Porsche Penske brushed adversity aside to achieve fairytale finish at Sebring

Porsche Penske Motorsport’s Floridan fairytale continued tonight at Sebring with a 1-2 finish and a historic victory for its No. 7 963 of Felipe Nasr, Julien Andlauer and Laurin Heinrich. Was it ever in doubt? For most of the race, it didn’t feel like it, as after the opening hour, it quickly turned into another dominant run from Roger Penske’s outfit.

The two factory 963s ran in formation hour after hour, challenged only briefly during pit cycles and in the final 90 minutes at restarts. It wasn't a totally clean race for either car – the No. 7 served a drive-through for causing contact early on, and the No. 6 required a nose change with eight hours to go after tagging the back of the No. 31 Cadillac under a safety car – but PPM, as ever, brushed the adversity aside.

• RACE REPORT: Porsche Penske completes another Florida sweep with Sebring win

The No. 6 trio were left frustrated at the checkered flag despite their second-place finish. Michael Levitt/IMSA

In the end, it was a race that, in many ways, mirrored January’s Rolex 24 Hour At Daytona, with Penske winning after fending off late challenges from Action Express’ No. 31 Cadillac and BMW Team WRT’s No. 24 M Hybrid V8. The only major differences, on this occasion, were the strength of the sister No. 6 963 – which was fast throughout and led in the closing stages en route to second – and the contending BMW fading late.

Regardless, it all made for another historic moment for the Penske team and the brand it represents. Porsche, which also won GTD Pro with Manthey (and claimed another 1-2), now has a record 20th overall win at Sebring, captured amid the 75th anniversary celebrations, and Team Penske, in its 60th anniversary year, boasts five class wins (three overall) at the event.

As a unit, PPM has also engineered two consecutive sweeps of the "36 Hours of Florida," opening up healthy leads in the championship standings in the process. The No. 7 crew have two huge wins to kick off their title challenge, and will hope they don’t look back from here.

“Sebring is usually an intense race, and that’s exactly what we found out today from beginning to end,” said Nasr, who ultimately sealed the win with an aggressive late lunge up the inside of Kevin Estre at Sunset Bend with just over an hour on the clock. He now has three Sebring victories to his name and two back-to-back.

“I signed up for this program because I believe I can win for this program. My teammates did everything perfectly today. We did everything we needed to do to be in front at all times. These guys deserve all the credit. I can only say it’s another dream start.”

His younger teammates were, understandably, jubilant too in the aftermath, as their resumes are rapidly populating with GTP wins. The call to rotate the cast of characters around Nasr, yet again, looks like a masterstroke from the PPM management team.

“It’s incredible, first to be called up to this role, but the team has prepared me extremely well. It will take some days to realise what happened today, like after Daytona,” Heinrich added. “It’s a huge success for me.”

In fact, it’s been such a successful start to the year for Heinrich and his co-drivers that an interesting sidebar to follow going forward will be the dynamic between the two Penske crews. The No. 6 trio were left frustrated, with Estre accusing Nasr of going rogue in the post-race press conference.“We were on a similar strategy, we stopped at pretty much the same time, just at some point different tires, and we were back and forth,” he said. “At some point, though, there was a call from the pit stand which was not respected. I was driving the car [and leading], expecting what we were saying to optimize the strategy to get to the end because we needed to save some fuel.

“But somehow Felipe did something else. That’s when the pass happened, and towards the end, he had pace in clear air, and he was fast enough that I couldn’t really attack. I would have done it, but there were no more opportunities.”

Nasr stood his ground, saying in response: “I can’t go into details. I’m here to race, and that’s what I did. There’s always going to be three sides to the story. What matters is we came out winning for the team and the brand.”

Where does all this leave the rest of the GTP field, though? That’s the burning question as the attention of the paddock turns to Long Beach next month. The following numbers will make for tough reading among rival teams: PPM led 273 of 343 laps at Sebring and has led 794 of the 1,048 racing laps so far this season.

The BOP tweaks for Round 2 led many to predict that the formbook would shift, but yet again, PPM held an edge and was ruthless in its execution. All of a sudden, 2026 is looking like a repeat of 2025, and another flex from the Penske organization.

There were at least encouraging signs out of the Cadillac camp, though. It wasn’t a win, but again, the V8-powered LMDh was close on pace, and crucially, the two outfits representing General Motors in the top class were in the fight this time.

Wayne Taylor Racing, under pressure this year after a lackluster 2025 campaign, was "best of the rest," claiming a hard-earned podium with the No. 10 car. (UPDATE: The car was disqualified post-race.) Action Express also finished within shouting distance of the 963s, too, in fourth. Like Daytona, the drivers of the Whelen Cadillac leave Sebring downbeat, but with plenty of valuable points banked.

“Bit of a tough one for us,” pole winner Aitken reflected. “The team put us in a position to be up front, and we had good work in the pit lane. I think we had a good strategy today, but at the end of the day, we just didn’t have the pace for whatever reason.

“We saw hints of it at the start of the race, dropping a couple of places off the bat, but it didn’t seem too bad. We weren’t able to make steps forward when the rest of the field increased the pace. We’ve got some work to do, but solid points and it could have been a lot worse.”

What will the rest of the season bring? We’ll have to wait and see. Right now, though, it’s time for all at Porsche Penske Motorsport to reach for the champagne once again, and the other teams in GTP to begin another post-mortem.