Pretty much as expected, the no. 2 Audi R8 with Johnny Herbert, Christian Pascatori, and Rinaldo Capallo takes the overall win at the 50th running of 12 hours of Sebring. The car lead the final 6 hours in a flawless run to the victory. The Privateer Champion R8 also ran a straight forward race, but just doesn't have the pace of the factory car and have to settle for 2nd, 1 lap down. The third belongs to a the 2nd place car from the Daytona 24 Hours. Jim Matthew Racing's R&S MK IIIC/Elan, as a R&S Factory team whom are not expected to be very competitive in the ALMS trim, it shows great reliability and decent speed. 4th belongs to 8 years old R&S Mk III of Dyson Racing. 5th is the no. 1 Joest Audi who experienced a steering problem and a long stop to replace the steering rack and fought back to where it finished. The #51 Panoz had a brake failure in the final hour and had to sit til the end only to take the last lap to be qualified as a finisher. The car was 3rd when that happened and finished in the top 10 in the end.

The LMP 675 class showed it's strongest showing since it's creation with the MG Lola of KnightHawk racing qualified 3rd. But ran into suspension trouble early. But the flame carries on with the Banana Joe's MG Lola which ran a trouble free race with a car they got just 6 days ago. They finished 6th overall and 1st in 675 class by a margin of 40 laps.

The Corvette C5-R finally won the Sebring in GTS in dominant fashion driven by Ron Fellows, Johnny O'Connell, and Oliver Gavin. They beat out the heavily penalized Saleen S7R of Konrad(for homologation problem, the car was added 70kg of weight and a 50% restrictor) and a ex-Oreca Viper of the Car Sport Holland. The second C5-R had a stuck throttle and hit the wall, and had a lengthy repair which lost out it's chance for a Podium.

The Alex Job Racing's Porsche 911 GT3 RS took the GT3 class by leading the whole of the way. The Ferrari 360s and the Spyker was never a factor....

How come the Ferraris aren't competitive? Not enough funding?

Why is it that in these kinds of races, the margin of victory is always between 3/4 and several laps? Isn't that kind of boring for the fans?

Consider this, 12 hours on the track, 4 classes of cars, 60 cars running on a 3.7 mile road course......passing is everywhere(for position or picking off traffic), believe me, this is NOT boring......this is the only type of racing with more contact between cars than NASCAR......

And yeah, Ferrari simply can't cut it against the factory cars. The Prodrive 550 is about as fast as any GTS car(fastest car in class at one point), but just a) not reliable enough and b) not consistant enough. Both of which comes only from a better prepared team(which has enough dough to be better prepared...). And the 360s, they don't have enough development on them against the faster ALMS spec GT3s......they are competitive in FIA N GT class, but ACO rule is a different ball game with direct factory backed Porsche.....

I'm just glad most of them fniished the race. I think that's all we can ask from them for now. Like RM said, you can't really compete off the bat against factory supported entry's.

Originally posted by John
I'm just glad most of them fniished the race. I think that's all we can ask from them for now. Like RM said, you can't really compete off the bat against factory supported entry's.

That's what I suggested, lack of funding is almost always due to non-factory involvement.

Audi sank a ton of $$ into making the R8 and is spending alot more $$ on racing it. With an almost unlimmited budget for racing, its easy to win. Ferraris are old too, the 333sp's from 98 are showing their age. But its amazing how much audi spends on their racig program, from the R8 in ALMS, to the R8 in LeMans, to the S4 Competitions in Speedvision world challenge to the S4's in sports car racing....

Correct me if I'm wrong but the Bentley LMP also known as R8C. This car is also made and developed by Audi. How come they scrapped the idea when the covered car was slower and now the Bentley team runs the same car at a competible speed?
Who owns who anyway? Audi (VW group) DOES own Bentley right?

R8C was built by the same firm(which I forgot the name...:D) that builds and run the current Bentley. They have relation, but the 2 are completely different car. R8C Project in 99 was very much done in a rush. They didn't get more than 10 hours of actual running time before that year's test day. And simply was not properly tested and developed. After 1999, that team went back to work and designed an intermediate chassis based on the R8C to develop some of the components for their next LM-GTP car. Which in the end turns out to be a Bentley. The reason why the R8C wasn't competitive and the Bentley was, simply due to the fact that the Bentley was more properly developed and tested.

thanks, I think I've read that somewhere.