Grassroots Motorsports

JUN 2015

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Grassroots Motorsports 177 EVENTS: 12 HOURS OF SEBRING 2 3 1. offcials removed Alex Job Racing from contention, costing them a chance of winning their 10th epara- ed that elusive 10th win. 2 and 3. Sebring is more than the 12-hour feature contest, as the weekend hosted the s frst two rounds for the SCCA Pr ender Mazda MX-5 Cup Pr Tires. Local driver John Dean (16) and rookie Drake Kemper (99) split the double-header. 4. Porsche won the GTD class, but Chevrolet drivers dominated the rest of the 12-hour race. The No. 3 Corvette fnished frst in GTLM. 8 4 on the track. His front brake pads were down to 3mm, and the brake fuid was almost dry. At that point, Job said, "We fgured that was it. We turned our focus to staying in second, because an Aston Martin was coming fast." Then, proof perhaps that karma is a two-sided coin, the Rolex 24 At Daytona-winning Viper team saw its car roll silently down pit road, the engine off. The No. 33 Dodge Viper of Riley Motorsports– a car that burned to the ground in last year's Sebring race and was later restored–led until the last 5 minutes, when a pinhole leak in the radiator meant the team either had to come in for fuid and lose, or stay out and hope the big V10 would last. It didn't. Super Mario, as Job calls him, brought the Porsche home frst in class, giving Alex Job Racing its 10th Sebring victory. "It was a great win for Alex and his team," said Scott Atherton, IMSA boss. "This truly puts him in a category of his own." Of course, that isn't all that hap- pened at Sebring. On an unseason- ably hot, humid day and night–even for Florida–the No. 5 Action Express Racing Mustang Sampling Corvette DP team remained cool and collected, taking the overall win and the Proto- type class victory. It was the frst overall Sebring victory for a Chevrolet since a Chevy-powered Chaparral won in 1965. Coincidentally, that winning Chaparral was the featured car at this year's race, and it was on hand. It was an all-Corvette podium, as second overall and second in the Prototype class was the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Konica Minolta Corvette DP, followed by the No. 90 VisitFlorida.com Corvette DP. Finishing first in the Prototype Challenge (PC) class and sixth overall was the No. 52 car of PR1/ Mathiasen Motorsports driven by Mike Guasch, Andrew Palmer and Tom Kimber-Smith, which also won the class at Daytona. In second was the CORE Autosport team, followed by the Performance Tech Motorsports team. The PC cars are essentially all the same, using ORECA chassis and Chevrolet V8 engines. The winning team had a lot of confdence before the event: "We came in thinking, 'This is our race to lose,'" Guasch said. In GTLM, bragging rights went to the No. 3 Chevrolet Corvette C7.R of Jan Magnussen, Antonio Garcia and Ryan Briscoe, the team that also started the season with a win at Daytona. A close second was the No. 62 Risi Ferrari 458 Italia, and third was the plucky No. 17 Team Falken Tire Porsche. The two factory Porsche 911 RSRs, Nos. 911 and 912, were the strongest cars in the GTLM feld, but with less than an hour to go,

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