No. 5 Corvette DP Leads First Segment Of Patrón Endurance Cup Round 2

Subtitle:Race Under Red Flag Due To Weather Conditions

Looking to capture a third consecutive Tequila Patrón North American Endurance Cup, the No. 5 Mustang Sampling Corvette DP team from Action Express Racing earned the five-point bonus for leading at the four-hour mark of Saturday’s 64th Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida.

Christian Fittipaldi was scored as the leader at the four-hour mark, but the race was under a red flag due to lightning and track conditions. The red flag came out at the two-hour, 50-minute mark.

Round 2 of the 2016 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship presented the 49-car field with a variety of weather conditions. The event started at 10:40 a.m. ET in warm and sunny conditions, but it began raining for the first time an hour and 35 minutes into the race.

Fittipaldi was leading at the red flag in the No. 5 Mustang Sampling Corvette DP co-driven by João Barbosa and Filipe Albuquerque. Their Action Express Racing teammates – the No. 31 Whelen Engineering/Team Fox Corvette DP piloted by Dane Cameron at the red – was running second to earn a four-point bonus, while the No. 10 Konica Minolta Corvette DP of Jordan Taylor was third to score three points. All other competitors were awarded two points.

The Patrón Endurance Cup began with the Rolex 24 At Daytona in January, and continues with the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen in July and the Petit Le Mans powered by Mazda at Road Atlanta in October.

Nick Tandy was leading at the four-hour mark in GT Le Mans (GTLM), co-driving the No. 911 Porsche North America Porsche 911 RSR with Patrick Pilet and Kevin Estre. Rolex 24 Prototype Challenge (PC) class winner Stephen Simpson joined co-drivers Misha Goikhberg, Chris Miller and Kenton Koch in leading PC in the No. 85 JDC-Miller Motorsports ORECA FLM09. In GT Daytona (GTD), defending Sebring winner Mario Farnbacher took the five-point bonus for himself and Alex Job Racing co-drivers Ian James and Alex Riberas in the No. 23 Team Seattle/Heart of Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R.

The next point-scoring segment ends at the eight-hour mark, with points also awarded at the finish.

NOTEBOOK

·      TOTAL Pole Award winner Olivier Pla led twice for 34 of the opening 38 laps in the No. 60 Tire Kingdom Honda Ligier JS P2. Fittipaldi then led the next 28 laps prior to the red flag.

·      Christian Fittipaldi, No. 5 Mustang Sampling Corvette DP: “It was pretty decent in the rain. It was just like keeping up with the Joneses, clicking off those laps, still driving at about 95 percent. It was still a pretty decent pace. But there’s still a lot of racing to go. We’re definitely at the point where we can’t make any mistakes.”

·      DragonSpeed debuted the Nissan/ORECA 05 Prototype in WeatherTech Championship competition in fine form, with Nicolas Minassian leading a lap in the No. 81 Prototype co-driven by Nicolas Lapierre and Henrik Hedman. Also leading overall in the overall segment was Pipo Derani, who paced three laps in the No. 2 Tequila Patrón ESM Honda Ligier JS P2 co-driven by fellow Rolex 24 At Daytona winners Scott Sharp, Ed Brown and Johannes van Overbeek.

·      Jeroen Bleekemolen passed GTD class TOTAL Pole Award winner Jeff Segal to take the lead at the 48-minute mark in the No. 33 ViperExchange.com Dodge Viper GT3-R co-driven by Ben Keating and Marc Miller. Only three laps later, the car suddenly slowed, and Bleekemolen limped back to the pits with a broken right-rear axle. The Riley Motorsports team made repairs, losing five laps in the process.

·      It was a rough opening segment for four of the six Lamborghini Huracán GT3s. Konrad Motorsports saw its No. 21 catch fire during morning warmups, missing the start of the race, while its No. 28 started the event from pit road to draw a penalty. Dream Racing, making its IMSA debut, went behind the wall and is 37 laps down. Townsend Bell looped the No. 11 Change Racing Lamborghini twice on slick tires at the beginning of a downpour and hit the barrier in Turn 17. However, Change Racing was running third at the four-hour mark, with Corey Lewis in the No. 16 Pertamina/Monster Energy entry, two positions ahead of Madison Snow in the No. 48 Paul Miller Racing Castrol/Universal Industrial Sales Lamborghini.

·      This was the seventh time the Sebring event has been impacted by rain in its 64-year history, and first time since 1997.

·      It was the fifth time the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring has been red flagged. The race was stopped in 1993 and 1995 for rain, and 1997 and 2014 for accidents.

·      Broadcast coverage of the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring continues on FS2 through 7 p.m. The race will be streamed on IMSA.tv from 7-10 p.m., and then returns to FS2 from 10-11 on FS2. The entire race is being streamed live on the FOX Sports GO mobile app.