We are consistently coming towards sunset. The #57 Mercedes goes on the rollback. Under yellow, yours truly is enjoying a baguette with butter as a mid-race snack. May I suggest that? I shall. Absolutely delicious. Madison Snow and Andy Lally are at the top of the shop. Pit stop time for GTP. Colin Braun replaces Helio Castroneves in the #60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura. Pipo Derani stays in the #31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac. Fuel only. Sunsert just over an hour from now. I wonder how the top drivers will be in the cars towards the end. None of the showers we thought would come have. It was coming off the Gulf of Mexico to the west coast of Floriida. There is some cloud cover and so the sunset won't be blazing in the driver's eyes. Paul Miller Racing and BMW have been chasing brake problems and are still in it.
Romain Grosjean getting into the Iron Lynx Lamborghini. They have had trouble over the bumps. Tommy Milner still at the wheel of the #3 Corvette C8.R and he has been dealing with understeer. Trouble for the left rear corner on the Corvette. Suspension damage? I wonder. Wright Motorsports need to fix the nose and suspension on the #16 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R. Corvette #3 is dealing with a broken shock, a broken shock mount. There is a long way to go. It will be a good battle between Cadillac, Porsche, and Acura in GTP and now the saving tires deal I think is going to be over and everybody can go for it and push, push, push to the end.
We are getting ready to restart. The wind is changing to directly out of the west and it will be on the nose, pining the nose down under braking and a tailwind into turn one pressing down on the rear. Pipo Derani leads the race overs Sebastien Bourdais. Taylor passes Felipe Nasr in the #7 Porsche 963. Ricky Taylor is really pushing hard. Bourdais half a second behind Derani. But Pipo Derani got the jump, definitely. Nasr knows Taylor is there. Braun passes for fourth place. Colin Braun moves through. Derani, Bourdais, Taylor, and Braun, and Bourdais makes a pass on Derani for the lead. Now, Ricky Taylor is pushing and maybe Derani is in a conserving mode on fuel.
Action Express may be crunching numbers for saving fuel. Let's see. Derani allows the other two by. Colin Braun runs off in the dirt in the Tower Turn. In Corvette land, Jordan Taylor takes the wheel of the #3 Corvette. The left rear damper is fixed now for Jordan Taylor. Daniel Serra being chased down by Jordan Taylor in GTD Pro. Ferrari 296 vs. Chevrolet Corvette C8.R. Serra sharing with Gabriel Casagrande and Davide Rigon. John Edwards next up in the #95 Turner Motorsports BMW M4 GT3 in GTD Pro.
Serra with a quick look on Edwards. No dice. Serra in fifth. Oh my! They are right on top of each other, side by side and some hip and shoulder there! They go around the wounded #66 Gradient Racing Acura that has had a fraught race today. Sebastien Bourdais leads the race overall. Female drivers are making their presence known in IMSA. Sebring Grand Marshal Lyn St. James, the race is sentimental to her and she has competed here, did so in 1978 in a Corvette, won in a Ford Mustang with Roush Racing in 1990, and ran this race eight times. It is great to see so many women competing in endurance sports car racing. Engineers and officials as well, are women.
Bourdais, Taylor, Derani, the top three. Just over three and a half hours to go. Always great to see Lyn St. James. Katherine Legge is doing everything possible. Lyn St. James and Calvin Fish drove with Robby Gordon and won GTO in the Roush Racing Mercury Cougar in the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1990. She was a rocket ship in IndyCar at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Rahel Frey in the Iron Dames Lamborghini Huracan GT3 currently. She drove a Porsche 911 RSR-19 in the World Endurance race yesterday.
In the overall, Ricky Taylor is chasing down Sebastien Bourdais. Again, three and a half hours remaining. So, we are getting down to business. Kenton Koch leads GT Daytona in the #32 Mercedes AMG GT3. Koch, Roman De Angelis, Bryan Sellers, and Ollie Milroy, the top four. Korthoff Motorsports has young Wyatt Michaels on the team, he is interning for the team. Put down the phone, have the conversation face to face. Your expectations have to start on the bottom floor. In testing, the teams in GTP are learning what falls off the cars. The physicality is unbelievable. Stevan McAleer was gritting his teeth so much holding on through the bumps, he broke a tooth.
The bumps are trying to take the wheel out of your hand and you are getting bashed around all over. Jan Heylen has now only recovered to 12th in GT Daytona in the #16 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R. Zacharie Robichon is the 2021 GT Daytona champion and he has also won the Rolex 24 in class. Kenton Koch remains in the GT Daytona class lead. No damage for the #16 Porsche and it is straight. Felipe Nasr is chasing Colin Braun in GTP. Nasr tries to get by Rahel Frey and there is some hip and shoulder. Coexist between the GT Daytona and GTP cars. You cannot expect a car to move or to disappear.
You have to be more circumspect and not slice and dice your way through. Sebastien Bourdais continues to lead the motor race over Ricky Taylor, Pipo Derani, and Colin Braun. The race is not over yet. The sun is setting and doing so soon. Scott McLaughlin is chasing Ed Jones in LMP2. Ed Jones penalized for a refueling time violation. McLaughlin has to give some distance if Jones is going to pit. Ed Jones is told to serve his penalty. Scott McLaughlin is unfamilia with Sunset Bend because that is not part of the layout here at Sebring for IndyCar testing on the short course. The black flag with the orange disk was displayed. That is the meatball flag, the mechanical flag. Ed Jones has lost radio communication with the team.
Ed Jones will come to the pit lane and he does head for the lane now. Scott McLaughlin second in LMP2. Kyle Kirkwood driving in the #14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3. He and his team believe they can push harder as it cools down. Jack Hawksworth will finish the race for Vasser Sullivan tonight. Kyle Kirkwood had a huge accident in the opening IndyCar race at St. Petersburg in Florida on the street course, and he was fine. Devlin DeFrancesco also flew into the air. He is running his first race at Sebring, racing with Eric Lux and Pietro Fittipaldi.
Routine service for this team for the American along with the Canadian and the Brazilian. The sports cars in LMP2 have taken a lot of hits as well. The safety in this era is so much better than it used to be. The cars are designed and tested in the virtual world for performance and for safety. Getting close to the end of another racing hour. Cadillac and Sebastien Bourdais continue to lead this race. The #01 car though is on fire and is in trouble. I wonder. What could have caught fire? Bourdais climbs out of the car under his own steam. A wiring loom or harness shorted out. The traction control was not working. Fuel was burning. Game over for the #01.
The #31 Whelen Cadillac is in the pit lane. Ricky Taylor now leads the race over Colin Braun, Felipe Nasr, Sheldon van der Linde. Alexander Sims, and Matthieu Jaminet. Electrical woes do not fix themselves. The green light is still on, on the #01. If the light is anything but green, do not touch the car because the hybrid is live. Ricky Taylor is in the pit lane for service from the lead. Pit penalties cannot be a risk. Louis Deletraz is taking over. Fuel, energy replenishment, and new tires. Everyone continues to back time the race for strategy. Deletraz back into the race. We will have a sprint race t0 go in 20 minutes.
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