Round 2 of the 2023 SportsCar Championship led a grand total of 52 cars to come to Sebring International Raceway Saturday, after a two-month break since the season-opening 24 Hours of Daytona.
Stow Motorsports and the No. 24 BMW team with drivers Gavin Sanders and Caleb Benci entered the season with a strong second-place finish at Daytona and followed this up with an even better run to victory lane at Sebring.
Starting from seventh place on the grid, a full-course yellow and ensuing strategic pit stop within the first half hour of the race set the team back, but just an hour and a half later, Sanders put the No. 24 BMW in the lead for the first time.
The No. 7 BMW of Grizzly Motorsports, who won the VR7UAL Pole Award for the race by posting a lap of 1:43.164 (nearly two seconds faster than last year’s pole), followed only a few seconds behind.
But the team from Portland, Oregon saw its hopes to win the 12 Hours of Sebring smashed to pieces - literally - when crashing hard into the No. 221 Lamborghini of Olympus eSports on lap 130, just over four hours into the race.
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| The No. 51 World Of SimRacing Team earned its second consecutive podium finish in the 12 Hours of Sebring - © 2023 VSCAracing.com / Benjamin Fischer |
“We had a really great car. Dawson did an amazing job giving us a very fast car. We had a great battle going with the 24 and looked like it was going to last all race.”, said Joshua Wolf.
“Unfortunately we were caught up in a massive accident around the blind turn in an area where the Olympus Lamborghini was stopped in the middle of the race track and we had no time to react or go around. That really defeated us as this was the second race in a row that an incident not of our doing took us out of contention.”
At the halfway mark of the race, with the Stow Motorsports machine out front, it was now the No. 51 BMW of World Of SimRacing Team in second position, only two seconds behind, with last season’s Petit Le Mans winners and Endurance Cup champions No. 79 Champion Motorsports in third.
A total of five full-course yellows halted the race. After the quick initial caution period, the race saw a green flag period of over four hours, spreading out the competition in the LMDh class.
The final full-course yellow came out within the final hour of the race, setting up a 25-minute dash to the checkers after the final restart.
Gavin Sanders in the No. 24 BMW led the field to turn one on the restart, closely followed by Carlos Herandez in the No. 51 BMW and Alex Rourera in the No. 10 Race4Cat Motorsports car.
Approaching the checkered flag, Sanders was able to maintain a 3.2 second lead and bring home the first ever VSCA win for Stow Motorsports in what was only the second ever start in the series for the team out of Stow, Ohio.
“Obviously we’re massively excited, but honestly also a little bit relieved! We were pretty heartbroken with losing the win at Daytona, so to turn it around that quick to get the win at Sebring is incredible. It’s our first win ever, actually, which makes it extra special.”, said No. 24 BMW driver Caleb Benci while celebrating the win in the winner’s circle.
For World Of SimRacing Team and their No. 51 team, taking second place underlines a strong start to the season, as the team already took third place at Daytona.
The two teams now also lead the championship, with Daytona winners, the No. 3 BMW of Mayer Simspeed Performance involved in a crash with a GTD class car at Sebring and experiencing various other issues, resulting in only an eighth place finish, 29 laps down.
“Yeah, tough tough race for us. We were running in third position, but got clipped in the left rear going into turn 13 around the five-hour mark and hit the tire barrier. That really hurt us and we lost a bunch of laps unfortunately.”, said Jason Birnie.
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| The No. 88 BMW of DS Racing eSports Team arrived to the SportsCar Championship by way of a fifth-place finish, after suffering major disappointment and scoring no points at Daytona - © 2023 VSCAracing.com / Benjamin Fischer |
Race4Cat Motorsports and the No. 10 team also gathered their second consecutive top-five finish, taking third place on the podium.
After their disappointment at Daytona in January, when they failed to score any points and wound up 15th, the No. 99 JO Motorsports BMW finally arrived to the SportsCar Championship in style, taking fourth place with Sheamus Power, Jonathan Oshalim and Eric Sibla behind the wheel. The team out of Galt, California also led 40 laps in the race.
Rounding out the top-five in the 12 Hours of Sebring was the No. 88 BMW of DS Racing eSports Team from Portugal, with Francisco Pereira, Nelson Clemente and Ricardo Santos giving the team something to smile about, after suffering zero points and a disqualification at Daytona.
Taking sixth place was the No. 79 Champion Motorsports machine with Thomas Fisher, who recovered just in time for the race, from concussion-like symptoms he suffered in an accident before the race weekend and team-mates John-Taylor Tami and Cameron Barker.
In P7 followed the No. 3 car of Mayer Simspeed Performance with Pascal Theis, Jason Birnie and Niclas Pedersen. The 24 Hours of Daytona champions now dropped to third in the championship standings.
Finishing out the top-ten was the No. 45 car of MoneyHouse Racing with drivers Nolan Hodgson and Joseph Stafford and the No. 7 car of Grizzly Motorsports, who despite their crash, still came back to finish the race, albeit 44 laps down.
The final LMDh class car running at the finish was the No. 12 BMW of Delta Racing, who made its debut on the series grid at Sebring, but suffered a major crash shortly before the finish.
Stow, WOSR pull away in championship standings
With their two consecutive podium finishes Stow Motorsports and World Of SimRacing Team are pulling away in the championship after two races. The two teams are separated by only four points, but have a 82-point gap over previous championship leaders Mayer Simspeed Performance. Race4Cat Motorsports is already 120 points back and Grizzly Motorsports look at a 194-point deficit with Long Beach only two weeks away.
Endurance Cup points lead changes hands
With their 12 Hours of Sebring win, Stow Motorsports and the No. 24 BMW team also took the lead in the Endurance Cup, by three points over the No. 3 BMW of Mayer Simspeed Performance.
Sebring Runners-up No. 51 World Of SimRacing Team sit in third, ten points back.
VSCA awarded Endurance Cup points at Sebring at the 4-hour, 8-hour mark and at the finish of the race.
With only two Endurance Cup races remaining this year - at Watkins Glen in June and Road Atlanta in October - the Endurance Cup championship looks to take shape already.
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