ESM Nissan wins Sebring; class wins for Porsche, Paul Miller Racing
Saturday, 17 March 2018
J.J. O'Malley / Images by Marshall Pruett & Levitt, Dole/LAT
Pipo Derani, Nicolas Lapierre and Johannes van Overbeek drove a flawless race to win Saturday’s 66th Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in the No. 22 Tequila Patron ESM Nissan Onroak DPi.
"[It was] maximum [fuel conservation]” said Derani, who made what proved to be the winning pass with one hour, 35 minutes remaining.
"The pit was every lap telling me the gap and I was trying to save fuel as maximum as I could. "In the end it was really, really tight. We got the low fuel on the last lap, but we finally made it, I can't believe it.
"Thanks to this amazing team, we've been working so hard. This one is for my dad – he's fighting really hard for health and I love him so much, this is for you, man."
The winners completed 344 laps – 1,286.56 miles – on the 3.74-mile circuit. Derani nursed his fuel to the finish to give Nissan its fifth triumph in the Sebring classic, and first since Clayton Cunningham Racing took the overall victory in the 1994 event in a Nissan 300ZX.
"It's a real testament to ESM,” van Overbeek said. "Today saw some of the best teams and some of the best manufacturers have a lot of trouble.
"Of course my co-drivers did an awesome job. I don’t think there’s a scratch on the car."
It was the second Sebring triumph in three years for ESM. Derani and van Overbeek joined co-owners Scott Sharp and Ed Brown in the winning Tequila Patron Honda Ligier JS P2 in the 2016 event.
Derani held off a determined run by the No. 55 Team Joest Mazda RT-24-P, which showed both serious pace and superior fuel mileage throughout the event. Harry Ticknell was running a competitive second when the top five Prototypes pitted with 41 minutes remaining. Tincknell had trouble restarting the car, resulting in a lost lap and a sixth-place finish for the car shared by Jonathan Bomarito and Spencer Pigot.
With the No. 55 falling out of contention, Renger van der Zande finished second in the No. 10 Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi-V.R co-driven by Jordan Taylor and Ryan Hunter-Reay, 12.427 seconds back, with the team battling overheating throughout the second half of the event.
"We were testing in the heat and the race finishes in the night when it is cool, so you are in survival mode during the heat of the day," note van der Zande. "The car really comes alive at night. The engineers are superstars and they know what they are doing. They give me everything I need to perform.
"It was an eventful day. I got tapped on the rear and they made a quick fix. I have a lot of faith in my new team. They don't give up and they stay calm when things happen. We were the best of the rest today."
Felipe Nasr, Eric Curran and Mike Conway placed third in the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac DPi-V.R, running in contention throughout the race. Also finishing on the lead lap were the No. 54 CORE autosport ORECA 07 Gibson of Colin Braun, Jon Bennett and Romain Dumas, and the No. 32 United Autosports Ligier JSP217 Gibson of Phil Hanson, Paul DiResta and Alex Brundle, who was filling in for an ill Bruno Senna.
Both of the Mazda Team Joest RT-24-Ps led the event. The No. 77 of Tristan Nunez, Oliver Jarvis and Rene Rast lost 10 laps due to a brake issue but rallied to place eighth, turning the fastest lap of the race in the process.
The winners managed to avoid the attrition that took struck many of the contenders in Round 2 of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. The sister No. 2 ESM Nissan was hit on the very first turn of the race by the pole-winning No. 90 Spirit of Daytona Cadillac DPi – suffering from enough damage that it failed to complete a lap. The No. 90, driven by Tristan Vautier, also had a massive shunt during the final two hours.
"It started from the beginning of the out lap – I flat-spotted a tire because I was too impatient trying to change a switch on the car," related Vautier. "When I got to Turn 17, I locked up a bit. I didn't feel as though I was as wide as I was, but when I realized my left-side tires were in the marbles, I tried to get on the gas. But once you're in the marbles, it's like ice, and the wall came to me pretty quickly."
The Daytona-winning No. 5 Mustang Sampling Cadillac DPi-V.R of Joao Barbosa, Filipe Albuquerque and Christian Fittipaldi lost 20 laps to replace broken steering components following an incident near the pit entrance. That resulted in a 10th-place finish, while both Team Penske Acura ARX-05s were struck with mechanical DNFs while running in contention.