Peugeot clinches Sebring 1-2

Team Peugeot Total made the trip to Florida with a view to preparing for June’s Le Mans 24 Hours, and it will return home on Wednesday with plenty of valuable data in its computers, plus a landmark one-two finish in the race itself. In addition to securing its third consecutive one-two, the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP is the first French car to win at Sebring since the race was first held in 1952.

The N°07 car (Wurz/Gené/Davidson) finishes ahead of the N°08 sister car (Bourdais/Minassian/Lamy)

After starting the 12 Hours of Sebring from the front row of the grid, the two Peugeot 908 HDi FAPs were never separated by more than a handful of seconds, despite the searing heat, omnipresent traffic, safety car appearances and race incidents. Nor were they slowed by the slightest mechanical problem, and the team will be looking to confirm the cars’ reliability when it stays on for two more days of testing here in Florida on Monday and Tuesday. At the end of the day, all that split the two machines at the finish were a puncture, two spins and their respective pit stops. After 12 hours’ racing, it was finally the N°07 Peugeot of Marc Gené, Alexander Wurz and Anthony Davidson which took the chequered flag in first place after 367 laps, closely tailed by the sister car in the hands of Sébastien Bourdais, Nicolas Minassian and Pedro Lamy. After the 2009 Le Mans and last autumn’s Petit Le Mans, Sebring is Peugeot’s third straight one-two finish. It is also the first win for a French car in the American classic and puts an end to 11 years of German domination of the race!

An action-packed race

Alexander Wurz started in the N°07 car running on soft tyres and succeeded in shrugging off the pressure of team-mate Sébastien Bourdais in the sister car which was on medium-compound rubber. Pirro managed to split the two Peugeots for a while in his Lola, and the enabled the N°08 to gain an advantage as it took control and covered two stints on the same set of tyres. The lead enjoyed by Bourdais/Lamy/Minassian was further extended when Anthony Davidson span shortly after the four-hour mark. The ground lost was recovered by the halfway point, however, with the pit-stop timing causing the two French machines to trade positions again. A further change in the order came when the N°08 car emerged in front after a refuelling stop. The drama continued on Lap 262 when the leading car fell back a place after picking up a rear-left puncture. This put the N°07 Peugeot back in front, and that’s how the race ended, with the result pretty much sealed when Sébastien Bourdais span making a final bid in the last half-hour. Great Britain’s Davidson was the first driver to take the flag, sharing victory with his 2009 Le Mans-winning team-mates Alexander Wurz and Sebring rookie Marc Gené. The crew of the N°08 Peugeot 908 HDi FAP crossed the line in its immediate wake to make it a one-two finish for the French make, while the day’s fastest race lap was the work of Sébastien Bourdais.

Monday and Tuesday will see a car continue the team’s endurance testing work at Sebring, with Marc Gené, Anthony Davidson and Simon Pagenaud all on duty.

Olivier QUESNEL: "Our mission here was to validate a certain number of developments and we achieved that goal to the letter. Despite the absence of our main rival, I believe we put on a great show and team orders were only issued after the final pit-stops, with half an hour remaining. It was quite tense, but also very instructive. Reliability promises to play a key role at Le Mans, and the two 908 HDi FAPs ran like clockwork here, and our refuelling work, race strategy and the work of the entire team were all very strong, too. We can be proud to have added a French victory to this race’s roll of honour, and the 908 has now succeeded in winning all the main endurance races. It’s a promising result, but we can’t afford to take our eye off the ball..."

Anthony DAVIDSON: "This is a fantastic result for me and for Team Peugeot Total. I thoroughly enjoyed driving the 908! It was nice that the race turned out to be so close, and it’s great to have marked my debut with the team with a win. I would like to thank everyone for their tremendous work."

Alexander WURZ: "Finishing first and second is a perfect result for Peugeot. The outcome was only really settled after the last round of pit-stops and we pushed hard throughout the race."

Marc GENE: "This was great practice ahead of Le Mans, both for the drivers and everyone in the team. It was good training for overtaking round what is a very demanding circuit…"

The race... behind

Adrian Fernandez, Harold Primat and Stefan Mücke placed third in the Lola-Aston Martin, making its first start in the 12 Hours. It will go up against Peugeot at Le Mans, as will Audi. Gene is convinced the trip to Sebring will be worth it come the 24 Hours.

“We really think and after driving, this is the best prep for Le Mans,” he said. “In those corners especially the last one, you find the right places to over take, in Turn 17 you can overtake in the outside but a few times I picked up a lot of rubber. It’s a tough track but perfect practice for overtaking. The bumps are more perfect for Le Mans than maybe Paul Ricard, where it is more smooth. There isn’t any other corner in the world like that.”

Greg Pickett, Klaus Graf and Sascha Maassen won in LMP2 for Muscle Milk Team CytoSport. Their Porsche RS Spyder won by three laps over the Patrón Highcroft Racing HPD ARX-01c, which led until an electrical problem inside four hours to go set them back.

It marked Porsche’s second Sebring class victory for the RS Spyder, which made its first 12 Hours start in 2006. Penske Racing won overall in 2008, and Saturday’s win by CytoSport was the first time an independent team won in North America with the prototype.

“I really like this magnificent machine,” said an enthused Pickett. “You expect that from Porsche. We were glad to run with the Michelin tires this year, and I’m tickled we could double and triple stint them. I’m 63 now; to do this at this level of competition… my teammates did the heavy lifting. They let me get in a little bit. It was a wonderful adventure. We do this for fun, the better we do it, the more fun we have.”

The Patrón Highcroft car of David Brabham, Simon Pagenaud and Marino Franchitti had dominated the opening two-thirds of the race and led by five laps when the electrical malady reared its head. Graf kept ticking off lap after lap while the helpless Highcroft car sat still in pitlane.

“I have to say that I have tried to win here with the Spyder quite a few times, but this time I was successful,” said Maassen, who won in class at Sebring for the fifth time but first in a prototype. “We had luck, that’s for sure. We had our plan, we did exactly what we wanted to do. We drive safe and steady and stay out of the pits. That is the key to an endurance race.”

“It was quiet on the radio. Bringing it home was special for me,” Graf said. “You had to keep your concentration up to not make a mistake especially in the dark.
I can’t thank Greg enough to put this team together. He has a great appreciation for this sport, and everyone one in this room knows what it takes to put something like this together.”

Chris Dyson, Guy Smith and Andy Meyrick placed third in class with their isobutanol-powered Lola B09/86-Mazda. The car experienced electrical sensor issues early.

Risi Competizione won in GT2, the team’s sixth straight victory in a major endurance race. Jaime Melo, Gimmi Bruni and Pierre Kaffer took a one-lap victory in their Ferrari F430 GT over BMW Rahal Letterman Racing’s two BMW M3s, which swapped positions on the last turn of the last lap.

Risi now has won consecutively at Sebring, Le Mans and Petit Le Mans, etching even more history in the F430 GT.

“I think it’s everything together,” said Melo, who won for the third time at the 12 Hours. “The team is a very, very good team. With three drivers who are very consistent like Gimmi and Pierre… that’s the way to win this kind of race. The Michelin tires are very consistent and work well for us. The preparation of the car is the key to this race. I know the F430 from when we started developing the car. We want to put it in the history books, so we want to win this year so bad. We can send it off in a good way.”

The fight in GT2 was a fantastic scrap before attrition started to take its toll. Team Falken Tire led early on in its Porsche and had two wheels come off on consecutive laps. The second hit the then-second-place Flying Lizard Motorsports Porsche, which lost three laps in the pits. Corvette Racing’s two Corvettes collided in pit lane when one Corvette C6.R tried to leave its pit box and another came in simultaneously.

That left the Risi Ferrari and two BMWs to duke it out. All totaled, the winning Risi Ferrari led for approximately 10 hours. It led from nearly the 90-minute mark until a caution period just past the halfway point when the Lizard Porsche beat the Ferrari out of the pits. It took Bruni all of a half lap to retake the lead.

“We showed the three of us, Risi, and Michelin worked really well together,” said Bruni, who won for the first time in the Series. “This really helps. (with momentum). We’ve known each other a while. Jaime has been with this car for a good long time.”

In the new LMPC class, Level 5 Motorsports’ trio of Scott Tucker, Christophe Bouchut and Mark Wilkins won handily with their ORECA FLM09 prototype. They won by 16 laps over the Green Earth Team Gunnar trio of Gunnar Jeannette, Christian Zugel and Elton Julian.

“I took the start and the car was working really well, even if we had a small problem in warmup, a problem with the engine,” Bouchut said. “We thought maybe it wouldn’t work like we expected, but not at all. The mechanics really did a great job putting it together.”

This was the first race for the ORECA-built machines, which are helping develop future prototype drivers and teams for the American Le Mans Series competition. Tucker and Wilkins made their first start in the Series, and Bouchut made just his 13th start.

“We haven’t had a lot of time in the car but it’s a really nice package,” Tucker said. “It’s sophisticated but simple. It was no problem running a triple stint in it. I really like the car.”

Genoa Racing’s Andy Wallace, JR Hildebrand and Tom Sutherland placed second in class.

Alex Job Racing made a triumphant return to the Series with a sweep of the GT Challenge podium. Butch Leitzinger, Juan Gonzalez and Leh Keen won by three laps over the sister car of Bill Sweedler, Romeo Kapudija and Jan-Dirk Lueders.

Keen put the car on the class pole position Friday, and the No. 81 entry ran a clean race on a day when that wasn’t too easy. The only blemish was a speeding violation in pit lane but the winning AJR car held up well over the course of the 12 hours.

“By the time I got in it, these two had done such a good job,” said Leitzinger, who won in GTU at Sebring in 1990. “The prep was really showing through; people were having problems and we weren’t. It was about as easy as a Sebring gets. We didn’t have to pull out these huge laps to catch anyone.”

AJR, based in nearly Tavares, Fla., won at Sebring for the sixth time. All of Alex Job’s victories in the famed race have come with Porsches. Ricardo Gonzalez, Luis Diaz and Patrick Kelly drove the third AJR car.

“The last 12 hours have been really intense,” Keen said. “I have to give it to Alex. He really knows what he’s doing. He put together some great GTC cars for us. There was not a mark on the car. All the guys did an awesome job.”

(c) Peugeot and ALMS PR