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IMSA 12 Hours of Sebring: Wild Porsche departure, Cadillac pole

Lesley Summerville

While “Mr. Sebring” Pipo Derani takes pole position for the 2024 12 Hours of Sebring, Porsche Penske Motorsport has a lot of rebuilding work ahead of it

Wild off by Mathieu Jaminet in qualifying for the 12 Hours of Sebring: The Porsche works driver lost control of his factory-entered Penske-963 at the exit of Turn 1 and smashed heavily into the wall

Jaminet was on a push lap when he slid too far to the outside in Turn 1 and hit the curb over one of Sebring International Raceway’s dreaded bumps. He ended up with two tires in the dirt and was unable to catch the Porsche, which then smashed heavily into a wall with the left front corner.

The front end of the 6 Penske Porsche (Tandy/Jaminet/Makowiecki) was damaged.

“I’m fine so far, but I’m sorry about the accident for the Porsche Penske Motorsport team and all my colleagues at Porsche in Weissach,” says Jaminet. “Unfortunately, the guys now have some work to do with our car. It’s a shame, because the Porsche was running really well on my first lap. A grid position in the top three would have been within reach.”

“We are now looking ahead to the race. If our car is competitive again there, we have twelve hours to catch up again.” Porsche still wants to find out the exact reason. “We now have to repair the number 6 and analyze what exactly happened,” says Jonathan “JD” Diuguid, Senior Director Porsche Penske Motorsport

Derani scores 25th Cadillac pole

Of course, qualifying had to be interrupted due to the red flag accident. When it restarted, most of the GTPs only had one flying lap left. On this lap, “Mister Sebring” struck again, four-time race winner Luis Felipe “Pipo” Derani.

The Brazilian in the Action Express Cadillac 63 Iron Lynx Lamborghini (Cairoli/Caldarelli/Grosjean; 8th) was unable to put in a useful lap after the restart of the session, but at least left the second BMW behind, which suffered the same fate. In the three free practice sessions, the Lamborghini SC63 finished tenth, ninth and eighth on its IMSA debut, always more than a second behind the best time.

With the exception of the aforementioned fastest time in the second practice session by the yellow JDC Miller Porsche, the free practice sessions also went to Cadillac, but in this case to the Ganassi car.

There was also some trouble in the practice sessions: Colin Braun put the APR Oreca 04 (Kurtz/Braun/Sowery) into the wall at Sunset Bend in night practice. However, the LMP2 Oreca was back on track in qualifying and secured ninth place on the grid. There were some technical problems in the GT field in the first practice session, but these had no further impact

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