys these have been in the back of somebody it's nothing much superficial at the grill area see it right there oh yeah it's interesting the nose down somewhat hmm you know when they were lined up and coming around before the pits opened the first time i saw a little puffs of tire smoke here and there lock up from some of the cars who perhaps closed the gap quicker than they anticipated i wonder if anybody got into anybody during that lineup it's easy to have happen i remember york burkmaster had major damage here at sebring on that warm-up lap a few years ago with the porsche and you suddenly get that stack-up effect you're not expecting the guy in front of you trying to try and get heat into the brakes and he jumps on the brake pedal you have relatively cold tires and you can't stop so it's a dangerous part of the race even before you've seen the green flag let's see what the corvette team chooses to do for antonio garcia when he reaches the pit 60 kilometers an hour is the pit lane speed about 37 miles per hour and uh if you come down pit road versus staying out on the racetrack under green conditions about a 36 second loss plus the service ollie gavin in the four antonio garcia in the three i just checked in with danny binks crew chief on the three car he said this nose pretty smashed up so they're gonna take a look at it see if they have to repair this i talked to danny banks before the race he said this is a race where we're gonna have to be perfect so this first hour of the race not going the way that they wanted andrew well both the important north american entries are in and they are putting new michelins on remember most of the defenses here are running on the continental tires but they decided actually not to take the tyres that were out there but they didn't take them they're both back on the right track but just in front of the corvette like like the 56 car leapfrogged around some of those other competitors so it looks like they did not take tires possibly in the right whole camp well maybe two two is always an option as well a little bit difficult to drive until you get the other half of the car literally up to 10 but uh warm day here shouldn't be too much of an issue and back up to speed they come we anticipate a green flag so we'll take a quick break and return to one of the great racing events in all the world a mobile one 12 hours of sebring presented by fresh from florida here on fox sports 1. back live to drama here at sebring international raceway that's the number 33 gtd class viper driven by ben keating which exploded in flames while going through turn six gurney bend this is either a fuel fire or oil fire it's being fed so i'm suspecting it might be a fuel fire at this point just been into the pit lane all of the field or most of them had come down pit road to get some refueling done so it's stopping here okay so he's he's lost a fuel line or something and something broke i wonder if he just whether it's stopped and then he re-fought it and now you can see it's been leaking something because the fire goes back to where the car is i mean you've either got massive fuel leak or you've got oil i'm suspecting it's probably going to be a fuel leak just because the way it keeps reigniting usually by the time you get an oil fire knocked down it stays down but i wouldn't be surprised for them to stop the field because i think it's getting to a dangerous point that fire is licking across the racetrack and even cars driving by what happens cal is the next thing that's going to happen is one of the entire rear tires are going to melt when it does it's going to explode and blow the body work everywhere i've had a car i've lost a car like this one of the roush cars you see him putting water on the tire on the back tire that's a smart thing to do too i'm trying to keep that from exploding that just has more oxygen all at once and it blows things to bits this all began about 35 minutes into the race let's hear from the team manager with andrew yeah it's greg jones here greg this is devastating for you do you know what happened well no we actually don't there was a bad vibration uh right when he left pit road and um you know he couldn't start the car and then all of a sudden uh you know he radios in that he's on fire and you can see what happened here so unfortunately it's a bad day for the viper exchange uh viper so that's about all we can do this car is looking so competitive in gtd yeah we were having a good weekend so right where we needed to be ben was doing a great job you know all of our drivers had time in the car and we were really looking forward to a good race unfortunately uh doesn't look like we're going to have that now i feel for you early path thank you very much boy that thing just keeps reigniting underneath the middle of the car they knock it down and it it's feeding itself wondering if the fuel pump's still on yeah that's what i'm thinking is it wasn't shut off before ben keating climbed from the cockpit this was a real favorite to take honors here i mean it's early days for that viper in terms of the durability in terms of speed everyone said at the test here last month boy that viper put together some really strong segment times and was going to be competitive this weekend they're kidding sharing with the dutch blickemolin brothers very quick very experienced as calvin mentioned competitive team there's the reaction from the pit tough race and we're just getting started here at the 12 hours of sebring stand by we'll be back there's a difference something that separates first place from second and pushes some to excellence over and over what compels this hunger this need to be the best for most winning is all there is for a few competition serves a deeper purpose what began over 60 years ago has become an obsession because after the fight and the thrill of the hunt there's much to be learned winning more auto races than any other company in history didn't come easy it's not an accident it's a testament a testament to a lifelong commitment to automotive perfection decade after decade we've combined passion and discipline in a relentless quest to never settle and never rest on our laurels here's to excellence synonymous with endurance racing around the world porsche certainly had their own chapter here at sebring international raceway as you can see the battle against that burning number 333 viper continues on board with patrick long one of the factory 911 rsrs the first porsche factory racing team dedicated to north american sports car racing now there's the number three corvette we saw earlier that it had crunched the nose now it's in for more extensive repair chris neville yeah bob antonio garcia has been sitting here for about two and a half minutes hasn't gone down a lap but the team trying to take advantage of this extended caution to get this car fixed up the nose looked pretty bad on the three car but i didn't think they needed to bring it in just because of the nose but talking to dan binks the crew chief on this car his biggest concern was because of that hit on the nose the left front fender was shoved back in front of the driver's side door so he was very concerned that driver changes were going to be difficult so when they saw the fire with the viper they decided at this point in time great time to get this car fixed up and hopefully not go down a lot well last year they won the class not this car but the four car and they did it from two laps down so you can rebound certainly with these safety car procedures you can get away by get that lap back and i think they're making the right choice dorsey some of that ducting could have been messed up in terms of the brakes and uh the radiator and stuff so i think this is the right call even though it was painful dan binks is one of the best i mean what he looked at right there was not just the integrity of the car but he realized there was going to be a trouble every time they did a driver change that door was going to come into play and nothing's fit quite exactly the way it should so don't do this to your corvette at home but it's always interesting remarkable how good they do on this car to watch how the cars come apart and go back together because certainly that's a part of the design yes mission statement is to make a car that's easily fixable when things go wrong because they will they were close you could see the work was pretty much complete now they'll probably spend a bit more time making sure everything is absolutely buttoned up but if they would have been in a position to they'd probably send him with a bit more work to be done to stay on that lead lab get him back in and finish it off but the pace car was already there so they didn't have the option this corvette team many time champions here at sebring when it was a part of the american le mans series of course that means when you're building your car during the off-season you head all the way to mid-march to be ready to go racing but now as a part of the tudor united sports car championship their first event was the rolex 24 at daytona back at the end of january that shortens up the old timeline it really does it really puts an enormous amount of pressure on the teams to be ready to go and as we saw at daytona some of the teams were not ready it was too early in their development process looks like they finally won the war with the fire they've got that you see they have the soapy sudsy stuff out there now that finally took it down but the car appears to be a complete casualty here's how it began hopefully it is finally over and we can get back to green flag action here at seabring driver ben keating climbed out okay the car not so much welcome back to sebring international raceway coming up on 50 minutes into the 12 hours of sebring here on fox sports fire has been put out in the viper the car has been pushed off the race track track repair is continuing while we have a moment let's get called up on all the happenings since the season opening rolex 24 at daytona we call it our mazda news and notes and it begins with equalizing performance among the various mechanical combinations on track yeah absolutely both different configurations that prototype cars have been given much more downforce the p2 car like you're looking at right there can now run in the high downforce package versus the le mans package so the daytona prototypes had that big red diffuser those big dive planes which are obvious to other people looking on screen and a few other changes the ford has been given a bit more power a bit more boost and the chevy's have been throttled back a little bit just trying to create an even playing field moving forward there have also been some personnel changes the very successful team manager at chip ganassi racing with felix about us tim keane parted ways with the team after the rolex 24 and for wayne taylor's organization simon hodgson has also left the group and uh these are two great friends of us at fox sports one we uh don't like not having you here in the paddock this weekend boys so get back and uh these are two of the best in the business i don't think it'll be out of action very long you have to suspect that they will be picked up fairly quickly and the need for that performance balancing in case you're wondering is because of the diversity when you have four six eight ten and twelve cylinder engines turbo normally aspirated diesel and gas takes a lot of equalizing let's go to chris neville well the three cars back on track one lap down pretty much changed all the bodywork forward of the doors and danny you guys have come from behind many times i know you're a little bit frustrated but you guys have come from behind before how is the three car well right now i think we're pretty good i tore off that nose really bad that thing was rubbing on the tires and we got that yellow we practiced that stuff at the shop you know if the hood wasn't bent up so bad we would have been able to do it in one lap and that's what we had been practicing so uh these guys are awesome man everybody works so hard you know i don't think anybody here could change all of that bodywork in three and a half minutes so we're ready to go any idea what happened there no i think it's just everybody was bumping and grinding at the beginning and we got the worst end of it yeah we see a couple drivers standing here in the background we got tommy milner over here tommy you've been able to watch the first hour of this race seeing everything kind of transpired out here at corvette racing what are your thoughts of this uh first hour of racing yeah i mean kind of what i expected uh that the class is pretty close right now all the cars are pretty even um oliver had a great start there got by the two bmws and uh chasing down the porsche there so you know just a good indication that our car's pretty quick so far and uh just kind of focus on the race and not make mistakes you see the three car having a little bit of trouble here how's the team stay up yeah i mean for them at least it's early on so that they they can get that out of the way now and then they get kind of get their lap back and keep racing um but you know stuff like that you know for us you know we see that and we know that that those kind of things you know hamper race so just kind of keep our nose clean and get to the end with a car that's in in one piece and then the last hour go racing indeed very early on andrew yeah well i'm down here with a team out into the car that's leading the race mate the delta wing dave price bit of clever strategy i think dave well i don't need to stop so often as the rest of the field so we're just making the most of where we are on fuel now of course a year ago you made the debut with the new configuration delta wing with it with the monster an elite engine a lan engine i should say and that was a hard old trial that raced here 12 months ago but going much better now now we've done a lot of work in the year and of course we've built a new coupe as well and i'm hoping we'll have a good reliable running i mean this time last year that was us on fire now do you think that this race is going to come to you a bit then because of that fuel situation well i mean on track when we can't compete on speed but you know our fuel situation is our biggest bonus to be honest well great andy merrick doing a great job but just to remind everybody how bloody narrow how narrow these tyres are at the very front look at it it's only about three inches it's across just amazing technology and uh he says they're good on fuel but their fuel tank capacity is way less about 65 percent the size of the prototype machines but it's all about the fact that concept is all about half the horsepower dorsey but half the drag and drag means you're dragging that machine through the air and that burns fuel and there's virtually no weight on those front tires anyway you go up there in front of that car and any one of us pick it up off the ground it's uh there's nothing up there it is quite an engineering achievement andy mayrick will be sharing with catherine legg and young colombian driver gabby chavez during this mobile one 12 hours of sebring another break coming up hopefully a green flag on the other side don't go away success in racing can often be judged on the strength of your collaborations here at corvette racing of course it's their technical partnership with mobile one lubricants that is without equal why you say it's only oil oh no it's so much more than that on a continual basis the mobile one and corvette engineers work together to enhance performance durability heat tolerances and of course that extends from the engine to the transmission to the power steering fluid what does that mean for me you may say well quite a lot actually while this is a world-class top sports car many of the same lubricants also appear on the cars that we drive on the road thanks very much justin you may have noticed the space housing justin's report there it is we've got to come up with a name for this it looks like you know the the intake manifold it does actually c7 stingray but we can do better than that one of those little bouncy inflatables that the kids have put some kids up on top of there or the the bow tie dome what happened was paddock space for all the teams to work on their cars has shrunk for this year's event so some teams just went with the traditional awnings not corvette this thing folds up into about 300 pounds of canvas and in two hours they can inflate it and when i ask the team manager doug feehan what kind of weather it will withstand he said if you get a wind strong enough to blow this thing away it blowing away is the least of your problems that's what they said at home it's amazing and there's no tent poles or anything it's just a wide open space it's really useful for the beauty of it right no tent poles down the middle let's go to chris neville well bob jim farley executive vp marketing sales and service for ford down here in the ganassi area overseeing all the activity with this group and uh jim you're not just a guy at the corporate office you're also a racer yourself and i think we spoke with you back at monterey historics last year when you were racing your cobra but what do you think here at sebring ford ecoboost it's so great to have ford back doing this as part of our dna to race and i was talking to scott pruitt he said i've been here since the late 80s so it's about time we came back it feels great to be here and for really what i'm hearing this is really the tip of the ice iceberg for ford this is not just gonna be prototypes we're gonna see you guys in some other stuff too well i wish i could break some news today but i won't but you know this is as i said racing is part of the dna of our company and raj myself the whole management team really believe in investing in racing and it helps sell street cars like our st our new mustang and need for speed this weekend so it's all good and thank for fox sports for covering it well hopefully we see the blue oval in victory lane later today jim farley a great guy drives his uh cobra he's got a beautiful cover you should see this thing yes he does he races with us over at hsr and uh he's got a couple cars he's a rook enthusiast i mean he's he's the real deal yeah they got the right guy for the job to sit him down yet not yet i'm hoping i'm going to make a deal with him i'm thinking his cobra is a 427 big block yeah absolutely beautiful restoration on that car there's the o2 from chip can assert racing with felix sabattus originally met as a north american endurance cup entrant only due to the presidents not lisa which guys like scott dixon who have indycar responsibilities coming up as you see the the 33 or the combat that is the very worst looking thing you can have i i like i said before i had this happen to me in my racing career that is a nasty job now for the guys back in the shop to dismantle and there's really not a lot you can do it was a one-of-one car if i'm not mistaken from riley you can't use much anything when it's gotten that hot you know inside there the gearbox has been hot now the engine there's you know there's so many composite pieces to these cars nowaday to keep the light weight of it uh and all that stuff that's hugely flammable it doesn't take much there's any good news is that the next round of the championship at long beach is not going to have gtd category racing there so they have to mazda raceway laguna seca in may but uh still a lot of work to be done to get that car rebuilt well while we're on the subject of the gt daytona category let's take a little closer look at the makeup of the class made up primarily of cars from the grand am gt gx and alms gtc classes gt daytona machines are enhanced but not defined by technology like their pc counterparts all gtd class cars utilize blue number panels rear end plates and all are on continental tires those competing in this huge class last year's alms gtc driver champions jerome blickemolin and cooper mcneil as well as grand-am gt champ alessandro balzan with his number 63 scuderia corsa ferrari 458 almost half of the teams in this category race porsches but in the rolex 24 it was the audi and the ferrari battling to the end and a dramatic finish that ended up with the ferrari on top let's pick up the gtd class leader there it is the porsche number 30 and momo colors making their way around as we await the green flag on board with kubrick or merziak i had a chat with the polish driver recently and it's uh it's great to see a young driver like him with a really and i mean over the top enthusiasm for the new tudor united sports car championship as the field begins to form up again there's one of the gtlm class vipers that's the number 93 car dominic farnbocker drives the sister car the 91 he right now is with andrew marriott yeah and he's one of the real fun characters in the paddock here don it kind of frustrating this race hasn't really got underway has it no no really i mean after the incident we saw earlier with a fire i mean we're lucky that ben got out of the car we don't know yet what happened there uh or maybe a few line broke or something but other than that uh the race is not even didn't even start yet and uh we already had a strategy like that in our team so you've got a strong car here haven't you yeah we we have a good lineup here uh two cars left our gtlm cars um we're trying our best right now kuno is leading the field uh mark is on tenth place so we have both options either we run strong or not uh we will see in the future now dominic was telling me a couple of days ago that he's a bit of an ace around the old uh nurburgring nordschleifer you're going for a bit of a record tonight you're gonna try and be the fastest street car is it ever around the track yeah i mean uh that's all we are looking for i mean uh some other brand beat our our old record so i think in the future we are i think uh there's a plan maybe to go back to the nurburgring and beat that record yeah of course uh way back when uh what was the forerunner of this uh championship used to race there you know with the great porsche nine five sixes and before that and i'm one sevens of course yeah it's a it's a great great racetrack and uh i compared it a little bit with uh with these american racetracks like a road america road atlanta seabring a little bit with a bumpy course uh yeah it's uh it's quite similar and i really like that great to see your enthusiasm for the nurburgring now to chris neville well down at the mazda camp to the prettiest cars on the racetrack and john doonan overseeing this program and john you guys are really learning a lot about these cars finally starting to get into the performance of the car well the mazda brand doesn't stop uh challenging ourselves to develop and came here for a couple test days after daytona learned a ton and made up almost half that gap we had at daytona still using a ton of the stock components from the skyactiv diesel engine uh we're proud of that but at some point as racers we like to fight for the win so each of these weekends each of the laps we're learning more and uh come a few races here we're going to be in the fight with this diesel technology what were some of the big challenges at daytona certainly again using stock components and putting them through the most rugged test asking to do four or five times what they're designed to do on the race track a great test bed but very difficult to make them compete at the top of the level of the class and the prototypes well as we've seen in gt we know that mazda john dune and everybody here from speed source will get these cars up to the front thank you chris big supporters of rising young drivers as well as technologies and motorsports both on the racetrack and off another break coming up nearly an hour under the yellow flag everybody ready to go back to racing back at sebring international raceway in the 62nd running of the mobile one 12 hours of sebring i'm bob varsia with calvin fish dorsey schroeder down in the pit lane andrew marriott and chris neville field forming up in about a lap and a half we expect to go green once again while we have time let's have a look at the fourth and final class in competition among our field of 64 prototype challenge a clash retained from the alms is prototype challenge a spec class featuring open cockpit race cars and technologies such as carbon fiber chassis carbon brakes and a sequential gearbox all pc cars utilize blue number panels rear end plates and all run on continental tires those competing include 2013 driver champion mike wash and 2013 team champs core auto sport with drivers john bennett colin brown and james gooey in daytona's core autosport taking the win but here in sebring it seems to be anyone's game back to live pictures coming down from the scene of the fire that brought out the yellow flag that has now reached over 50 minutes in length but it looks like things are cleaning up quickly this is turn six gurney bend of the 17 corners on this track eight bear the names of some of the legends who raced here the fangio chicane the cunningham corner the collier curve the john de bien ben there are still a few that could use the name of another racing legend to chris neville ryan dl tasted champagne here back in 2012 and ryan back at daytona we were blending these two series daytona prototype p2 cars together and really the long straights there really lended themselves to the daytona prototypes but here a little bit different story what are you seeing in this first hour yeah i mean i think our pace of daytona was actually pretty good we just obviously had some mechanical issues but we felt good into the race we were strong uh and then coming here we definitely felt that we would be on a little bit more of an even playing field uh obviously there's been a couple of changes on the rules um but it's definitely benefiting us it's great to see uh you know not just us but the old car and the muscle milk car being competitive and you know i don't think anybody wants to see a dominant car but it's nice to see cars running equal lap times and doing it in very different ways but you know for us obviously we're the title sponsors with uh tequila patrolling for the north american endurance cup so we're we're trying hard to get ourselves back on track here and keep all the sponsors happy but so far it's been a great weekend you know it's a hard race to win um i enjoyed winning a couple of years ago and and hpd actually so hopefully we can win it again today you know one thing we heard at daytona is it takes a little bit longer for the p2 cars because they're lighter for the tire temps and tire pressures to come up we see that this weekend too definitely not anywhere near as bad i mean the the road course tire is what this is and also the road course aerial that we get to run now makes a big difference for us i think the combination of the the hard oval tire with the lemon aero kit uh and also cold temperatures at daytona was was not great for us uh but here you know it'd be nice if we did have a difference with the rules so that you know you could gamble on not doing tires and getting advantage on it because i definitely think one of the strengths especially with our car is tire wear but um hey so far we're out front and we're happy about that and uh also a good friend ben king so i'm glad to see uh he's out there and bumped for the viper guys thanks ryan it's a home game for ryan dial who lives in orlando about an hour hour and a half drive from sebring international raceway the town of sebring has a population between 15 and 20 000 i would guess five times that many people have rushed to sebring international this weekend for the 60-second running of this great race spoke to ryan deals team manager robin hill this morning about their progress this weekend he said we had a really good test here but he said we came back and we suddenly lost the balance on the race car and that's been a common thread up and down pit lane this weekend when you talk to the teams this racetrack changes so much dorsey day to day session to session and particularly month to month there's a lot of indy car testing that actually occurs here at sebring particularly over on the other half of the circuit puts a lot of rubber down changes the grip level teams set the car up come back and they're kind of lost you really have to be flexible don't get locked into that setup you've got to chase the racetrack a little bit yeah it's been that way it's savoring for the longest time you know during the day time in the morning it's usually really quick and then come afternoon sunlight you lose all the grip and then if you start chasing the car then the next morning you've got it all wrong again gt daytona leader kerber garciac in that porsche late splash looks like it's going to take four continental tires as well that's a smart call right now they just ran an hour behind the pace car so get those tires on there in case the other ones picked up debris or anything because we've been slow behind that pace car i think they are walking a strategy there that they still had plenty of fuel on board they could afford to go but this yellow has been so long yeah they're kind of running out of fuel and if we go back to green they'll be in shortly thereafter so it doesn't make sense to stay out i'd like as a team manager to you know pull those tires off and put fresh ones on because of just what we've seen you know so much behind the pace car stuff picking up debris and you know that all that fire and fire dust and all that stuff that was out there a big part of the 60-second running of the mobile one 12 hours of sebring has been spent under the yellow flag nearly an hour from right now an hour ago this happened as ben keating brought his gtd class viper to the side of the track in turn six with a massive fire that took fire crews a long time to extinguish as you saw keating got out of the car he was okay under the caution for nearly one hour we now expect the green flag to get back to racing now we're seeing all these cars trying to you know get a bit of brake temperature into the wheels which will then get some tyre temperature as well cleaning off those tires if they've picked up any of those marbles and that's the danger time you can really run into the back of someone very kit easily so you got to be careful under these conditions those firefighters firefighters fought that for such a long time and uh really did a good job of getting it all under contained you know with it was a fuel fed fire so it was really uh not an easy situation corvette stingray pace car begins to pull away just that little bit and there's the delta wing that unique vehicle maximizing weight horsepower fuel use for efficiency while keeping speed getting ready to go racing at sebring once again after nearly an hour under the yellow flag a yellow flag brought out by this horrendous fire under the number 33 gt daytona class viper of ben keating who climbed out of the car but it took the crews a long time to get it put out it looked like he reached in perhaps to shut off the electrics on the car which would stop the fuel pump but as dorsey schroeder pointed out earlier something apparently broke under the car and fuel or oil kept feeding that fire until it was finally knocked down and the racetrack prepared in turn six they talked about a vibration after they got the pit stop done like something was uh a tire or something might have come apart and tore a fuel line off but for sure that was a fuel fire and um it's just a shame to lose a race car like that luckily mr keating is fine there's the delta wing leading the way in the hands of andy merrick and at long last we are ready to go back to green flag racing here now they can't figure they can't pass him to start finish line i was about to say some of these guys might want to pounce on that car yeah reflect away then you can go but you got to wait for the green you got different classes right at the front there's bruno shunkier in that blue open cockpit prototype that's an lmpc car so we see the action express car get around sharpie this will be good he's on the move it's a lock jam down into turns two and three it gets really tight here three wide through turn three there you don't see that often lucas ler there forces the muscle milk entry inside of scott sharp remember scott sharp didn't change tires maybe he's struggling here to find grip that's the scene of the incident see the oil dryer the dust we're gonna see that for a few laps the battle on the brakes down into the hairpin taylor looks to the outside side by side here coming off the hairpin great stuff and right now it appears there's no catching andy marrick in that delta wing boy he's got got it going doesn't he yes he was very impressive at daytona had decent speed here this isn't probably the best configuration of racetrack to take advantage of that low drag machine like daytona and the high speed nature of that circuit official numbers on the caution flag 15 laps of caution 59 total minutes under yellow lucas ler pushing hard in the muscle milk entry he's up to third now chasing zhua babosa he's won here at sebring in class five times looking for that overall win so here's a good example of what the tudor united sports car championship is all about hanging with that private car they'll point still ahead delta wing leading the former daytona prototypes leading the former lmp2 car an lmpc car in close attendance i bet this little delta wing is getting a cheer from the massive crowd gathered here at sebring that's one of those you love it or you hated cars you know and for the fans that like the way that looks out there they will be going crazy so unique that we see the mike shank racing entry the need for speed ford riley the movie opened last night they'd love to celebrate that with a win here today saw that uh car in the movie at the detroit auto show while i was up there shelby gt nice car riding with one of the best scott pruitt just never seems to lose a step as he moves from race victory to series championship one of the truly glittering resumes among active drivers in american motorsports defensive posture there by the corvette yeah bert frazelle behind the wheel of the second of the action express racing entries made his intentions known don't think about the inside lane this is the part of the racetrack i was talking about or trying to at the top of the show those concrete blocks were there on new year's eve in 1950 look at this look at that yellow corvette that's a gtlm machine which will have more speed but he's just trapped in amongst the gtt gtd category right now gotta be careful gotta be patient remember that three car is trying to come from behind don't cause more damage to the race car i was here when they removed some of those concrete um blocks if you will to make the racetrack on the backside more like a real racetrack and those things are over two feet thick per per chunk just a tremendous amount of concrete around this place look how close these classes are a lot of the gtlm drivers say we can't compete with these dtd machines on the straightaways the reason being is the gtd card doesn't have all of the high downforce bodywork which slows you down yes it gives you grip but uh causes drag down the straightaway look at this action the 30 car oh he got turned no damage there if he doesn't get stuck in that and that sand gb auto sport tully's racing entry here took down some sponsorship signs so you might have to pay for that up he's good he's going to get going local yellow only and they'll take that away mike avenatti behind the wheel stands for global baristas nice marketing touch last thing on his mind right now and now the delta wing has been caught and is being passed they pounced on him i figured they would sooner or later well ricky taylor is looking strong here in this uh opening couple of hours showing a lot of pace qualified very well yesterday this is the team that struggled at the test they couldn't keep the car on the ground just over the bumps really struggle with their shark package but they've gone away done some work and the car is much improved looking competitive here this weekend here's that spin from kind of a nudge here i think yeah the road was just taken away from him and kind of got pushed off there i don't know if they ever actually touched or not but just didn't have any road there it's a difficult place to hang as a driver attempting an overtake it's a tricky corner believe it or not you're going into 10 and you're coming off of that s turn and the car is not really flat yet you got to try to be cognizant of getting the chassis back to square before you get hard on the brakes look at oznegri he is looking really racy boys putting the pressure on ricky taylor right now started 61st now up in the top six no traffic to deal with right now for oz negri darin law hey guys we've been talking about all the traffic and all the different classes and how do you keep track of all that well here's a modern piece of technology this is telemetry supplied by imsa and if you look at the screen it's a track map you've got different color-coded dots for each class red being prototype blue being one other green being another yellow being another this is how the strategists keep track of where their cars are where the leader of the tr of the race is and where the leader of their class is and you can see by this it's almost like a bunch of marching ants around the screen it takes a lot of uh a lot of following to be able to keep track of all this stuff problems on track for the number 44 of john potter and magnus racing he had a difficult rolex 24 at daytona finishing 12th in class lots of missions collected yeah he had nothing to do with that he got a nudge i think that's turned 13 and that is one of those areas of the racetrack if the car in front of you breaks a little bit harder you're kind of committed dorsey and there's nothing you can do we saw it last year with some of the different categories racing together over in turn 13. problem here when you see a car go straight like that there's an indication either something broke but i luckily it did it and turned 17 right before pitt limb so it's not going to cost him that badly they keen on the weathertech porsche alex joe bracing celebrating 25 years of racing here at sebring with nine class titles looking for a tent they've got some work to do be a left front only though i'm going to put more on there sometimes these wheels can be hard to get off when the tire's been mangled with these wheel guns they typically got a different torque rating putting the wheel on is taking it off so like maybe 40 percent power putting on 60 taking it off chris well bob right here next to the 22 is trying to look for some contact or something along the left side of the 22 weathertech porsche but doesn't look like any marks from contact other than just that continental tire flopping around so not sure what happened here well as the car goes by if you get a chance let's have a look at the left rear bumper well you see the unmistakable profile of ralphie the buffalo symbol of the university of colorado where cooper mcneil is a junior this year go bluffs you've got a car 12 hours of zebra welcome back to a big weekend of racing here on fox this week nascar heads to bristol for our first short track of the year casey kane looks to defend his victory a year ago coverage begins 12 30 p.m eastern on sunday only on fox and streaming live on fox sports go back to the action under green the mobile one 12 hours of severing with calvin fish and dorsey schroeder on bob varsia andrew marriott chris neville down in the pit lane there's an airplane landing in the background still an active airport here at sebring that's one of the distractions the driver has to deal with you look out the window and there's an airplane landing on you it looks that way when you come down the stairway there's only one little wall between that aircraft and these cars well back in the day the stories are legend of drivers particularly at night when it is dark with a capital d here at sebring drivers might spin and find themselves among the ghostly shapes of big old transport airplanes still parked out there on the ramps i did that back in 71 when we're on the five mile course went off back there and there were cows out there four-legged ones tell you what i'm liking the pace of ricky taylor right now this is a big stint for him really really good drive he's putting together right now he's got around lucas ler there and he's chasing down the action express league car right now car looks good too cal man we're watching that thing through the corners and it's really putting down a lot of power this is the muscle milk team under team owner greg pickett really comes off the corner as well won a couple of championships in the prototype division of the american le mans series look at ricky taylor he is right in the wheel tracks of schwalbe will he think about a move down in the hairpin thinks better of it black and orange number 10. really getting good launches guys when he gets off that corner he really gets power down it's all about getting that shock package right and hoping that the track conditions meet the setup that you put on the race car for this 12-hour event they can make minor changes during the race but changing the shock package is something that you can't do quickly certainly so they seem we've got it right look at the crowd back there behind these guys back there is the legendary green park party central here at sebring turn 13. you can get in but you can never leave this is where that new rear venturi on the back of these daytona prototypes will really have an effect through these high speed sweepers here high downforce high speed corners bishop bend named for john bishop founded the international motorsports association now known as imsa it's actually a fun little series of corners back there it's fun to drive it's a real good rhythm section quite fast it's a great place to watch too because you can see the cars coming from a long way off the cars look good going fast in a straight line like this but you want to see them work in the corners look at the patience displayed there by ricky taylor didn't force the issue waited to see what that gtd machine was going to do and that's what you have to do throughout the first at least 11 hours yeah last hour you're going to go for it and force the issue and stay right on the tail of that leader but right now he's doing the right thing that turn 17 is so wide i mean there's a million different ways you can approach that corner on the corner entry but somewhere in the middle you're going to get to the uh to the real apex and everybody's going to get the same time ricky was smart he said i'm going to just read this thing for a while see what it what it looks like it's going to happen since the test these cars these daytona prototypes had to run a lot less rear wing angle a lot less down force in the back of the car but maintain the same dive planes on the front and that's been a challenge for these teams coming back here this week essentially you're really creating the car to be loose kind of over steering through the corners and uh you really have to work with the rest of the chassis set up to get that dialed out dorsey you know and it's going to get worse is it about three o'clock in the afternoon when we really have the sun beating down and it warms up another 10 degrees or so this racetrack will get slippery and you might start seeing guys putting wickers on or adding a little bit of downforce because this racetrack is notorious when it gets hot for just getting greasy one of the big challenges here at sebring are the pavement changes from the concrete to the front straightaway onto the asphalt with concrete patches on some of the corners so you can never be quite sure what kind of grip you're going to have and every corner is different look at this battle for third dorsi dirk mueller in that white bmw's got ollie gavin all over him and pat long right behind him they added uh sealer to the asphalt parts of the racetrack about a year ago and that sealer then presented another problem when it got wet in particular oh look at this stuff down the inside locks up a little bit locked the rear brakes as he turned in great stuff dealer couldn't respond to the over under that's that turn 10 i was that's one of the best places to set a pass up straight line breaking right there it's quite fast patrick long and the white porsche bill auberlin in the dark 55 version of the team rll bmw and the first of the srt vipers mark goosens driving the other bmw now in the mix as well the black the sinister looking black number 55 driven by bill auberlin he wants to be part of this party bmw had a lot of success here won the race here in 2011 and 2012. the debut for the z4 last year they had some front suspension issues that really cost them a chance of a third consecutive win but they got a year under the belt now it's a totally different story that's great to see all those different marked cars running together like that shows the parody that these classes have now corvette bmw porsche grimmer viper we're gonna see that all season long just in the background there you can see the falcon colored porsche great to see those guys back didn't run at daytona the supply of the car wasn't available for them so they had to skip daytona but they're back and uh feeling pretty good i haven't had a lot of miles on this uh bright falcon delivery machine but uh talking to brian sellers he said last year we really struggled with rare grip at the test as completely the opposite having to rethink our strategy in terms of where we go with thai development with this new porsche it's really the only car of its kind in private hands the other ones were all factory efforts fry is the only non-factory driver to be competing in one of those rsrs this year anywhere sharing with wolf hensler and marco holzer ryan is contracted by falcon tire so wolfy was allowed to run at daytona brian did not compete in any category because of his uh affiliation with a tire manufacturer look at this lucas lewis got around ricky taylor was it traffic oh my and count the categories prototypes mixing it up with gtd cars blue number plates on the side of the cars tell you they are gt daytona the pro-am class what's going to be interesting to see dorsey is how the daytona prototype configuration prototypes and the p2 machines stack up over the long run yeah the tire degradation be like you would assume that the prototype the daytona type prototype would be the worst for the wear because of the weight but maybe not i mean they've developed that tire so well continental doing a great job but it's an unknown i mean the first time those cars have ever been on this surface or on this racetrack you spoke to and what this morning who engineers the lead car i said can you double stand he said no way p2 cars i think they can so that could be a fact too remember in pit lane new rules you can refuel whilst the tire change is being done so it puts a lot of pressure on the crews to get the tire change done and they're only allowed two wheel guns so you can't do a really quick stop like you see in formula one or anything there's only two guns restricted personnel it's a real orchestra down there yeah it can get pretty chaotic and the cars in their respective classes have tire limits just 18 sets from the beginning of the weekend to the end that includes practice and qualifying 18 sets for the pc and gt daytona class 22 sets for the gt le man cars 24 sets for the prototypes there's a look at the seven let's go to greg kramer in the pit lane standing by with mike shank and mike you guys may have fallen a foul of the classic definitive well sorry but it rules a rule oz didn't get his night lapse he's got what a thousand laps around here but he didn't get his night laps you guys were forced to start at the back but what a performance so far looks like to me oz has the need for speed the uh the ecoboost car is running great we've double spin it double stinted the continental tires went from 60th to 4th the car's really good we got a long way to go oz has done more beyond anything i could ask him so far so good well he's certainly shown what he's capable of you wanted him in the car at night obviously so you had to take that penalty you were talking about earlier in the week that going with the diffuser package on these riley cars adds almost a thousand pounds of down force that's a very different package than you had a daytona totally different animal completely and added to that the ballot the bouncing that we do at this track it's impossible to manage and you got to chase the setup on this track this track is really tricky my guys i think have done a good job ford have done a great job with the ecoboost motor it's getting better every weekend got the vop a little better ready to go racing all right good luck you put a great show already i'll tell you what they say here at this track it's all about dampers dampers dampers guys well in mike shank you see the prototypical endurance sports car owner all energy all optimism he is a racer to his core and a real survivor good luck to him and the rest of the 60 crew here at the mobile one 12 hours of sebring another break and we'll be back sebring is is a is a super aggressive tough circuit to race on you can never relax it's it's physically and mentally very hard it's when it gets dark how difficult it is how dark it is the diversity uh that is thrown at you is usually what creates the adversity how difficult sebring is the drivers have talked about it the team managers have spoken about it welcome back everyone 10 hours and 18 minutes to go ryan till tommy kendall and justin bell now with you in the booth down on pit lane greg kramer and darren law and joao barbosa continuing to lead the number five action express corvette and man the traffic around here is intense we knew it would be but you watch right there that red white and blue number five that is your leader zwaal barbosa and he is he's got a windshield full of different class cars well it's like the racing version of groundhog day i mean you literally hardly get a corner or two i was talking to people uh ryan dial said he did 12 laps in practice and never went more than about four corners without having to pass someone and of course what happens here what we're watching in traffic is they're lining up behind the delta wing there is if you see lucas law is right behind this is a motor race we're watching right now and if one if the guy in front of you goes through tommy you have to try and muscle your way through you can drop two seconds around here there's a lot of ground to catch up so these guys are not taking crazy risks but let's face it every corner is a risk and we heard it from christensen uh at the start that the intensity is uh is there and you can't afford to wait the days of when you could afford to be patient because you were pacing yourself those are gone and so the guy in front has a little tougher time because he's the first guy getting there uh and now you see we had a change of position we see the uh second place position now the wayne taylor car 10 over the six uh and it's funny barbosa picked up where he left off at the rolex and joao barbosa has to be getting a little bit frustrated with the delta wing in front now he sneaks by the delta wing so fast in a straight line half the weight half the horsepower but the same kind of speed as the other prototypes around it and they've got great straight line speed so barbosa has cleared the delta wing ricky taylor and the black number 10 corvette from wayne taylor racing has gotten past lucas lore we saw that down the back straightaway and it's really great to see the p2 cars and the daytona prototypes now on a little more equal footing than they were at daytona i think that's what we just actually saw the different dynamics between the two types of cars in prototype just then through the corners the lucas law p2 car there can be incredibly aggressive under braking and going through the tight corners on the straights the dp car is quicker well can be incredibly aggressive and has to be incredibly aggressive that is the tough part even if they get them dead even on lap time in race conditions you're gonna the p2 car really needs to be a little quicker to have an even fight because where that car generates lap time under braking and corner entry uh is traffic affects that more than the greater power acceleration of the dp based car so uh that's something now tire wear i i was talking with uh tony cannon and he said the dps might be a little bit harder on their tires so at the end of the stint they might have it almost about perfect well that remains to be seen going back to the gt lm category the 55 bmw ride on board with bill auberlin giving pursuit to the 912 right in front the battle for fifth patrick long behind the wheel of the porsche in front and both of the new 911 rsrs were very quick at daytona the 9 12 not having the luck that they wanted but they've been quick here too and i tell you what though it's the bmws and gtlm that always seem to be kind of the sleepers they qualified a little bit better here but they always seem to come alive when the green flag drops for the race are they laying back a little bit practicing qualifying or is it just a better race car well i mean the nature of this business is i mean i hope there's no major hurricanes or flooding anywhere because every sandbag in america is in florida right now but at daytona they just didn't have the pace they still kept themselves in contention and had a shot to win that at the end but it didn't have the pace everyone i talked to this weekend the first one out of their mouth is watch the bmw's leader in gtlm is jimmy bruni in that beautiful red number 62 ferrari from risi competition and they had problems in practice here bruni off track uh audi had spun in front of him i don't know if there was fluid down or what but jimmy bruni left the racetrack as well and did a lot of damage to the left rear in particular of the ferrari but the crew did a great job to get it back on track i was actually walking down through the paddock when it came by on a flatbed and three out of four corners had managed to be kissed so so it wasn't looking good but interesting and qualifying yesterday obviously bruni i i mean in my opinion i actually drove in that same team at petit le mans a couple of years ago he is extraordinarily capable in qualifying but he was told to dial it back by giuseppe reese saying you know what you kind of lost your privilege not it was your fault the privilege to get poll is now gone let's just get this race because remember what happened to them at daytona and you know millions of dollars on the line in this kind of racing in this equipment and they're in the race and you know what good call by the team management because they qualified sixth or seventh i believe and now they're well they're leading the class well and that's a group when you walk around the paddock and you pull who you got your eyes on the ferrari in this exact spec has won every time out at one patient a few years ago and so forth in this exact spec with the bop adjustments uh but they said the wild card there is those guys have one speed and so it sounds like uh you know oh battle for a second porsche inside oliver gavin and gets the task accomplished here yeah then nick tandy i mean such a a great emer he's more than emerging he's emerged he's a top british driver but you know he's he's making his way into the record books with some outstanding runs and that new 911 just it looks like a real race car doesn't it when you're up close the width of it the statue of it but you know you've got to mention you know as you look at this bin dumbo we've actually not been in a lot of other sites now but corvette and porsche so experienced uh of these endurance races that this really is like i said at the top of the show it's a battle of the giants and now we run on board with the active master interesting best colored car on the in the in the on the grid i think beautiful beautiful paint job this is on board the number 70 the prototype the diesel power the sky active diesel and it sounded like it was running just a little bit rough one of the things that john dunan talked about earlier and you've got to be impressed with the program that they're trying to build and we've got to acknowledge what it is and it is a development program mazda acknowledges that but the great thing is and they pointed it out before what tends to be some of the mechanical problems in this car is not the power plant itself some of the drive train components just not being able to handle the torque that the diesel engine puts out so right now they're trying to build this program and i know it's frustrating for the drivers to be out there in a car that's not running the pace but they're building you saw it out the window there the challenge they're facing not only is it a development it's that is largely a production power based power plant a high high percentage of parts of production and you see the corner speed and this is uh and they just incredibly frustrating because faster under braking obviously lighter more power but really just uh watch watch what happens when they get on the straightaway here this aston is just going to get smaller out the front window so in theory the prototype should be able to close down the straightaway but more development on hand for the guys at mazda the 62nd running of the mobile one 12 hours of sebring will continue when we come back right after this there's a look at your leaders in the four different classes over years of endurance racing michelin has regularly shown us that tires can be double triple and in some cases quadruple stinted but with a new series comes new rules previously at sebring teams would have to fuel the car and then change tires this year fuel and tires could be done the same time so we will likely see more single stints something the drivers are going to like because new tires give a bit more of a performance edge but for crew chiefs and engineers planning started back at daytona rules stipulate teams get 22 sets of tires and michelin offers three different compounds but that blend of different compounds had to be ordered at daytona on a cooler weekend a team might use more soft compound and on a warmer weekend more hard compound teams had to place that bet on the weather over six weeks ago really adding a new element of tire management to the most challenging 12 hours in racing and it is a challenge i mean you guys know it when you show up at a racetrack and the team goes well we don't have the compound that you wanted tommy it's not at all what you want as a driver now the number six muscle milk prototype is in daryn yeah they're running for regular stop driver change lucas is getting out they're doing a full ball and stop with tires fuel everything and a lot of cars are coming in right now one of the issues that i was talking with with some of the teams and we found this yesterday is that it's getting hot they're coming into the heat of the day and tires are becoming an issue things are getting greasy so talking about hard how hard those guys are pushing but they're going to have to monitor what they're doing or they're going to burn the tires up you look down pit lane you can see the number nine action express is in this is on board the 90 from spirit of daytona michael valiente getting behind the wheel and you heard darren say it's getting hot we'll go back to tire compounds that the gtlm teams have a choice of everybody else running on continental tires but for the gtlm teams we were talking about tire compounds how big of a difference does it make tommy well it's hard to quantify it's different at every track but it's funny talking to the viper guys they weren't exactly i mean they felt good about their chances but they really didn't know where they stood because they'd spent most of their time on the compound that they didn't think they were going to be racing on so they were because they were having to save those for race conditions and of course though brian the the thing is in this hotter temperature we'll see perhaps unlike daytona a lot less outlap incidents because the tires get up to temperature at daytona we really struggled seeing some of those tire temperatures come up a lot of lessons learned but remember half these teams haven't raced here have not raced here for a decade and a half you know because of the the merger of the series so we're gonna see some people really not having the database to go back to unlike some of the others so a lot of strategy in play but the as you see the leader and uh second place coming down pit lane right now brian this is a pretty important stop because it's a 12-hour sprint the race has now come to pit road and really with that long full course caution that we had this this has really been a nice long run now the teams are starting to get fuel mileage numbers they're getting tired numbers so they've got the data to work on now crew going to work looks like barbosa now they did do a driver change on the five but fuel numbers brian will be skewed uh you see a driver change is going in um but you know the fuel numbers will be skewed because you can't sit behind a pace car that long and get accurate numbers it's boday who just jumped on board there he was magnificent in qualifying in behind the wheel of that car tommy did you watch it out there as he went around those you could see he was on the limit he's like like an indie qualifying amazing and we're going to have a position look at that remember how good the wayne taylor racing guys were in the pits at daytona and there was no driver change i don't believe on the 10 so perhaps got hung up on the driver trained driver change just a little bit as you see ricky taylor there in the black number 10. there goes the muscle milk the prototype the white and black prototype so he has picked up a position and left to the front and it can happen in the pit lane we talk about how competitive the cars are on track so then it comes down to the team and those driver changes those pit stops problem on track for one of the prototype challenge entries inside of 17. easy to have a problem down in 17 when the car's not on the ground half the time because of the bumps yep that big big uh jump virtually let's go to great kramer in pit lane down here in the wheeler number 31 and this is a stop that's taking a lot longer than they planned they're putting some tape inside of the cockpit when i asked about what was going on in the stop i wasn't told this was going to be happening it actually masked another problem they had a real problem getting that right front corner on and if you look at the left front of the car when that a car change spun the prototype challenge got earlier in the race this car just grazed it as it went by and it damaged the die planes on the front of the car they said so far that's not affecting things too much darren guys same thing here the 38 car came in and had a lot of trouble getting the left front tire on they put it on pulled it off put it on pulled it off it really cost them in the pit lane you know if you're going to have those mistakes you have them early and then you've got time to make up but you've got to get those problems fixed because those final pit stops could be the difference 0-2 from ganassi is in car looks so different with that big machine record sponsorship down the side of it from what we saw at the rolex 24. takes a little bit of getting used to it great livery though see he's clearing out the the air vents there because you get a lot of grass if people are starting to go off and make mistakes so there's a lot of dirt dust and grass you need to keep that clear clear so scott dixon stays behind the wheel and heads back out into zero two so pit stops beginning to cycle through and you look down the racetrack there is the number 10 of ricky taylor and the st timing and scoring will cycle through as well we saw klaus graf ahead of the 10 after that last pit stop and we're actually showing max angelelli in the car now on timing and scoring so perhaps wayne taylor racing crew did do a driver change they just got it done better well and even better than them oh as the muscle milk guys and with now that they're allowed to do fuel and tires together the driver change really wasn't under much pressure before if you were especially if you were changing tires and they were there was more of an incentive to double stint tires now that's not the case so everybody says the driver changes are likely the limiting factor and so there's gonna be a ton of pressure on that so if you're doing a driver change which car do you want to be getting in the daytona prototype with a door and a roof or the prototype that's open top for me two things one is uh in 80 degrees i quite like an open car too so i think it's you know remember that your teammate can really assist you but as we watch coming through the notorious turn 17 that the tournament w is pretty out of shape there and i'm not sure that the number eight got unsighted and hit bumps and and just spun it around of course then we heard on the radio the starter motor wasn't working and often when you're watching at home you get very frustrated why isn't he moving why doesn't he get going the starter motor was just obviously not allowing him to get going he did and had a rather adventurous pull into pit lane it's funny i talked to scott sharp but he said according to ryan the o ryan said that it was for whatever reason they were able to do really quick driver changes when he was in a db so it's not maybe the obvious uh thing in terms of which one's quicker so it'll be an important factor to watch and who can get their driver changes done and not be waiting to release the car david chang not having a good day and that number eight star works prototype challenge machine but other drivers certainly are scott dixon being shown by timing and scoring no now klaus graph out in front from the 60-second running of the mobile one 12 hours of sebring just under 10 hours to go from the mobil 1 12 hours of sebring the 62nd running of this great event right now klaus groff out in front and his orecca nissan but max angelelli his wayne taylor racing team sebastian bourdain his action express team and their corvettes have been fast all day long and there's nothing that chevy would like to do more than to take a victory here they won at the rolex 24 they want to win here again let's take a little bit of history lesson here from the mobile one 12 hours this evening when was the last time that a chevrolet won here overall well it was back in 1965 and you may recognize the car the chaparral and you'll certainly recognize the name jim hall what cool cars listening to vic alfred last night talking about his first trip to chaparral raceway testing for jim hall and they said whatever you do if the car stops on course do not get out of the car it's not called rattlesnake raceway for no reason look at this battle here it's reversed between action express and wayne taylor racing that battle for second place but you see in what the what the prototype drivers have to deal with as far as the different classes right now max angelelli trying to get around the prototype challenge car in front of him he's got sebastian bourdae one of the best in the business right behind him and they had a gt daytona car mixed in there as well so with the traffic it's going to be there for all 12 hours and that's going to be the thing you got to be patient but you got to be aggressive how do you how do you balance the two uh everyone's got their own plan for that but it's very fluid i think we should point that out to it's not an anomaly that there's traffic at sebring it is sebring it is daytona it is multi-class sports car racing and in 1950 i'm sure they complained about the traffic so you know it's it just what happens is now is that all these cars have their different strong points i mean the pc car can be so quick underbreaking compared to gt but not as fast on the straight so we i mean right now is a great example we've got the viper there on the left the new 911 on the right and you see he squeezed he didn't know he couldn't do much there against the taylor against um the the action uh velocity toshiba car but he couldn't do much with him there because he has to use all the road he's a gt car committed to his line there's a lot of dynamics so remember by this point of the race a lot of the world's top drivers in each car we're at that point of the race that some of the best drivers in the world are behind the wheel so i think there's a lot of synergy between what they're doing things change a little later that scenario just highlighted exactly the challenge for the slower cars as well you can't just always err on the side of caution because otherwise you just lose too much time so that's the tough part uh you know the fast guys are like why didn't he give me more room the guy in the slower car is like i'm trying to keep contact with that viper or whatever the car might be well and and the 912 porsche that you saw in there the number 912 that's your leader in gtlm so you know they're working through the leaders you ride on board right now with the johannes van overback running fifth scott pruitt right in front of him in the daytona prototype you talked about strengths and weaknesses i wonder if the p2 chassis aren't going to be a little bit more nimble in some of this traffic yeah well for sure i mean it's but again it's i mean they uh pluses and minuses you know they again they generate their lap time under braking and corner entry which if there's a you're behind a car and so you really have to come from a long ways back you have to commit but sometimes when you commit back there to and you can't you have so much momentum you're making uh taking a huge risk because you commit back there and then you only find out at the apex whether the guy saw him or not yeah yeah if you're gonna ask me how i'd like to have a fast car sitting there with my right foot planted the floor down the straight is a nice way to gain some time yeah if you can get her to handle on the straight away that's uh that's hard to hard to uh it doesn't go away van overback slid a little wide off the corner his teammate one of the best sports car racers in the world david brabham right behind him in the number one from extreme speed mode they got a got danger max is uh that's not his first rodeo so he's uh taking the inside there and bordeaux again uh not willing to push the issue just yet well for max angelelli he had to make the move on the gt daytona car in front of him oh and a problem for the 51. that's 17 also that's long before well that's the middle of the corner and at the other end of the track a problem for one of the prototype challenge cars you see if you notice that prototype challenge car very easy for a flat modern car that's so low to get beached on those curbs they're not actually particularly high but when you're only two inches off the ground it's easy to get beach but of course right now the 51 ferrari waiting to rejoin it's pretty fast traffic moving through turn 17 and uh you make a good judgement call to rejoin and the 85 was the prototype challenge machine that we saw off and he will re-enter jerry crout in the 85. jerry a very accomplished guy in the star mazda series i mean he's not the youngest driver in the field by any stretch of the imagination but he says this prototype challenge car is a ball to drive this is down in 17. wow 51 just in too hot or had some sort of a braking issue that is the best thing about turn 17 right there the multi layers of tire wall that are there and you saw the tires move really protected the car but more importantly protected the driver at a very high speed impact zone and of course they're going to have to check the car over now if this was tennis we'd call that a double fault because no one else was involved other than him on the way under braking for 17. klaus groff leading here and this muscle milk picket racing team really seems to have found the handle on this oreka nissan greg that's maybe a great way to put it all that great battling you're calling happening behind the number six muscleville bigger racing car greg pickett obviously you guys struggled at daytona in in terms of speed now it's a different setup on the dp package here but they seem to have got it pretty right you guys are out front it's come alive for you i have great compliments to scott elkins and the guide working with the bounce performance they had a very difficult job bringing those two things together but you can you can see the times are very very close uh lucas did his typical great first stint he's a real battler you know that greg did a wonderful job the team gave him a great stop which i'm very appreciative of we've been working really hard we've been to the shaker we've been to the tunnel we're going out you know we had a tough time at daytona but we're fighters here at muscle up picket racing and i i don't want anybody to forget that we're going to be tough here well you continue to prove it and you know one of the interesting things is when you're in heavy traffic horsepower is everything it helps yeah you guys have been able to use that lighter less powerful package and work through traffic nicely yeah about our only uh difficulty in that ride you're exactly right but uh when we get right behind the dp cars they've got a lot of downpours and they take away our our turn in and our breaking capability a little bit not terrible but lucas says it's a bit of a challenge but uh racing's supposed to be a big bit of a challenge right it was easy everybody be doing it not the best in the business good luck big big implications here and look at the rear of the car it looked like fluid coming from the back of the porsche just then as he rejoined i hope that is not the case and it was sand but yeah i mean typically you see fluid uh something off the right fender or fender rod typically where the radiators are on the porsche up front that is cooling in the back there but no the back looks unscathed it must have been sand pouring out i apologize for that and there is the 85 obviously a little meeting of the mines i think as they came into that corner there very tight though tommy you notice that you come down that little short shoot through that very tight right left right left onto the straight and there you have it as you're just unwinding uh that's pretty dodged another another ball right there wow cars are all over the place we know that the temperature is heating up the track's getting a little greasy but you wonder if there's not some fluid down because a lot of cars leaving the racing surface right now this is where the 85. he's already committed to going to the left and that car may be on cold tires leaving the pits just lost it i think that she both got away with that quite lightly i mean i know he's got fender rub on it and hopefully it's going to cause too many problems but we said it oh look at that another something is getting very strange out there we've had false feelings yeah there's got to be fluid down somewhere different corners oh brian so something uh you know we are seeing uh the new set of drivers get in the cars and that may be causing some of it nicely executed then because when you've got people coming down that straight 165 miles an hour you want to get that out of the braking zone but this is where the good team manager comes into play and the radio working comes into play and you get on the radio and you're telling your drivers look a lot of cars off right now be patient take your time look for fluid be careful we this is a 12-hour race we've got nine hours and 48 minutes yet to go full evaluation of the 9-1-1 porsche as he comes into pit lane he was involved in instantly gonna have to check it over we saw a smoke from the front right so uh while they what happens with the teams they go to do a standard pit stop first and while the wheels are out they start to evaluate yeah they know they're gonna have to do this so they do this and it gives them a little bit more chance to look at it um we'll see if they go up and check out that right front yeah he's holding with the wheel and he's he's getting in there so work going on on the 9-1-1 the porsche entry remember this team they won the rolex 24 just seven weeks ago can they come back and win here at seavery tonight the ufc returns to fox sports with ufc 171 prelims as the ultimate fighter season 17 winner kelvin gastelum takes on rick's story plus other epic bouts it all begins with the pre-fight show at 7 p.m eastern on fox sports 2 streaming live on fox sports go welcome back to sebring i think we've seen some ultimate fighter stuff going on here on the racetrack a little bit of rg bargy but certainly lots of cars with problems is now the 87 around on track with bruce hamilton behind the wheel get you up to speed nine hours and 44 minutes remaining here in the 60 second running of the mobile one 12 hours of sebring but let's catch up on how it all began with our race recap at the drop of the green the number five action express corvette out in front and really the first couple of laps were pretty clean we thought there might be some action with 63 cars starting but uh then the action started things heated up and not the way we wanted them to as ben keating has a fire in his number three viper that is one of one ah heartbreaking significant damage and then damage to the number three that happened in the very opening laps and this was gonna be a long stop on pit lane long stop but corvette always prepared for these eventualities they train harder than anyone at this but however in the first opening minutes of a 12-hour race you don't want to be a stay in the pit lane for this long but if you're going to have a problem have it early so you can come back and then a problem for michael avenatti anyway back underway copy that there's some stuff on the back but i'm not sure that it has any meaning it was showing pictures of you we'll see you when you come by i'm not exactly sure what he was screaming there but yeah well and the reality is we've only shown you half of the incidents or less it really is you made the ufc analogy uh it is full contact nobody has tapped out yet though so we are um we are in it to win it now we saw that uh we saw the 911 car and you know for those of us that went to le mans last year and then in daytona those factory porsches have been flawless in 48 hours and even though that was not the slightest bit his fault it's nice to know that they don't have a you know a lucky horseshoe stash somewhere and that they they are not impervious to it they've made it look easy we all know it's not easy uh we're gonna see how they uh how they bounce back from that and recover because it doesn't matter where in the end as you come up in those last couple of laps of 12 hours tonight you reflect back and you go it wasn't my fault it was my fault whatever the reason is the fact is that getting your car touched early on in the race could have a repercussion later and that is the same we said every 24 and every 12 hour and every 10 hour race you need to keep your car clean to have the best shot of winning at this race well remember one of the keys to winning here is the unknown how do you deal with the unknown when that that unexpected mechanical issue comes up when somebody spins into you how ready is your crew to repair it the spare parts that they have on hand how quickly can they react and that's why the teams with so much experience always seem to be the ones who do well but right now like you said no lucky horseshoe well this yellow is helping them because the average speed is way down so the amount of ground they're losing is i mean they're still going to have to come back and the car didn't look that bad but obviously something underneath was damaged to the point support structure or something they're actually putting in like a new interface in offender there so let's hope darren law is down there and perhaps down you've got an update on exactly what the damage is yeah guys patrick p lay had a prototype spin in front of him they said he had nowhere to go and had to hit him unfortunately and uh it's there's no suspension damage but it's damaged a lot of the bodywork the front nose the carrier for the headlights so it's a very time consuming stop well the good thing is on some of the earlier porsches as you look without the front fascia on there you can see that the radiators aren't nearly as exposed on either side that they used to be in the 911 type derivative if you made contact where the radiator was on the corner there was a big issue here's what happens to pele and it doesn't look like that big a hit and he really he was he was starting to move around him and the car spun right into his path so um now with the new unified rules it is easier it's not easy but it's easier to get uh to get your lap back so i mean again this is if i mean it might be too much to overcome but this is a godsend for them the fact that this is taking place under a yellow that you've got nine hours and 39 minutes left to get it done we saw the problem for the number three corvette earlier on it was antonio garcia who was behind the wheel he's now with greg kramer yeah you guys talked about the best teams best deal with those unknowns and unfortunately antonio we just did a highlight package and you were in it for the wrong reasons what happened first to cause that damage i mean it was a big big hit for sure i mean from the cameras i think all the guys didn't know that what happened really there but i got really i got hit really really big time by nick tandy in the back so i was saving a little bit some distance with the 56 and he just launched me into the into the bmw basically so i couldn't do anything and i don't know i mean he probably got hit the same way so i don't know where it started really but i mean we all know we need to park the car there i mean it's a traffic jam into turn three usually and basically i tried to i tried to do the the best thing just to stay safe with the car in front of me but he just launched me to the other one so unfortunately we we broke the front splitter and the full nose so decided to change the whole thing even if if i if i if i was still in contact with them so then following stint was good i mean the car is has the pace for sure so i think now we just need to find the the best strategy to to get back that lap and go back up well the brain trust here at corvette racing is up to that good news the car is working okay that's interesting justin you said it i mean sometimes the damage appears much later and what we just found is that two other cars were involved in that collision with the number three core of that so what kind of damage on the 9-1-1 well maybe they're taking care of that right now but you heard him say the bmw was involved as well we still have a long way to go from the mobile one 12 hours of sebring i think the north american endurance championship is really special and i'm really excited that patron jumped in and sponsored the that whole championship it's a championship really within a championship so kids the teams that aren't geared up to run 10 or 11 races the chance to go for maybe just four it locked in all the great racetracks so you know daytona sebring the glenn and then finishing up at petit le mans and you know they're a little out of the incentive to win those races and win that championship so i think it's going to be great for the teams it's truly an endurance championship so maybe a different mental approach in how you prepare the car how you fund the car and getting through those four races is key to probably winning that north american championship the tequila patron north america endurance championship and there's a look at the four different class leaders these are the teams right now and if you look down to gt daytona down at the bottom level five motorsports well they've withdrawn they're not going to be running anymore this year but the points that they scored at daytona that has them right now in the lead for the north american endurance cup so that's going to change today that one's going to change for sure but you know it's interesting scott sharp said it it's it's a true endurance championship yeah and it's one of the i would encourage you at home to play along like we are in the booth the points are awarded at 4 8 and 12 hours so when those points are calculated everyone in the booth is going to take a a shot of tequila patron and uh it's a way to keep everybody fully engaged i thought you had to do it 30 minutes yeah so i didn't get that four eight and 12 shots is what i thought it was as you see the leaders come to pit road because pits now open for prototypes and your leader to the marks in the number six greg klaus grav hits it waves off the water bottle so obviously he's really comfortable out there right now check with the continental tire guys they said the tire temperatures after a long stint in this car were right on the marks oh he stalled it he just stole very strong then stalled it let's get down hey guys i'm at the 90 pit and they're basically just doing a routine stop filling up with fuel they're not going to do tires they did them recently one of the things they're really stressing right now as you guys have seen we're not even to halfway and there's a lot of attrition they're telling their guys back off be smart don't make mistakes when you saw the mistake on the part of klaus graf with that stall but you've got to note that that oreka nissan package that muscle milk has is brand new to them so they're learning that chassis and that power plant they had been running hpd products in years past and you see now this is the replay of cloud scroll now let's watch the 10 and the five border also stalls and jaleli does not so those guys uh and were they still trying to get it cranked as we said you can lose positions in pit lane boarding they keep pop tarts on those cars i think they do because because that that is not as easy you can't spin the tires as you come out you can't break traction and uh no excuse but it is harder to get out of the pit lane well and usually that if if that is the case they usually remind you on the radio for a couple reasons not only is it harder to get the car going it's also much harder on the driveline so with cold tires that don't have a grip you can just blaze them and it doesn't hurt anything if they're hot they don't want you to put that huge shock through the driveline and they're going to tell you hey ease out of the pits if they did not change tires and you saw how busy it was on pit road and that is why the officials have split prototypes from gt can you imagine the 63 cars coming in there with those pit stalls trying to get pit stops done so a good call for the tudor united sports car championship prototypes and gt cars split there on pit lane gt cars will be in next and then we'll be back to more green flag action from sebring international raceway make sure you join us remember you can enter for a chance to win the industry's most awarded car of the year the 2014 corvette stingray convertible visit racetowincorvet.com now for your chance to win and tommy you need to read all that fine print down there at the bottom of that graphic purchase not required and there you have it all right under caution gt cars just made their pit stops here at sebring international raceway you see the clock at the top of the screen nine hours 28 minutes yet to go and klaus graf out in front in his aurica nissan hopefully the that magnus car does not jump into the chevy open house event tastes great as we uh look up on here you uh to see david brabham back here chatting with him you know david's he really had a little sabbatical over the last couple of years focusing on other things in business and we're talking yesterday he he said i had to step away just to to to kind of refocus my mind and he came back last year just as faster than ever and uh so it's just nice uh to see him i was actually his best man and he was mine so old man yeah but of course when jeff braban was here uh along with matthew so quite a brabham affair this weekend remember sebring while these cars are driving around behind the pace car sebring attracts luminaries and and the famous from our sport because it's not the hollywood kind of fame it's the people that whether whether it's hurley hayward whether it you know you see my dad all sorts of people come here because they appreciate quite what sebring means so you know at the start of the race they were all down there in bitly and tommy kendall where yeah scott dixon now to the top as things have cycled through after pit stops but there's a look at the number five sebastian bourdain remember he had problems leaving the pit stall just a few minutes ago let's take a listen to some of the radio traffic i think i know what it is it must be something in the tc or something which should be turned off when you're on pit lane cruise but i don't think we got to that point yet so i bet that's what it was when you see the near miss for the 10 on the nine as they come out and he said something in the tc setting so the traction control they want that off so you can get that wheel spin when you leave yeah and that's what they they have they can literally pro infinite ways to program and they call that logic and every team has different ways of doing it you can say okay wind pit speed is engaged if you're in this gear if if then you want to cut traction control you want to do this up until xspeed you it's literally infinite what you can program the cars doing and one of the things uh that we did at viper is you know one of the keys last year you had to shut the engine off on on pit stops now you don't have to do that but we actually were monitoring air jack pressure and the engine would crank but it would not provide spark until the pressure in the air jack dropped below a certain pressure and fired it's quick everybody's looking for fractions of a second and so it sounds like they have an issue there that caused the car to stall and they'll be looking into that um between now and then to see if there's a different setting on the wheel or they can do some sort of adjustment one of the stalwarts in sports car racing especially in the gt category over the last several years has been flying lizard motorsports darren law is down in their pit i'm here with thomas blaum he's chief strategist for flying lizard you know we all see what the driver does on the track and what the pit crew does in the pits but one of the things behind the scenes that nobody really follows heavily is strategy and this is what thomas does he calls strategy for for the for their team their race strategy their their pit stop strategy thomas how hard is it for you we've got four classes you guys are in gtd what kind of challenges do you have with that well obviously a 12-hour race and especially in gtd where you've got amateur drivers and professional drivers um you know you really got to plan out ahead and the amateur drivers have to do quite a bit of drive time this year in the in the new series so you know you really got to think ahead how do you get your guys it may be not quite as quick a lot of the laps early in the race so that you can race for the win late in the race but you know we spend a lot of time looking at the races past histories um you know how many cautions are early when the cautions happen so you know a lot goes into it obviously when some cautions come up it may change your plans but um you know a lot goes into it obviously with such a big field of cars close to 25 cars you know we got our work cut out for each other for ourselves all right thanks thomas back to you guys one of the smartest men you'll find down in pit lane and that's where that strategy comes in there's a look at the 45 the flying lizard one of the audi r8s and it's alessandra a lot of behind the wheel right now and they've made that move from porsches into the audis this year because they really thought it would be a better weapon in the gt daytona category and the car is absolutely beautiful and they are fast well they came within a whisker they they were actually the winner of the rolex for a brief period uh but that that crossover was seamless for them they were fully competitive throughout and uh and ended up coming with a strong second place finish at daytona hey guys the uh the flying lizard guys just talking with thomas one of the issues they're having right now they have a fuel pressure warning light going through turn 17 in both of their cars they're very concerned about something happening with the fuel that's one of the reasons they came in and just topped up they're not sure that they can run an entire tank through a stint now that's interesting i wonder if something has come loose in the fuel cell itself and it's not getting the pickup if that with those massive bumps down in turn 17 and you don't want that i mean you've got to have the full run on a tank of fuel but both cars seems odd cars is odd but that racing is odd that's why you wonder if mechanically it's not a part the same part is broken in there i mean the bumps here at sebring i know you see them on television and they look big but seeing them is one thing riding over them is something entirely different well right now as they come down that backstage back straight of course turn 17 you're just talking about is perhaps the most dynamic in terms of car suspension corner almost probably in north american road racing but the cars of course at the front there scott dixon in the 02 car it's he has the run of the track right now he controls the pace as they come through 17 the pace car has just pulled off to the right and everyone getting very racy behind because there's four different categories in the first probably ten cars and it is a green flag and scott has a nice clean start and unlike the initial start where you have to wait until you cross start finish to improve position the minute you hear green on the radio or you watch for the yellows to drop at the individual corners races on you can pass anywhere scott dixon with a big leap at the drop of the green has begun to pull away because you look back through the field the next prototype entry that he's racing with is mired back in this gaggle of cars saw some action there the viper losing two spots to the porsches christensen just lasted past there on the inside of 17 there because he has to because up in front of him a first and second place the corvette the number four tommy milner all over the back of that red ferrari matteo malaceli for risi competition he's so great to see malachili back after the huge impact that he took in that crash with memo gidley at the rolex 24 back and still very quick and remember the finish last year where tommy milner put in that unbelievable final stint and was able to track down that ferrari and get around him to win the the rolex last year that was one where i think tommy milner really kind of came into his own uh we talk about who he won in the car at the end it's always been olly gavin but last year they wanted tommy milner in at the end and he uh he delivered the goods and i think we're seeing him set him up now for the back straight as he comes through on to turn 15 he's going to be going on to the back straight there but the corvette looked like he has the edge in handling through the infield so let's see if he's got the pace down the straight coming into 17. bad news for klaus groff and his muscle picket racing team they'll have to come down pit road for a speeding violation during that last stop and he'll have to serve it under green that's not what they wanted to see kenny you saw him go off the road in 13 that might be when they delivered the news to him honestly what he had several penalties last year that he didn't want to hear and now a problem between two prototype challenge cars 86 looks like the 87. and 108. it's scott dixon continuing to lead here the 60-second running of the mobile one 12 hours of sebring will be right back after this quick break because there is plenty of action yet to come under full course caution at sebring international raceway the mobile won 12 hours of sebring it's scott dixon who leads overall two prototype challenge cars getting together actually teammates the 88 and the 87 bar one motorsports got together and have brought out the full course caution yet again they say yellows brief yellows and that's exactly what we just had well it's gonna be time to say goodbye to our fox sports one viewers but remember live coverage continues in just a few minutes on fox sports go and imsa.com we'll take you to the checkered flag and beyond so join us there and if you miss any of the action today join our highlighted coverage tomorrow at 8 30 a.m eastern time here on fox sports 1. for tommy kendall justin bell greg kramer darren law and brian till thanks for joining us here and we'll continue our sebring coverage in just a moment online we'll see you there full course caution yet again welcome to streaming coverage of the tudor united sports car championship the mobile won 12 hours of sebring from sebring international raceway 9 hours 16 minutes to go in this 12 hour event 62 years it's pretty amazing the history that we've seen here over all those years the different champions the different drivers that have come through and you know they said at the beginning of the show this is hallowed ground you walk some of that same pavement some of the best sports car drivers in history have ever walked down before and it's uh it's pretty sobering it's a special place tommy dressy uh fellow trans am runner uh looking out the back to see uh and you see the pepper on the front his father's pretty ill and his dad's been a huge supporter was that a lot of trans am races and everything so tommy who brings a sponsor to get in one of these cars actually forego his forgave or forgotten for went for win his uh sponsors placement to put his papa on the car well it looks like the 87 had a problem a gt car went wide and tommy was involved with that so a special hello and hope you're feeling better to papa dressy is tommy trying to work with the crew to get the car back actually i don't think that's not tommy in the car but uh i've i've met mr dressy and tommy he came here as a an immigrant from morocco and he worked in the firestone plant in los angeles and he was such a proud man he wore a suit and tie every day to the plant and so tommy has just hustled and and built quite a nice sized business that affords him the chance to race but he speaks uh in uh very very admirable terms of his father saw me one of those good guys in the sport as you see doug bealfield looking on and trying to talk to the safety workers and billfell saying hey we got to get the car back i want to get back in this thing we still have plenty of times to get back in it but i think we should talk about the frustration that he's building right now multiple yellows is really breaks down the tempo of the race not just for us watching and us talking about it but inside the car as a driver we talk about variables we talk about risk we talk about all the different things that go on at a difficult track and race like sebring but actually tommy they are a little easier when the race is running green because you know who's around you you know who just went in the pit lane there's a you know if the leaders go by you and you're in a gtd car they're not going to go buy you the next lap because it takes them seven or eight laps to catch you up again or whatever it is so the tempo the rhythm goes is discombobulated right now for everybody including the strategists who by the way are pounding the numbers like like the uh geniuses they are well the strategists that are working the hardest and this will be something to keep an eye on uh that three car that's trying to get back on the lead lap any cars that are a lap down in any classes now they they do the first wave around so that you don't lose a portion of a lap and then when they do the lap down wave buy if you are in front of your class leader you will get to come back again and so it's much easier it's not easy but it's much easier to get your lap back so i'm gonna keep a close eye on that number three corvette to see if they can get back on the lead lap this quickly greg kramer and darren law down in pit lane they'll keep track of the strategy down there and how those engineers and strategists use the information that they get to try to get their drivers back on the lead lap it's about knowing where you are and it's really even though it's a 12-hour race the engineers a lot of time start at the end and they'll back time all the way to the beginning to try to figure out how they want to play their games so that front that was the the lead ferrari in vet so the ferrari stayed out but the vet didn't come in again there you see a split of split i mean we don't know his fuel requirements different syntax some people prefer to run with track position others are making the most of refueling right then now we talked earlier about prototypes and gt cars on pit lane at different time but we just had a full course caution they had just gone back to green so if you have another one within a few minutes afterwards the pit lanes open for everyone let's check back in with greg well the pit lanes open for everyone and because it's a short yellow a lot of these teams electing to not do tires they just topped off the vet he's gone when i was talking to dave sims and reecey they were looking at coming and doing the math and they said you know what we think we're going to stay out we're still okay but if they were coming in tires only this is such a short yellow period well and whether this was a factor or not that will keep the three car from getting back on the lead lap and i heard afterwards in terms of how closely these guys think about things that even us in the booth don't think about action express at daytona split their two cars the five and the nine and they had them they were actively trying to keep the ganassi car from getting their lap back so one car would pit but only one would pit on each yellow so that there was always a car in front of uh that ganassi car you know basically blocking that move well and that's where the strategy really comes in and that's where the the advantage of having two cars comes in you think about risi competition they've got their one ferrari up against two porsches and two corvettes so that's where having that extra bullet in the gun sometimes really helps hey guys down here with a muscle milk car you talk about strategy these guys were at the back of the pack they really said there was no there was no need to worry about tires fuel or anything we're at the back anyway let's do everything so they did a complete stop they're started from the back they're going back to the back but now they have fresh tires and a full load of fuel and of course a pit lane that wasn't chaotic and that that counts for a lot as well that remember the yellow flag before mayhem right now they could maybe take care of some business that uh in a very calm way and and he has a pretty clear track to the back of the field but as they're preparing to go green i hope in the next couple of laps you the lights have just gone out on top of the pace car there once again they've got to get themselves spooled back up tommy going down the back straight and it's it's you know what it's like the start of a new race every single time now watching the ganassi cars this weekend and i know the guys talked about some personnel changes within that team and we've not seen the performance that you typically expect out of ganassi and you wonder it is a team sport and you guys know it so well that chemistry that camaraderie when you change one ingredient in the mix it can change the recipe it can change the outcome and maybe that team working to try to find their way again get that chemistry back now that there have been some personnel changes and guys there's a little bit of development going on some of the engineers down here for the gtlm team's really starting to study the weather it's warming up it's cool and breezy but we're still starting to get more temp in the track and they're starting to look at the tires do we want to make a compound change or at least make a pressure change in those tires to keep these cars running at the optimum they're starting to do some of that strategizing and some of the math on the numbers right now well i i live in columbus ohio so i think it's been really warm down here the entire time i'm here because we've had the most brutal winter up there i i've enjoyed it right now scott dixon enjoying a clear racetrack in front of him as the green flag falls we're back to racing and you see the number 10 corvette that black and orange number 10 corvette get bottled up on the inside and around the outside the number five of sebastian bourdain from action express sweeps high around the outside and max angelelli disappears back to third he got caught in traffic and it it's worth pointing out you know that the nascar commented how it doesn't the new paint job that big machine records uh scott dixon is the big machine he's been in that car almost three hours on this hot day there's a maximum drive time you cannot drive more than four hours i suspect that uh they'll they'll run this tank out and then they'll switch him out but he's earned his uh earned his keep already i think the other thing to note is history plays a lot here at sebring and calvin talked about it earlier the daytona prototype teams they don't have a lot of data from here and a lot of the teams that came from the american le mans series who have run here for years and years have that data so you look back on it if you've not had any experience here or much experience in a daytona prototype based prototype um you might be missing some of those little magic tweaks that you need to get around this very bumpy circuit not only have data here in this configuration with the the big wing and the diffuser they they don't have very much data anywhere other than a little bit of testing and the spec has chained continuously so it's putting more load through all of those parts so a big question mark what we think of as a proven package uh is maybe not as proven especially on this uh the roughest circuit that we go to when you look at what we have here in terms of the driver lineup we're staring at in that car i mean jailbird boasts uh max angelelli they're we know them they're our sports car heroes but this is like the good old days to have an indycar champion like scott dixon out front and tony kanaan just waiting to get in it's amazing to me because the fans are really responding because it's almost like we're hosting such a good party that they want to come to it and i think i'm you got to thank chip ganassi for for doing that um because he brings great talent to the field brian frisell and the other corvette from action express rolling down pit road see that in the box on the left as you watch the action in a big crash it's the 62 running third in gt matteo malocelli off in turn one extensive damage to the left side of that ferrari oh i think i just could hear giuseppe rizzi from up in the tower here oh my god this team is just i mean wow that's a big having a hog oh no that is that was the 30 momo entry in the gt daytona category rejoining the track he got right into the middle of that oncoming traffic turn 17 the exhibit is so committed you are in a gt car truly committed and last thing is probably looking in your mirror for a fraction of a second you don't expect someone to pull in for the right whatever damage was on the 62 is now being compounded into real damage 56 bmw with a problem as well you see the damage to the bodywork on the front there and that's more than just bodywork i think looked like suspension damage you just you can't re-enter like that you just can't do it well it's funny because when i was talking to people about traffic the obvious traffic that people talk about is the inexperienced guys hugely experienced guy here and that is just a you know that's you just don't do that you know there's nothing the risk reward there's no upside to that he's already had an incident he's already going to the pits to wait until it's it's truly clear let's focus on bmw here tommy because i really hope that that is you know the obviously hard on the left oh look as he rejoins here you see the car get out of the air it's not turning well and he pulls literally into the middle of the racetrack yeah at the exit to one of the highest speed corners or explosion on the track door exposed door exposed and dirk verner in the bmw in the 56 bmw he was running in fifth you see the momo gtd entry he got crossed up and he over corrected and it went in on the right but i mean i believe i'm not throwing him there but it was it was a spin the odd thing to me was there was a lot of motion in the back end of the of the 62 when it went in from the first look that we had yeah i really feel sorry for the the number 30 momo car there because he tried at the la as he's going right to the exit he tucked it to try and not shake out she tried that's chris you know thanks for that tommy take a look at take a look at the 62 again it could just be the motion in the back yeah it's not as much motion as i thought it was i think you were right justin i think it stepped out just hooked yeah remember that is that is when you get it right your car's good you're trying to get yourself a bit of corner and i was just double guessing myself as well oh he goes in there that's a scary thought you're really humping through there and so it's it's very possible that tc cut in yeah and and it had a more dramatic reaction but you know what the trouble is is that the damage he would have been able to continue through the whole of this race yeah i believe yeah but not now 56 trying to get back to the pits they'll make it back that's dirk verner behind the wheel and i'll tell you what that's a walk you don't want to make back to the pit to see giuseppe no not for the second time and the team my heart goes out to the team i mean mateo is out of the car walking away it's good that he appears to be okay that team has worked so hard there are very few parts on that 62 that made the trip to florida earlier in the year to daytona after the massive crash and the rebuild that they had to do and now for the team that had worked so hard their day is done and we still have nine hours to go there's giuseppe risi what a wonderful man what he has contributed to ferrari's race presence in north america is is without parallel any in the world anywhere in the world he does it off his own back really in terms of his momentum and energy and and funding and but let's just hopefully one of our colleagues is down in the pit lane to check on how that bmw is doing because these guys look at them on daytona if you talk to them on thursday at daytona they were nowhere by race day they were right there and i think we were in position here to see some the same sort of thing happening here you could see that wheel was completely buckled there tommy look at it he's wheeling it away that is that's a hard impact to rip one of those alloy wheels in in half almost darren forged yeah guys this is this is a similar hit to uh to the porsche the 911 porsche it's luckily it's isolated to just the the left front corner it looks more body work than anything doesn't look like there's any suspension damage the only reason it came in on the ground like it did was because it had a flat but they're going to have to repair the bumper the headlights are busted out they've got supports broken up underneath but there's no radiator fluid or anything else leaking the whole front splitter is about busted off as well so it's going to be a time-consuming repair as well mainly bodywork though as they go to work on the bmw let's check in at reese's competition with greg kramer yeah standing here with dave sims and dave boy i'll tell you the last couple of years you guys if you didn't have bad luck you wouldn't have any luck and that rebuild after that big hit at daytona things look so good here any report of anything mechanical or any report at all he didn't come back on the radio yet on this one and especially after yesterday's uh incident when the guys rebuilt the car last night i mean yesterday and got up to a really good fast car and we we do not know anything yet from the driver and yeah somewhere along the line we got to change some sort of jinx out of out of something it's just unreal it is indeed we'll let you get back to it if we find mateo we'll certainly check in with him when it happened i looked up at giuseppe and it was almost no reaction it was almost like well of course that's how this season is going and giancarlo fisa keller just got it well he said we need to change the jinx and i had spoken to giuseppe reese a little bit earlier today and said the same thing daytona was a jinx this one appears to be self-inflicted oh no question yeah and uh that doesn't make it any easier to take no in fact i think it makes it more difficult hey guys uh i i don't have a view to any of the monitors i would keep an eye on the 56 bmw they they taped it back together and they threw a couple pieces of the of the big strips on there but it didn't look like all the bodywork was hanging on so if they don't come back in i don't know that that thing is going to continue on for very long before they have to come back in well this is also one of the ways we'll see we'll monitor how you how you manage situations like this you keep track of the safety car and you do as much work as you can another view of the incident itself we were lucky the aston didn't take him i mean that was almost the second rear end of the of the car avoids that bouncing wheel but what i was saying is they they what you do is you do as much work as you can and then you send the car out before the lead the pace car gets there come around again to try to not lose laps wow that's even that realizes how much it was even more dramatic than we realized that how much he came back on the racing line the exit of turn one not only is it unsighted you can't see the exit you have so much momentum going even like even when you're by yourself if you're about to run off the road you can jerk jump out of the gas you can't change your line there's so much speed and momentum carrying you to the right there that you know you just can't change course just gutted the reese team is and i know giuseppe reese will not be pleased with this result you saw the 30 also with the problem and i believe she's the daughter of john nielsen the uh the factory jag racer from back in the day i talked to bo barfield who has a pretty big day job as the race director for indycar he's here as the the uh technician strategist on that 30 card he said i am having such a ball where my mistakes are not seen by anyone in fact it's in full camouflage and so but he he talked about their driver lineup and uh and he thought they had a really good shot to run well and now that's all out the window well as the safety crew goes to work and the safety crew has been busy here this year at sebring we'll take a quick break and we'll be back to more action from the 62nd running of one of north america's great endurance events the mobile one 12 hours of seabreak you look down the long back straight away here at sebring the safety car with the lights on this is our fourth caution we only have four cautions in 12 hours last year so you had 63 cars out here you put 63 cars i should say and things get just a little bit busy just under nine hours to go and you look at the big concrete squares remember this is a b-17 training base that's what this airport facility was originally designed for and then became a racetrack and when you've seen some of the shots you see the airplanes in the background it is still very much an operational airport and you can see those big square patches of concrete down the front straightaway and it's one of the things that one of the reasons why this racetrack is as rough as it is let's check down in the pits while we have a chance with craig well tommy you were talking about beau barfield having sort of an off weekend from his full-time job and being team strategist here this could have been part of the strategy at this point do you know at this stage what the status of the car is no they're just getting it back to the uh back to our camp right now we're gonna assess and see what we can do to stay in but uh i'm sure there's gonna be some lengthy repairs we'll get that going well this is an ngt motorsport has been in the wars before for sure other than this you've really been enjoying this role haven't you oh it's been great this team is really awesome momo ngt the partners they have awesome drivers it's been good for me to get back on the competitor's side of things and uh just had really a great time very quickly i want to move over enrique is here cisneros who's team principal and of course very involved with the momo program 50 years for momo this isn't how you wanted that celebration at sebring to end up but uh you've got to be very happy with how things are going other than the incident and and momo's research into the marketplace it's largely your guys doing yeah obviously man this is our proving ground for for all the accessories and products we get coming out with and uh you know the team we're running strong we're running in first place for for a good part of it and um you know obviously the team's disappointed it's not the ending we wanted uh it's frustrating to see that kind of impatience from a driver so early on you know all the field was whizzing by he had no place trying to you know rejoin the pack and and he caused two accidents so um you know it's too early in the race for that but um again you know team's done a great job and we'll be back next race absolutely and of course uh right here 1964 2014 50 years of momo gentlemen i was talking about barfield i was wondering if bo barfield wanted to call a penalty you know i mean since the race director well he was nice normally when you talk to him it's it's because you're accusing him yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly now this is this is you know she you had a very good almost missed him even with all that you know really uh heads-up heads-up job trying to to avoid and you had a good point justin when we were in break you were questioning whether they're in in all seriousness whether there will be some type of penalty going forward every other sport you get a yellow card before you get a red card in soccer and things and and i'm not i don't think as a driver it's very easy to drive with a penalty with with probation hanging over your head we have seen it in the last couple of years if without naming names but we i think it's just that it's so easy in the heat of the moment only a few lucky ones of us have been in that heat of the battle moment but again and had to live this tommy like these guys do instant decisions but also we're professionals so our instant decisions should be based in in uh sound judgment so uh that was just a bad decision to pull onto the track uh it was a decision to pull onto the track therefore it was different than driving on the limit in the first mistake which is the guy's trying he's leading the race and he's trying to maintain that lead he's getting after it makes a mistake but this one was unforced air that you know uh just a mistake on top of it so it's uh it's a real shame because it affected people other than just him well and the answer is going to be well he couldn't see back around the corner and that's when you rely on corner workers who will direct you when it is safe to move back onto the racetrack so all the more reason any way you look at it not to pull out any way you look at it the one of the you know more pucker puckered up corners uh you go through it's thrilling but it's also dangerous so it looks like uh letting the pace car get a little bit ahead pull now it's uh the discretion there's a zone a restart zone that dixon can decide where he wants to go it does not have near the gap because he doesn't have cars between him like on the last restart he's going to say he doesn't have the luxury that he had the last time the green flag flew because right behind him the number five sebastian board a then behind him the black number 10 max angelelli michael valiente in the blue 90 corvette and then the zero one of memo rojas so it's prototypes filling the top six spots on track at least the top six spots and maybe the top seven or so so this is going to be a battle on board the zero one with mimo rojas and those guys up front know each other uh dixon and bordeaux will be going after each other in two weeks on the the streets of saint petersburg in their indy cars and if you don't think that they give 110 here the way they would in the indy car you are wrong these guys are competitors and they're digging every moment rojas just a little wide at the exit of the hairpin and they're all over each other right now so one slip up one mistake one inch and then the guy behind is going to try and force his hand but it's interesting isn't it as we watch these dps with the prototype right right up his chest there as he goes into this very complex sequence it's uh this for me is all about setting up the guy this whole sequence you can't really go buy anyone here but it's all about where is the guy fast i mean coming down this little straight into this left right combination before you go down the back straight is very dynamically tough on the car and the driver so these guys are on the limit here as they come around but look dixon has pulled out a nice little gap it really gives you a view of where the different type of prototype is strong and where it suffers a little bit it's david brabham in the one all over that rear wing of memo rojas in front as they come down the long straightaway you'll get an idea of top speed here and then right behind them gustavo jacoman in that black and pink number 42 on board the number 90 corvette the other thing that we should talk about is in the corvette ranks there are different chassis underneath those corvette skins the number 90 is a coyote chassis that is the five and the nine as well from action express for coyote chassis the number 10 corvette from wayne taylor racing has a dalara chassis underneath it and the gamescom car which is not here after that massive impact at daytona at the rolex 24. it was a riley chassis so when we talk about corvette still different mechanical grip packages underneath because different chassis is underneath that corvette body work the very smooth part of the racetrack actually just here it's nice settled down but the braking zone here is so short going into the very tight hairpin until they catch traffic it's going to give us a good indication of what the relative speeds of these cars are uh where their advantages are and so forth it's really hard to glean that once they get into traffic because lap time is uh is usually influenced by how clear their lap was but the you know the p2 car of bravo that he cannot hold on the back uh of roja it's it's these dp's are working very well everywhere and you know i think that's as we're seeing it in the lineup the top five cars there before before we get to the p2 car but working very hard there's the gtlm cars working their way through sorting themselves out and in gt daytona where we understand that the 22 from alex job racing will have a stop and hold for 20 seconds for leaving the pit with equipment attached so for cooper mcneil who won in the gtd category last year they're gonna have to work their way back up from a penalty this gtlm battle the corvettes out in front they had problems both cars had problems at the rolex 24 and i talked to doug fehan it was an overheating issue in the three a transmission issue in the forward he said trust me we have resolved the issues they're very confident coming in to see it's funny because when i was asking doug louth about the transmission issue i said is this different he says well we're always trying to improve so we're running different parts i said so you think you're comfortable he says that basically gave me a definite maybe now let's watch the four as we go down into turn 17 it you're gonna see the bump look at the front look at the cars in front you can see them bouncing around as they go that's an awful lot of driver input as they go through this corner i mean you literally are at times aren't you especially your tires degrade you're almost swapping hands all over the place amazing and you've got an idea of the cornering speed i'm sorry tommy of the number six that was the six this is all from muslim picket racing klaus graf remember they did that pit stop he's got fresh tires a full load of fuel he was at the back of the pack and he is charging now you'll see tommy miller behind the wheel of the four graff going to try to make quick work of him i talked to ryan y'all and he said with this cornering speed of the p2 car he said the outside of 17 is actually a passing zone for him it's a little bit sketchy but again that's such a long corner if you wait for someone uh you lose too much time so you see obviously muscle milk employment the same strategy you notice that the three now with the demise of that ferrari has uh that he is now in front of the four car so he is back on the lead lap so uh unless the three car really can't maintain pace i expect you'll see that four car hold station so next time we get a yellow the three will be it will get to make that up at the tail end corvette would end up with both of their cars back on the lead lap and you get a good idea of the different speeds there there's the 31 corvette the white and red number 31 corvette in front of the gtlm ferrari from crone racing and then a prototype challenge car right behind them so you get an idea of how those classes mix together here at sebring 63 cars took the green flag and i i don't think we've seen the full potential of this corvette i don't say that because they're holding back i want to clarify or add to my my sandbag comments the reason people everyone sandbags is because it works and so but i the corvettes when before it got real serious at daytona both the cars had the problems the one car was looking pretty good until that late race problem so i don't think we've seen the full potential of this new c7 corvette gorgeous gorgeous car check in on the prototype challenge leader klaus groff now working around the zero nine dunkin indy is the leader in the category and when you look at the poll lap that bruno giancara did in that zero nine car from rsr racing it was spectacular like eight tenths of a second in hand and bruno obviously uh you know used to be with ganassi top top indy car guy found a spot in sports cars but still a hugely proud focused individual and so to be able to throw that kind of a gap on everyone in a track like this i sent him a congrats message and uh he was he was reveling in that uh it doesn't mean a whole lot other than on that day he was head and shoulders above everybody else chris in the team car the zero eight running right behind so rsr injuries running first and second and then the 38 in the prototype challenge class is right behind them just behind the corvette so the top three in prototype challenge running very close together as that 31 corvette the prototype stuck in between this for me is the most potentially uh stressful dynamic of overtaking in traffic because you have the pc car that is incredibly nimble and good under brakes you got the gt car lm cars that are actually faster in so many places on this track and then you have a dp that isn't running as fast as the front runners uh slowly going through them and all you wish for when you're in a traffic situation is that the people around you make a decision they make it hard and they go through that was well negotiated by them all but it's it's a very it's it's not it's not as as dynamic and quick as we see at the front end well and when you see like when when genkira is in that car shankara is going to be quite a bit quicker than the corvette so the fastest but now when you have guys that maybe aren't quite as quick you see a park dragon on that 08 one of the the fences on the front splitter but you and so it's hard because you know the brian briscoe here in the three and now we cut away to an issue with the 46 audi it's probably down in the hairpin that's okay no harm no foul it's easy to do there you just miss your breaking by two feet and and uh you think you're gonna break later and then you realize that there wasn't that was late well for all of us old guys it's nice to see that runoff at the hairpin because i think we all drove or tested or raced here when there was no runoff because that runoff was actually the racetrack one of the fastest entries hardest brake zones and the runoff was was about 10 feet in a wall because there's a road behind that and so uh when they changed it i wasn't i'm like oh it's not an old sebring but now i'm like well that was stupid i think the same person decorated that car that did the villa i'm staying in you can certainly that is a florida style car madison snow he's really come on song especially last year winning so many races and now he is the new leader in gtd we'll also add that bill sweedler there you know they they ended up winning daytona and along with townsend bell and now they're right up at the sharp end of the results right here at sebring so madison really pushing his way through traffic and there's the 5-5-5 ferrari the winner in the gtd category at the rolex 24 and you were talking about madison snow he won at petite le mans last year and they joined yen halen in this team and they had a great finish at the rolex 24 and they joined forces with matt plum put it under the rumble banner and what else would you expect other than to run up front bill sweedler having a great run he's taken to this ferrari and this class like gangbusters he and townsend bell having a ball running in this ferrari now under the aim banner and it's happy to see him because a couple years when he was trying to he ran that lotus first and then the private deer ferrari against the factories in gtlm last year and uh it's nice to see him kind of find his level and he and townsend i mean every session they've been up towards the sharp end of it towns and i went up that down and said let me see that watch he says ah i'm keeping it in the box keeping it nice and tidy so but for sweedler who's invested a lot to actually have a shot to run up front for wins is uh he deserves that for as much as he's contributing to the sport the 63 ferrari there running third in class right now out of the scooter of corsa stable and the ferraris seem to work so well around this racetrack both in gtd trim and in gt le mans trim well balanced mid-engine easy on tires always quick in a straight line they've got the full package well in these classes where you have to have the different ratings of drivers the key the pros are all gold the key is how good are your silvers and uh there's a lot of effort go so bill sweedler who's paying the bills is uh is a silver driver so really the race in madison snow is also a silver driver so it's uh the battle amongst the silvers is arguably uh where where the race is won or lost and remember when you wanted to be ranked really high yeah because it made you feel good well now there are guys who haven't been driving for a while ago well i know i won some championships but i think i should be a silver driver because there is a market for quality silver driving your ego gets involved last year i was filling out the form and it talks about championships and i'm like this and this and this and i when i got my platinum ranking i was like oh awesome and then i'm like wait a second if you were a little more humble you'd be better off so you saw how that went for you tommy really yeah so here we are following the 81 damian falter in that car he's a really good driver i've really enjoyed watching him he's you know and of course in this this whole gtd car the cars are so close these guys are really going at it very important for our viewers to know that doesn't matter what category you're in you are all everyone's in as hard a race as they can and and winning at cb and whatever class is as much we as we see in the left-hand side of the screen the 56 bmw you absolutely called it right from the pits there darren in the fact that it is they were just patching it up to get it out and patching it up to get it out but right now they're having to address a slightly more severe problem you can always tell by the body language when the mechanics start moving slowly it's not a good sign and now they're working on the opposite side that was not the obviously damaged one so you know it's funny we always talk about um hey guys you're right this thing they just passed it up to try and get it around for a couple laps and try and buy some time but this thing was destroyed the front end the splitter the bodywork again all the suspension was fine but it was rubbing on the tire um it's going to take them a while and then i look around i'm coming around to the back of the car and the back of the bumper has been bashed in both of the exhaust pipes are hit i mean this thing's been hit front and rear and you guys know as far as anybody again we're not even halfway and uh you just gotta stay out of trouble unfortunately for dirk uh he wasn't even caught up in the accident he was trying to avoid the accident and remember we talked about it when we listened to antonio garcia it's the 56 that i think he was pushed into after he was hit by the porsche from behind so darren was just talking about the damage to the back of the car and those little things over time will come back to haunt you now obviously what haunted the 56 was the problem with malacheli down in turn one but that damage who knows what it would have done um if they had stayed out on track and not been repairing the front end of the car right now and we see that oak racing car gustavo yakuman behind the wheel has pulled himself up to the tail end of this battle between rojas and brabham and that oak car was did not have the speed but somehow maintained stayed in contention till the very end of the rolex 24. they've uh hugely experienced successful team from europe uh the winner in p2 at le mans last year the zero two is in it looks like a driver change andrew without racing of course they had an alternative problem at daytona and that cost them a lot with that car was really quick there i've just been talking to the team a minute ago and uh i was a bit concerned they didn't seem to have the pace that they had in qualifying in the early part of the race that just explained that they sort of got themselves out of position really they've got a lot of dirt on the tars after that last big incident so i think you might see the oak car coming up through the field but remember this is their old car just last week alex alex brundle tested their new coupe and that coupe there'll be a couple of those under the league which will be racing at le mans so i think there's a lot more to come from boat racing down to you chris up to the moon we've had a another problem on the racetrack one of the prototype challenge cars in the tire wall and notice this tire wall not like the wall down in 17 or in one when malachi got into it doesn't have the big rubber wrap on it it's loose bundles and you can see how those get pushed up and out of the way that's quite a journey he made to get out there um you're actually at the midpoint of that corner you're going quite slowly i mean you know you roll through it but uh if you notice it doesn't look like a lot of brake marks there tommy did something happen it looks like he just rolled straight in there well it's possible he got shoved off during the brake zone before he had the speed off and uh you see he's pretty much straight in there yeah it's not fun when you're in an open-top car and you're in a bunch of tires because they're easy to get hit in the cut in the head there but it does bring out another full course caution which is a real pity because this race was just getting a nice rhythm going we started to see the classes sorting themselves out and i'm sure the strategies were starting to be able to plan what the next eight hours 37 minutes was going to look like i see a little movement his head moving a little and i saw a hand there but i'm a little surprised we don't at least have a corner worker over there getting eyes on him uh full course caution and this has not been a good day for par one motorsports they had problems with the 88 and the 87 earlier if you remember when we were talking about tommy dressy so not the day that they wanted to have but teams going to take the opportunity to get some pit stops done these cars obviously well hopefully committed a long time later hopefully they've committed before and this is often something that happens velocity here just uh unplugging all the various pieces of equipment and i've just got to be pushed out of the way here it's a bmw do you hear that look at that got the smoke up my nose again that rubber smoke i told you it's a drug before so a good pit stop there from the wade taylor boys and i'm just going to try and catch up with bobby ray hall in a minute to find out what's been going on with that bmw i think they've got it sorted now well tommy just pointed it out and it sounded a little confused when they were rolling down pit lane because the caution was out and it'll be interesting to see if they came down pit road because if pits were closed they can't service the car other than emergency service which means if the car were nearly out of fuel they could give it a splash but they did more than emergency service and i think since those cars are both at the very pit lane uh it takes a good while to get down there so i'm guessing they did it was just heads up worked by both action express the actual express car was in and out and also the taylor car was in what you do is you see an instant look at this 56 56 trying to get back around what you do is if you you see an incident you think there's a good chance they're gonna call it yellow you commit to the pits before the yellow comes on and now everybody else that pits under this yellow will then cycle out behind them you'll end up with an advantage it's just good heads up work uh if you you know you're taking a gamble if uh but it looks like it'll pay off assuming they were in before the pits were closed while we're full course caution let's check in with chris neville who's down at corvette yeah we were watching the bmw guys trying to get that car back on the racetrack in the first hour of this race it was the three three-car damage there and you guys getting back out you lost a lap but finally now after a couple hours it looks like with this caution you might get back on the lead lap yeah but it looks like uh we'll see i'm not sure that enough time has passed since the last yellow but it looks like we'll get it back which is good cars good after after we fixed it it seems uh it's a fast car so is it 100 i think so i think it's back to 100 all right you've obviously got a lot on your mind this weekend your son kevin competing in his first formula one race he qualified fourth is any of that a distraction yes a huge distraction but now you know all his stuff is when i'm not doing my stuff so that's good i can concentrate on my own and then when we're done here tonight go back to the to the condo and watch this race do you wish you were there and you could give him any advice yes of course i wish i was there but that's how it is i'll go to the next one and uh i'm so happy for kevin his performance yesterday was absolutely fantastic yeah everybody down here corvette says this weekend yan is just going to be known as kevin's dad well he says he wishes he was there but you told me that he went to a race last year and had never been so nervous in his life never got that scared in a race car i guess sitting watching your son drive something of that caliber is just a little bit nerve-wracking they've gotten the 87 out of the tire wall and he'll make his way back around bruce hamilton as i said not the day they wanted to have down at bar one the good thing is they i mean they should replace those tires pretty quickly and get this thing back underway um but you know he's look at the front of the car it's clear it really is he as i said i don't think his impact was very hard but they do by regulation have to put that tire wall back in in proper shape um and uh as we as we know this is the second race of the year so i mean that's what we have to remember guys think about it when people go back and talk about raising history this is the second race of the tudor sports car series second race second history in history so it's a pretty big one you add that to 62 years of history uh so it's new in in the old well i think too you know i i there are you know the line is haters gonna hate you know and and i know that there was times after the rolex 24 when people complained about this that or the other but when i look at what the series has done taking two separate entities putting them together and what they've built it's pretty impressive especially when you look at the balance of performance of the cars here this weekend impressive stuff let's check that back down in the pits with darren hey guys you might want to check in at some point uh throughout the the rest of the race here with the nine car from action express brian frisell got sick in the car they had to pull them out and they're checking them out they don't know if it's food poisoning or heat or what uh and it's a possibility they might be down to just two drivers if he can't make it back you don't want that because you got to make sure that you've got some fresh drivers in the car and it's one of those things that you know people talk about what a driver goes through but the danger is and a lot of times i don't think fans see it the danger is you leave your driver in for too long they get worn out with the speeds they're going and the physical abuse that they take around this racetrack you become prone to making mistakes on top of that from a strategic standpoint it becomes an issue because you can only leave your driver in the car for so long over a certain period of time so drive time becomes a bit of a sticking point unless you play your strategy just right and if you only got two bullets left in the gun for the rest of the race that's going to be an issue it'd be really easy to follow a foul of that uh four hours within any six hours i wonder if they're talking about pit lane that's exactly what i mean i just thought i overheard we were committed yep i think they're having that well then the other one said it wasn't committed and then let's listen did you it was called up who called it the shot called chuck yeah but they haven't called over they haven't called us or just stand down until they call up the right okay yeah well no they chuck called wayne there's a big conversation going down here i mean you just told me before we came uh on to this interview that your car was committed what's the situation yeah i mean we were committed before the caution came out and we can't see where he's on the track once he's committed and if there was a yellow flag at that point they should have notified it notified us they didn't we were already we were already committed so uh you're still arguing it out are you i'm not sure he's arguing i think he's he's trying to get the right decision yeah so uh long way to go in this race you're right in the hunt yeah it's a long way to go but you know you don't want to have this kind of unnecessary things happen at this early stage because you you can get taken out just so easy but by slower traffic so you want to get yourself with the quicker cars quick question wayne you had your one session at daytona you said you'd never go in a race car again have you put put the crash helmet on the race suit in the museum in my home museum all hung up ready to go all ready for photographs thanks very much so well the controller see your rage is down here at the wayne taylor pit not for the first time mates here i'm continuing to talk to the officials they were talking about being committed if he was already at pit in and there was no way to stay out that's committed deciding that you're going to make a pit stop coming through turn 16 at the beginning of the back straightaway the team may be committed but that doesn't mean that reminds me of that yeah that's that's a pretty tough call that's a very big orange light isn't it tommy before i saw that before i saw that i was thinking they weren't terribly emphatic in their defense but i i don't plead it a little harder on that yeah well we will find out as they continue to try to figure out what to do with the tin car they plead their case we'll be back to sebring right after this back at sebring international raceway still under full course caution and a little bit of controversy on pit lane as the number 10 car from wayne taylor racing max angelelli behind the wheel discussion about whether he came to pit lane after the pit lane was closed i think there might have been a little question as to whether sebastian board day and the number five from action express might have come down pit road when it was closed as well but they came in 10 seconds apart so if they get the five they're certainly going to get the 10 but uh i don't know yeah it was uh i mean committed on the ten car uh he was about as committed as that guy on that bachelor show while he's dating 15 different women yeah i mean that's the five yeah that's one day the lightest the closer call on board for sure that was a team's call to tell him not to enter at that point because you are on the inside you you only have to be careful of the traffic on the outside of you there if it was in a big pack you really wouldn't want to to rejoin in the middle of that pack tommy but we can't see that from the camera angle well he could have gone on and there's enough room because the racing line takes you way out yeah towards the wall so if he would have just peeled just on just the left of that uh the split he could have been okay there but you know that's uh it's it's you're they were taking that gamble if they get in and get away with it it helps them i mean they were already at the front of the field so it really there wasn't that much to be gained i mean the interesting thing is the five did probably get in just in front of the light but we don't know that would have been more a case of committed because i think the timing would have been tighter there but obviously as we watch the cars go around for me tommy with what's happening right now you must be coming up some quite significant driver changes i think as well we are now uh well three and a half hours just over in this race and we're actually uh on on the in the heat of the day i think it's starting to wear people down quite a lot and as we watch the ten they're on track i think andrew is down with the five car yes justin in fact i've just hopped back over the wall they tell me they are definitely clean the officials did come up to them but there is no problem they are convinced they will not get a penalty and i'm sure that's a situation so they are clean and well they were just the right side of that cut i think yeah i think you may be right andrew and for max angelo it's going to be frustrating because he sees the five right in front of him and he saw the five rolling down pit road right in front of him he's gonna be going oh all right well what about him but as as you said when you look at the light and if you look at the the timing beacon it was ten seconds after the five crossed the line it put in that the ten rolled down pit road and that's really a better move if you're back in fifth or sixth it's worth taking the gamble they were already they weren't leading they were already right at the front so it's uh i mean obviously hindsight is 2020 but um you know that ultimately that decision ultimately rests with the driver because he knows where he is and he sees where the light comes on i mean as wayne said rayne just had this look on his face he knows it isn't all over because if you get a penalty because you got eight and a half but it just makes it harder work you have to get a pass by you have to wave by and in another next yellow and you have to work your way back up to the front but it's a lot easier to stay at the sharp end 60 second running of the mobile one 12 hours of sebring we're back and it is a beautiful day in sunny central florida and there's been plenty of action since the drop of the green full course cash in right now so we'll give you a little bit of a race recap and with 63 cars starting a lot of people looked for fireworks right from the get-go first couple of laps were clean and then as we said earlier things heated up this actually took place under caution clearly a fuel issue fuel leak that's fueling this fire even when they put it out it keeps springing back up just a shame the car was running second at the time the only good news about the fire was that driver ben keating was out but then issues for the number three corvette issues corvette responded well as fast as they could but as we later heard from yet magnuson it's gonna take a long time to catch that one back up problems all around the racetrack as the day heated up and perhaps some fluid down on the racetrack because we had five or six cars off at a time damage to the winners in the gtlm category from the rolex 24 you saw that 911 porsche with contact with a prototype challenge a little stall for klaus grob leading the pit lane after one of his stops he would have to serve a penalty as well for speeding on pit road and then the big one yeah that was an initially yeah he went in hard the car still movable but this next move pulling into the direct line of traffic resulted in two cars being taken out of this race for the rest of it a very very disappointing move by the driver and of course then the bmw the 56 bmw that front left hand corner absolutely wiped out now that i see that again we never saw where that car got damaged it happened at the same time so we're gonna maybe have to investigate a little bit further to see where that damage suffered that bmw suffered this damage but mateo malocilli in that number 62 ferrari pulling back out on track it could have been much worse than it was and that was just such a dangerous spot so that's the race recap here is a look at the unofficial prototype class standings the number five up front sebastian bourdee has been magic as the third driver in that car with christian fitipaldi and joao barbosa all weekend long great job in qualifying just behind him the number 10 from wayne taylor racing jordan taylor max angelo and ricky taylor but there is a potential penalty that might be coming their way for coming to pitt road during this full course caution when pit lane was closed gt le mans category is one that we always talk about where the manufacturers like to play and right now corvette trying to make up for the problems that they had the rolex 24 they lead in category well but you know just the endless problems and you hear people talk about how sebring 12 hours here is like 36 elsewhere you're like is that a hyperbole look at what's happened between that ferrari going out the the flawless uh factory porsche having trouble one of the corvettes bmw etc and that's just in one class and here we go to gt daytona rumbaum up front jan halen matt plum madison snow hugh plum remember yen halen madison snow drove together at the rolex 24 finished third they joined forces with rumbaum matt plum and you plum here at sebring and you know what they haven't skipped a beat just been rocket ship fast all week long and in the prototype challenge category number 25 from eight star motorsports running up front right now but that's been a seesaw battle back and forth and the way a lot of this comes down to pit stops and so forth uh this class you can always you can throw a blanket over the top cars almost virtually in every class but uh that one seems to it's hard to even begin to handicap it until you get well closer to the end of this one 63 cars took the green flag so it is definitely congested here on the sebring international racetrack and that has made for some great racing there is plenty more to come from the 60 second running of the mobile one 12 hours of sebring welcome back live to sebring international raceway as we continue with our fox sports coverage here live streaming at imsa.com and fox sports go thanks to brian till justin bell and tommy kendall now on the mic in the booth i'm bob varsh along with calvin fish and dorsey schroeder we are under our fifth caution flag we've already broken last year's mark for caution with the number of laps and number of yellow flags and what has been a fairly bizarre race even by sebring standards to this point dorsey well we turn the microphone over to our cohorts and look what they do it tore everything up yeah this is pretty amazing that they uh we've had this many cautions and in the degree of which we've had them too for that matter i mean that big fire to start the things off you can't do much about that but you know the reason company ferrari another huge wreck for those guys after the thing that they went through at daytona you know it's saddening yeah i mean uh giuseppe reese just can't catch a break i mean the poor guy just keeps digging deep and coming back but um they need to uh get out of this jinx that they're under but i think it's really tough for everyone up and down pit lane right now because the race has no rhythm they probably don't have really have good fuel mileage numbers yet and things like that so at this stage of the game you start to lay out your game plan but i'm not sure anyone's even got that together yet it's just join it for sure i mean there's no rhythm to the race there's no you know that you can't get good numbers on things we're going into the heat of the day which is uh the slipperiest part of the day as far as the racetrack goes working the pit lane with us now is andrew marriott and the man standing by right now with the boss over at chip ganassi racing with felix sabattus here's chris neville yeah bob mike hall calling the shots on the o2 car this weekend and mike we were just talking about rhythm of this race and all these cautions is it kind of tough to pull a strategy together when we keep going under caution well it seems like some days the cautions fall for you some days they don't but i think if if there were 30 minutes to go in the race we'd be having a different conversation uh but you know we it it the balance is maturity and experience uh it's great when you're up front with the experience it's really good to have maturity when you're not so a long way to go but it's great to be racing at sebring that's that's really the main thing you know in the early part of this race it looked like the corvettes were strong they stayed up front and then you guys got the lead and you were able to keep it is it just being up front being able to control that pace no i think what you're seeing is a product of a lot of hard work from the ford people here on this side uh what we've done since the 24 hours at daytona has equalized ourselves to the corvettes and so now i think you're gonna see a race here uh particularly when it gets late at night i hope everybody decides to tune us in on fox tonight because i think they'll see a heck of a show when the headlights come up yo one car pitted right next to you lots of communication back and forth does that car have the pace of the o2 car i think they both have pace the great thing about communication when you have teammates is the fact that you learn from each other and you read the road that's really what you learn when you're when you're out there on that gilligan's island and you don't know what's going on you can't exactly run down the road and that's the corvette's what they're doing so it really helps a lot well scott dixon was behind the wheel for quite a few hours since the top drop of the green now we've got rookie sage karem out there andrew yeah well i'm with mike rockefeller here in the 90 yeah spirit of daytona car and uh i don't quite seem to have the pace rocket at the moment but the race really hasn't gone away yeah i mean it's so many yellows so far you know it's just you have to be clean and try to stay on track out of trouble that's what we are doing so far we haven't shown uh the best pace i would say today but we are we are up there we are p7 currently and it's still a long race and i hope the the car will get better you know as the track rips up and it's quite hot now so we are playing with tire pressures and see what we can do rocket reigning dtm champion i wonder what a dtm car would be like round here yeah i would love to try it you know but for sure it would be great fun you'll be defending that title of course that's uh always the goal very good thanks doing that with phoenix racing back to you all right thanks very much andrew i'd like that too dtm cars around here i bet that would be a show they run those things pretty stiff though i mean yeah it would be a rock and roll shelf through turn 17 that's for sure michael valiente knock your feelings out michael's going to be running full time with richard westbrook this year in the sprint races obviously rocky's just in for daytona sebring and petite a really strong driver lineup there this year and uh struggled a little bit early in the week spoke to westy during the lunch break and he said the car was not good in qualifying they made some changes he said it felt much better in his opening stint so they put the top down on the corvette stingray convertible pace car exactly what i would do now to something that i won't do race corvettes at sebring sebastian bourdain max angelelli followed by sage karum david brabham memo rojas your top five look at saiz karami jinx around the outside of angel ali and takes back that second position boy oh boy the indie lights champion is on it max went to the inside he got on the brakes and that car was in the bumps and started hopping up and down i don't think he realized it was that rough over there the ganassi squad have been very impressed with the pace of this young man who's behind the wheel of the o2 right now and he is showing his stuff i had a long chat with the man you just heard from mike hull about sage karam at the recent test leading into this year's 12 hours and you're right calvin they are very impressed with what this kid can do see how bumpy it is right there going into the airplane that was that this racetrack has settled in and it's it's created all these bumps and didn't used to be there when they paved this some years back look at this he wants the lead he wants it now he is pushing hard he's down the inside bordeaux let him have it he doesn't want to fight too hard you see how rough it was when he got offline he pushed him all the way to the ground that was really really looser there remember at four hours there's gonna be those uh endurance points awarded so we're 11 minutes from that mark that might be why they've let him loose sage karam from nazareth pennsylvania home of the legendary andretti family of racers and there must be something in the water in nazareth north american endurance cup that's very much a part of these first two championship rounds this is going to be devastating the 10 is getting a penalty guys and it's going to be a big one stop and hold for 60 seconds seems like the action express car they've said you're okay they pitted exactly ten seconds apart from one another so they're saying that the action express was committed to pit lane but had the option to stay out and he didn't so that was a big gamble one other car was also nicked the bar one motorsports pc orica chevrolet of bruce hamilton gaston kirby and thomas kazametz they have been often on the track all day oh trouble here 38's back hey the wall not bad i don't think it's hurt the car they just spit inside the wheel yeah that's down to 17 right before you come on pit lane so if he did hurt the car he's right close to get in but i think he just had a simple spin and uh rolled back into the wall the way it looks really surprised that the amount of spins by the lmpc cars you know i know some of it has been contact and just you know a lot of traffic situations but there seems to have been some simple spins going on with drivers by themselves well that was a spin early early in the corner i think it got caught off by that bmw possibly oh he did bend the wing a little bit though didn't he maybe just had to jump on the brakes a little bit harder hit a bump and got turned around on that approach to 17. young canadian david ostella who has driven two count em two long endurance races in his career he won here in class last year and finished on the podium in january at the rolex 24 at daytona traffic jam sebring weathertech car in white black trim in the middle of this gaggle looks like one of the porsches dragging something off the left rear unless it's just some loose body work possibly the blue car there i don't think it's any problem back on board the 22 rum bum up ahead execute 911 this is the factory gtlm car it's a car that's kind of trying to bounce back a little bit had some problems a couple of hours ago one at daytona of course in that fantastic battle with the bmw car in the last hour see him flashing the lights he's trying to make up ground like you said kyle driving a lot more aggressively than some of these guys around him want to do right now what you're doing by that you're just alerting one of those gtd machines who's in the thick of their own battle they're so focused forward you sometimes don't look in your rear view mirrors and see that faster gtlm car coming behind you this is richard leitz in the porsche for the speed differential over the gtt cars on the straightaway surprising it's not that much in straight it would be a lot more up here in the break zone yeah the gtlm just has so much more down force which creates that drag down the straightaways but then in the break zones dorsi as you said that then gives you grip on the entry to the corner road racing is a give and take proposition you've got the faster car you expect guys to get out of the way but it's not always easy those guys also realize that they have pace in certain parts of the racetrack so that they don't want to slow down and let you buy they don't want to ruin their lap time they are more than willing to say you're just gonna have to bide your time and wait look at sage man he's just setting sail big hop there again those bonus points for the north american endurance cup are awarded at the four-hour mark the eight-hour mark and at the checkered flag here we go wow he's out there no man's land getting around poor day i'm sure bourdain didn't even expect that he was almost off the racetrack totally there you see there sometimes when you're online that you normally don't work on you suddenly find a big bump you didn't even know it's there right there you don't normally drive on that right-hand side of the road and he had a big bump to deal with there you see the gap now about five car lengths here comes the penalty stop plus 60. talking to the 10. he'll be fuming see if he peels off yes he does just coming down pit lane versus staying on the racetrack max wants to know what he did the penalty box is on the right side of head out go all the way to the end of the pit stop in the box on the right hand side i do did i do something wrong i want to learn tell me this is why you can see the yellow light flashing that means pit lane is closed bourdae the leader had hit pit lane before that had come on angelelli did not earlier you heard is brian jb and tommy did something wrong tell me i want to learn there was a lot about it after the penalty here there was a long conversation with officials about whether or not he was committed to the pit lane when the previous yellow flag came out apparently they lost the argument not you max we made a mistake up here it's not you yeah they call them okay okay thanks that's uh pretty level-headed right there i mean he said if i made a mistake i want to learn i want to know what i did wrong i don't i'm not understanding it and well they said pit pit obviously but the driver still has to realize that when the light comes on i'm not allowed to pit so there's a there's a gray area there you listen to your pits so don't you mean them they tell you to come in and you're more concentrating on getting getting the pit stop done quickly and that light coming on well the call was the right one if you can get in and beat that yellow light big advantage but you know the driver is the one who's going to see when the light comes on and whether you beat the light so to speak but just coming down pit lane along without serving the penalty cost you about 35 37 seconds all right the damage has been done the penalty is served max the axe is back in action let's go to chris neville well patrick dempsey finally cooling off after almost two hours behind the wheel but patrick after you did the exchange the car came back in pit lane and they were adding some fluid what's going on with the porsche yeah we've been struggling with the power steering pretty much uh halfway through andrew's first stint there and then i got in the car we put some fluid in it it helped for like four or five laps and that was it so it's a little bit of a workout two hours behind the wheel no power steering no it reminded me of everybody in the old days you know that nobody had power steering i've been training a lot which made a big difference and uh just you know it's unfortunate you know beautyrest has been supporting us and uh pushing the design and uh specialized all our sponsors motegi wheels it's just it's unfortunate we're not a better result we had a good shot at it we'll just have to battle back and see we still got a long long way to go we do and every time we drop back and take a look at gtd it seems like we just have clusters of cars everywhere so you're constantly battling oh it's a blast there's so much going on it really is situational awareness managing traffic you know understanding what the lmpc guys are going to do and battling it out in your class it's just fantastic it was an incident in one i didn't know if i was going to make it through the tire flips up and just hit the front quarterback and then we kept going i was like i've got by that one but it's a blast i'm having a blast why don't you go do some curls and really try and burn those arms up patrick dempsey not only enjoys his racing he's a huge student of the sport a big respecter of the traditions here at sebring i hope you heard his discussion with our justin bell during our half hour pre-race show here at imsa.com you'll have one of those before every round of the championship this year okay and you see the clock winding down at the top of the screen in just over three minutes there'll be bonus points of water for the patron north american endurance cup and a lot of guys will be strategizing around that looking at the viper team that currently leads in gtlm looks like they've decided to keep dominic farmbach out there he's uh doesn't have a lot of time left in terms of fueling his tank but uh he may be able to stretch it and get enough to get across the eight-hour mark to go battle for second in gtd the 63 porsche of alessandro balzan excuse me the ferrari 458 italia how can i make that mistake and marco seyfried in the number 44 magnus racing porsche 44 car rebounding they had a problem earlier in the race when uh john potler got took for a ride over in turn 13 had a little bit of damage but they've got a really good group on their pit wall as well and you can strategize your way back in to the mix you just got to stay calm work the rules in terms of the safety cars and you can be back in the mix very easily that sure wasn't john potter's fault either i mean he was just innocent bystander he got run through from behind and they're doing a good job that team pulling back in aboard the 22 fifth in class gonna see some names here you may not have seen before in north american sports car racing because a lot of these teams have had to dig deep into the driver pool to find these pro-am drivers guys who are graded a silver if you're running one gold in the prime category you only need to have um well you need two drivers with silver grading but only one needs to do the minimum drive time you have two goals in your car you got two good guys with silver status to do the minimum drive time which is two hours and 50 minutes so that's like 25 percent of the race almost so you can't afford to have someone who's going to lose you too much ground so these guys have been pouring through driver resumes trying to find guys who have speed but have been on the radar under the radar so to speak in terms of having a goal status which would eliminate them that's an interesting ripple in the driver market somebody who's good but not so experienced as we say silver drivers good silver driver is golden great battle in gtd here including a couple of audis we haven't talked much about the r8 of course audi oh boom is that attack i think he did get tapped he might have a problem getting back down he got flat left that's what the noise was you heard the tire blow yeah and he's got a long way to go yes he does that's about two miles to go i would say alessandro latif switched over from the sister car now gotta race at the front for the overall yeah look at that look at the time on the clock we keep talking about those bonus points it is go time if you got anything and ian what is very much on top of the strategy they did it very well last year to be in the mix in the north american endurance championship 20 seconds traffic ahead this is for the points at the one third mark of this mobile 112 hours of sebring with points toward the tequila patron north american endurance championship it's a double-edged sword how much do you push for those bonus points and risk throwing it all away here in terms of getting any damage or getting involved sage cameras a very aggressive driver remember you've got to cross the line we're at the eight hour mark but they've got to get to the stripe to get those points that really helped out the o2 car i think sage is going to be well clear of any pressure from bordea down into 17. spins the car back around at the top of your screen it's still right in the middle of the racing line now he might get held up through here through the blind bridge turn nope he'll go inside that porsche better see him trouble is as you start getting on the gas early that front just takes off on you and washes out into that traffic there we go they should have got those bonus points right at that mark for the ganassi squad we need a special kind of flag for one of the stages of the tequila patron north american endurance cup so everybody knows including the spectators there's points awarded in all four classes everyone's up there's a hundred thousand dollars on the line for the prototype division and the gtlm and then 50 000 awarded to lmpc and gtd at the end of the year it's a nice bonus he's going to make it into pit lane with that without too much damage did a little bit on that left rear fender but not really nothing to worry about i don't think even arrow's going to be exactly like it damaged the car much now just right behind where it's flopping but i don't think i will kendra's performance at all spoke to tommy sadler this morning right after the warm-up he said marcus winkelhock actually tweaked a nerve in his back doing a practice driver change this morning so they weren't sure how much time he was gonna do for the squad here today and uh he was obviously the guy in the middle of that battle at the end of the daytona 24-hour race so you don't want to lose someone with that sort of talent with having an injury audi of course dominated here with their prototype cars in the old american le mans series taking overall victory after overall victory they were just here testing a couple weeks back for the uh 24-hour le mans use this track as a test track big believers that sebring is the ultimate test track if you could survive here you could survive anywhere that's not a cheaper adventure bringing over the prototypes for a week they're doing night testing and everything i saw tom christensen in orlando last week before he flew back to europe and they said we had a great test we feel like we're in good shape but he said not everyone is showing their hand yet but as they say this is the ultimate test bed you had a quick glimpse of a neat tradition here at sebring there you go the nationality the winning car and the year in which they triumphed notice all the familiar names they're a ford gt40 porsche for their 908s and so forth the ferrari 512 what have you you get down up into the 90s and the 2000 decade you see a lot of german flags those of course for porsche still one of the most successful brands here at sebring look at that go up for a long time and going and eventually it will become audi the japanese got in here too yeah you're going to see some nissans nissan there you go and toyota popped in here the great days of the camel gt jeff brabham who's here this weekend his son matt brabham was awarded the john gore's line sponsorship to a young driver jeff was a four-time endurance champion here in what is now the emsa tudor united sports car championship but look at all those german flags and all those audi's 2008 porsche snuck in there remember that p2 spider great battle ashley one overall with a p2 car over the dominant audis penske racing who else brought it here and led the way aboard the 45 there goes the gtlm's viper corvette cold tires still you know we saw the flat tire so he's taking four i'm sure he'll take a lap to get those up to tap so he's a sitting duck at this point yeah pretty much getting passed up there through gurney bend headed toward the hairpin it turned seven just got to be patient calvin just like you were talking about before i mean you go out in these conditions you can just drive as hard as you can until you get those temperatures and pressures up though i mean you're not up to speed there's nothing you can do about it dane cameron in the class leading bmw z4 andrew marriott is with his boss i certainly am with will turner will so what a story this is you had a bit of a problem before the start you had to start from the pit lane and now you're leading yeah so leading after four hours isn't really that important it's not when i want to lead i want to lead at the end of this race yeah but you've just got some points haven't you again yeah we just got some valuable points for the championship and i have to thank don salama for planning that um because the strategy worked out well to get dane to the front but also dane's doing a fantastic job in this bmw and uh right now he's uh the class of uh four hours so that's good but uh again it's not over until it's over teams struggled with some ups and downs this weekend i gotta thank all the guys for the hard work and uh paul dalalana for uh for making this happen and uh he had a fantastic stint so we're just gonna hope uh that everything works out i think there's been a big hit so i'll go back to the booth this is a big one guys i don't know what the car on the straightaway is but that's that hit a ton really bad hit car on the right heavily damaged car on the left wow our sixth full course caution our second major accident that is so fast through there you're you're just really really on the throttle hard and there obviously has been contact there's two cars involved here number 38 most heavily damaged car the prototype challenge machine of david ostella there's the 52 the other car involved 52 cars not terribly hurt i'm really concerned about the other car frankie montecalvo i'll have to wait to see if there was contact but boy oh boy see if we can have a look at what happened frankie montecalvo's climbed out and they're climbing out that's really good to see glory david estelle of canada that is really good to see wow wow that's a testimony to that carbon fiber tub and how strong that is that was a massive hit one of last year's winning drivers in class and quite a debris field as you see this will take some cleaning up he's a replay he's a little bit wide there's a bit of damage to the left rear way out in the gray and then monte calvi had nowhere to go you can't turn from there either once you're at that point of the racetrack where you're already on the throttle the tire wall and the secondary impact there's nothing even bigger than the first he's just wide all the way through doors he got into the gray yeah he got into the gray and the car wouldn't turn it pushed straight out to the wall monte carlo had nothing he could do he was already on the throttle and had planned his exit both drivers of course wearing the mandatory safety device known as the hans the head and neck support system that prevents the driver's head from being strained on his neck beyond bearing look at that and he walked away yeah that's that is used up that's as bad as i've seen one of these calvin actually it wasn't a big forward hit i was like he kind of hit it with the side and then dragged the tires out so i think it looks i mean it was a big wreck don't get me wrong the back hit was the bad one you know and luckily it hit at the rear axle not in the not in the driver's seat exactly the point i was going to make doors he hit where you had a crushable structure between the incoming car and the driver cockpit of the one being hit the debris field is massive of course but you're right kind of dissipate like that if he wasn't out there in the gray area with all that junk he probably made the corner still but once you get out there the car will not turn anymore and you saw it just it got in kind of light into the tires but it kind of sucked it in once it hit with the left front it becomes a game of chicken do you know what i mean you just got to give it up and you can't afford to take any chances and i'm not saying he was but just got out wide and made a little mistake there but you got to give up the throttle try and control the speed a little bit to get it back entire wall took a huge hit that'll have to be rebundled let's take another look as you pointed out calvin there was some damage at the back of ostellas car which might not have turned as well as it should have he clearly was in the dirty part of the racetrack that's when the car just started going straighter it appears like it goes straight actually what it does is it quits turning yeah and it caught that left front and that kind of turned the front in so it wasn't like a head-on you know full force impact there so stella goes round and there the car gets hit at the back monica he was lucky enough to hit the pit right you know without control straight across the track that's the best thing i've seen today right there and that's that could have been so bad for him to get out so great relief they'll be sore but they are safe and that's the best news of all so out comes the yellow flag once again there's gunnar jeannette on the left frankie montecalvo's long time driving partner another break coming up folks out in green park wondering what was that all about stay with us just about 2 30 eastern time 7 hours 45 minutes to change remaining in what has already been a very eventful 60-second running of the mobile one 12 hours of sebring there is one of the corvettes limping around as we are under our sixth caution of the day flat left rear and he probably ran over debris from that wreck that would be my guess a massive two-car accident on the start finish straightaway coming off the final corner has led to yet another yellow flag here in the first half for the 12 hours at this stage you just gotta go slow enough not to do any bodywork damage particularly to that inner fender there's ducting and all sorts of coolers and stuff back there so you just have to really be patient plus he's safe because the yellow's out nobody can pass him he can go as slow as he wants to i mean there's nobody going to do anything so you just limp her on back there's no prescribed speed that the team can tell you it's up to the driver to really just gauge it's lost most of the carcass already looks like it's running on just the outer bead so maybe there's a big carcass laying out there somewhere but in any event you know under yellow nobody can do a thing look at all that look at the rubber holy moly wow well remember we had uh we've had a couple of cars lit through there on flat tires most recently the audi yeah i think that was maybe where he uh shred some of that there's the tire carcass now they're calling for a red flag okay that all stop they're stopping the race what's going to happen here is that they're going to bring all the cars to the stop they can't be worked on they can't be touched drivers will stay in the car unless told otherwise no work on the cars no work on the cars whatsoever they might let the drivers out because this is going to be an extended cleanup period right now clock continues to run stock continues to run so even though briscoe needs service with that corvette they'll have to wait to be able to do that i'm sure they're going to bring them down the front straightaway here because pit lane is uh entrances a bit yeah it's kind of a tough situation to call right now because you got wrecks in pit lane and you got wreck on the straightaway and i'm relatively certain that the thing is that brisco in picture right there yeah you think it is playing out with uh he's gonna they're gonna line him up on the front straight i think they're being smart if he's not doing damage the race car lamp is stacked up behind the pack so he's essentially almost making up a lap that he would have lost do you know what i mean in in distance at least by uh just cruising around and getting up to the back of the pack and then being under a red flag condition and that is the better of the two cars great to see cam boggy creek on board but i'm sure they didn't want to see their car in this type of situation poor frankie didn't have anything you could really do about that he was just wrong place right time the front end of the car would have a cone-shaped crushable structure up front but that has already done its job and spared the car and driver to a large extent let's go to chris neville well bob uh down to corvette group uh danny banks bit happy that we've gone to red here because as we've been taking a look at that entrance to pit lane a lot of blockage down there so that three car with that tire gone flat uh he was concerned that they were gonna have to keep going around out there and possibly beat up somebody where possibly beat up some suspension on that car so when we went to red flag danny danny banks held his fists up he was happy about that and and hopefully they can slowly get that car back around the racetrack and hopefully pit lane will be open by the time the three car gets back here but this team obviously having a tough day only the fifth fourth red flag in the history of this race going back to 1952 twice for rain in 1993 and 95. 90s were a busy decade because we also had a heavy crash in 97 that brought out the red i wasn't in that one but dorsey probably created the crash no that was probably his fault you and i were in the one with the rain then i remember sitting on pit lane it was ridiculous yeah it was absolutely remember even under caution you couldn't keep the car on the racetrack just aqua planing oh you got at like 60 miles an hour you were over your head 60. it could have been uh that big wreck might have been davey jones back then in the jaguar we had a huge wreck see the car is coming to a stop on the olmen straightaway between turn 16 and 17. let's go back now and listen to radios onboard the number four after the accident whoa definitely you know hit something debris i don't know exactly what it was but uh i mean i wasn't two millimeters from the viper there see not much you can do about this you've got to drive up the straightaway because there's a crashing pit in and there's debris everywhere you did definitely get into something there goes the car soon to discover leaking air let's go to andrew yeah well i'm with frankie montecalva unbelievable you walked away from that a little bit red in the face but i just saw your hands not even shaking frankie no no i was just a little more uh disappointed we had a good car you know we were staying out of trouble and just trying to run my own race out there and stay stay clean there's a lot of yellows you know so far so we've been been fortunate enough to stay out of it until then but uh our car was getting better and better over a stint you know i had a lot of understeer but it started coming to me at the end we started doing faster laps and just got caught up and had nowhere to go so yeah just just go through it tell us exactly what you saw um well i think it was uh ostella and ranger they were you know racing wheel the wheel really racing hard so i was just trying to stay out of there out of their race and trying to keep my pace up and uh was going into 17 they broke really late they were both carrying good speed through the corner just kind of did a normal line through there and was getting a good exit was tracking all the way out to the wall when i came around the corner you know he clipped the wall and spun right out in front of me so i had nowhere to go frank can we glad you're safe mr cool yeah it was it was not a fun ride that's good to hear frankie mounted calvo he's probably still wondering what just happened to me yeah he was trying to stay out of that battle he said the two cars ahead of them were dicing it out and he didn't want any part of it and ultimately ended up in it so that's uh that's disappointing it definitely says like you said calvin a lot for the design and the crushable structure on the nose of these things that you can have an impact of that severity and still the driver be alright looks like the crews are going to work back there on the olmen straight cleaning up some of that tire debris you also had a look at air conditioning prototype style just open the door i'm sure it's warm in those cars right now you know it's probably upper 70s today any concerns about overheating your car you pull it up you stop well there there's a heat sink for sure when they shut them off out there they're going to get really hot and some of them might not fire now if it doesn't fire they are allowed to push you and restart it since they've commanded that you shut it down that's al carter and one of the audi r8s trying to flap some cooling air into the car you shut it off and all that heat from the transmission tunnel comes right up from the inside and it just boils you no air circulation whatsoever pardon me that's al and his aston martin the brand he's racing in this year that's a good pointer see those front engine cars in particular all that stuff just sits there and you know the brake rotors all that heat comes straight up and it all finds its way to the driver most of it through that transmission tunnel which is a hollow is hollow underneath the car so all the heat goes up into that and it acts like a chimney you know just sucks all that heat right up through the where you shift from see the crew's going to work on the tire wall you know i came here for the test and there was a big accident back in the hairpin that about knocked down the fence but i noticed that the crews seemed to be incredibly well rehearsed at repairing the tire wall cleaning up the racetrack we've already seen several episodes of that this weekend in fact several since the beginning of this race they really get the job done here at sebring let's go to andrew marriott once again yeah i've been with one of the big names in this race uh ryan hunter ray you're sort of you're all this is your bit of fun isn't it driving one of these cars but sebring is no fun oh it's uh it's so challenging out there today it's a it's a bit crazy really the amount of yellows we've seen but i absolutely love sebring i love the 12 hour and uh this is my effectively my home race so it's great to be here with srt viper we had a great run at uh at daytona we're looking to top it here today but you can see it's uh it's pretty treacherous out there today how do you switch your mindset from indycars to this because that was the braking distance is completely different the downforce is completely different must be quite hard to do that yeah and it is more difficult going from a gt car to uh to the indy car but uh prototypes in the past years have been easier to go back and forth this uh requires a little bit more changing of driving style but you know it keeps me sharp keeps me on my toes i've always got to be thinking about how i can be a better driver so i love that part of it love working with this team because you could be staying in florida because you've got the compete in your race uh starts the season you're getting ready for that good preparation yeah i can't wait for the indy car season to start you know it was a a big boost to the series to have verizon come on now it's a verizon indy car series and a lot of good momentum going on there so we're looking forward to getting st pete going and uh and then heading into may for for what's going to be a spectacular month at the indianapolis motor speedway meanwhile you've got a good chance here because the car is going well and some of your rivals have been hitting each other yeah you know we changed a lot on the car last night the two mark and uh dominic who have driven it before me uh said that the car is the best it's been all week so i'm really looking forward to getting in it no matter what though when it's this hot sebring is gonna be greasy slick it's going to be uh it's going to be tough to keep it on the track right great to talk to you thanks champ thank you thanks for having me well he's right about that this racetrack gets slimy when it gets hot like it is in the afternoon it drops off almost two seconds a lap from the morning times and inexperienced crew people who come down here and drivers they chase their car around trying to get that time back which it never really went away it's just the racetrack is by nature that way as we mentioned during our mazda news and notes there was a personnel change at chip ganassi racing with felix sabattus long time team manager tim keane has moved on let's hear from his replacement now yeah bob mike gara taking over the reigns on the 01 car this year and mike coming in after daytona not really mid-season but after the season has started and after a lot of development with the car has that been a challenge it's been a challenge it's been a lot of work but uh it's pretty impressive what ford's done in such a short amount of time especially just from the open test until now just a couple weeks uh they've made some leaps and bounds uh with mapping and uh we're really really pleased with the performance of of the the ford and the car in general so we're making progress uh got a little late start on daytona but we're uh we're making progress now you were with the 01 car for the first couple years of the daytona prototype program then went over to sarah fisher racing spent some time in indycar now back over here are you excited to be back over here um yeah the uh it was uh interesting challenge over at sarah fisher racing had a great time and learned a lot and hopefully i can bring some management experience back here uh it's nice to join ganassi again and uh and hopefully you can push this program forward a lot of speed out of the o2 car right now you guys have that kind of speed too yeah i think so we're just kind of biting our time we've been on different strategies all day um both cars are capable of running quick times we're just uh doing it a little different than they are and um taking our time and see what we got at the end yeah now the cars are rolling both these teams starting to gear up for a pit stop and they are on extremely different strategies when you look at the fastest laps sage karam's car is at a 153.2 fastest time for the 01 is a 150 4.8 that is a significant delta between two team cars so i don't know if they got kind of a rabbit and uh taurus kind of strategy going on here make sure you get at least one of these to the finish obviously daytona they had some drama there maybe the one that's running for the championship let's run a slower pace try and keep on that lead lap and then let him loose at the end field coming back around they'll form up we expect to get a green flag shortly so we'll take a break on the other side we hope to have something very special for you stand by for more on the 62nd mobile one 12 hours of sebring

Channel: IMSA Official

Views: 867,308

Keywords:

Id: acyRyeb7sTI

Length: 234min 16sec (14056 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 18 2014