It was a close fight throughout, but in the end Penske Porsche had the legs to take their 19th Sebring win. ¹

Battle shows the 1st, 2nd, 4th cars at the flag. The Cadillac lost out because it couldn’t keep the stint length long enough, but felt like the closer challenger so more comparisons will include the cars #7, #6, and #31.

At the end the #7 Penske Porsche had enough pace to pull out a 15 second lead over the Cadillac (and 8 seconds over the 3rd place #93 Acrua).

Driver Comparison

Vesti put in some impressive laps and looking at the Top 20 of each driver he has a healthy couple of 10ths. A look at the spread shows that those entrusted with the bulk of the laps, and were also the drivers in at the end, were Nasr, Jaminet, and Bamber. Jaminet tops the charts in most laps, 163, of any GTP driver.

Looking at the entire field shows Vesti had this Top 20 advantage over all, but it was Nasr that was the king over bigger sample. Some of this is because the driver was given more opportunity, but there is also a reason why they are given more laps!

Frijns is high on this list, and the BMW always looked like it might have the pace to challenge, but never looked like it would! It wouldn’t have been surprising to see it in the mix at the end, but that never happened.

All these drivers are Platinum or Gold, so in this close grid it isn’t a surprise to see the entire field split by only 1s in fastest lap, 1.5s in Top 20, and 2.2s in Top 50. Great stuff!

It was a race run at a record pace in the post Audi era. How the race progressed verses the record is here: racestats.equipe43.com. It also includes the Hourly positions.

Car / Team Comparison

Team is highlighted because when we look at the short, medium and long sample averages we see a wide spread (actually very narrow, but everything is relative) across Porsche entrants.

It is wonderful to see. Overall, across all drivers, the #31 Cadillac extended it’s advantage to a bigger sample; all three of their drivers are in the Top 10.

It was #7 Porsche that could turn it on more easily and when it mattered. Their early race was compromised with the pit light debacle, but no matter. It just meant we had took a bit longer for it to come together in the race. They also had the fastest lap, suggesting that if they’d spent more time at the front from earlier on they might have swept the board. Whatever the gaps would have been tiny.

Aston Martin Debut

At times it felt impressive. Hanging around on the lead lap and about 1s off the pace. Ultimately the best thing that happened was it got lots of laps in – something it more often than not misses out on in practice and (joint) tests.

Grade: B-

Lamborghini

It led, briefly. More time, laps, and money to help this would do wonders.

An Aside: Practice Pace

An aside, it is interesting to see that fastest practice times are similar to the race times. With most cars a fraction slower in the race. GTDPRO being the closest to their practice times. This view considers each car individually, so there is a decent spread.

1. Porsche Penske Motorsport Storms To Sebring 1-2, Daily Sportscar, 3/15/2025 ↩︎

Dots or Lines. Which are best?