Porsche cleans house in Sebring, but Ferrari earns it in GTD

The 2026 12 Hours of Sebring gave us just what we needed on so many levels. It cleansed the palette of that niggling feeling about losing seven hours of the Daytona 24 to fog. It provoked some crazy driving — some of it heroic, some of it stupid — all of which made for great entertainment. And, my favorite part: Just as people who prefer European-style endurance racing rules were becoming fed up with all the yeehaw wave-arounds and restarts and starting to use the dreaded A-word (“artificial”), we got exactly the kind of late-race yellow they were sure was coming, and everybody kept their heads. The restart happened, everybody raced, and we got a completely satisfying finish. Well, unless you hate Penske or Porsche or both.

Yes, it was another Porsche Penske Motorsport 1–2 with the 7 ahead of the 6, and the GTP pecking order was more or less unchanged from Daytona, but it was a bit more of a dogfight this time. Both cars had their incidents — including the 6 breaking its nose on the back of the 31 Cadillac under safety car, which would have amused me if I didn’t always want the 31 to win — but they recovered through typically flawless Penske execution. Intriguingly, what decided the finishing order was actually a rather brazen on-track pass.

With just over an hour remaining in the race, the team called in a position swap because the 6 car, with Kevin Estre driving, was on fresher tires. Seven minutes later, Felipe Nasr in the 7 pounced on him in the G-loaded last corner and took the lead back, which Estre said happened because he was dutifully following team orders and Nasr was not. That is amusing to me. Good on you, Felipe. Way to get Porsche its 20th overall win at Sebring.

Porsche’s only serious challenge in GTP was again from Cadillac, with the 31 starting on pole and having the pace (and the Jack Aitken) to stay a threat, but in a heartening development for Caddy fans, the Wayne Taylor cars were finally in contention this time as well. There was a Cadillac three-ship running together late in the race that looked pretty dangerous. In fact, the 10 finished on the podium, but it was taken away in post-race tech for excess camber, which gave P3 to the 31. It is great to see WTR up there, though. They hadn’t really been pulling their weight.

There are no Porsches in LMP2, of course, but the equivalents last weekend were the United Autosports cars, who also finished 1-2. They did get a race from Spike, who was back in purple, but they got caught out by the timing of a full-course yellow. Tower had a pretty good race, too — which isn’t the greatest of looks for Sébastien Bourdais, who recently quit the team — but they got outdone by Tower on a restart. There was also some spectacularly bad driving in LMP2, most of it well within LMP2 stupidity norms, but Parker Thompson, driving the #52 in his second-ever LMP2 race, brutally murdered the DragonSpeed Corvette for absolutely no reason.

In GTD Pro, it was more Porsche, but not at all in a boring way. The winner was the Manthey #911, a truly remarkable showing even for Manthey. To swoop down upon U.S. racing like they did and then win their first Sebring is an incredible display of execution, but to do it with Nick Tandy hounding you all day in the AO Racing #77 — the People’s Porsche in this country — is all the more unlikely. So that was the other class with a Porsche 1–2. The GTD Porsches were not as dominant — particularly the Manthey #912 — but the Wright Motorsports #120 did make the podium with two overtakes in the last two laps. All that plus a superb debut of the new Carrera Cup car? Pretty good weekend for Porsche.

As for the other debutante, the Lamborghini Temerario GT3, it didn’t instantly turn around Pfaff’s fortunes, but it did finish the race! I can’t wait to see how they go on a less turbulent track.

But. The legendary GT3 drive of the weekend was that of the #21 AF Corse Ferrari. That Tony Fire cannot be stopped. After taking their lumps in drive-through penalties for racing… you know, hard, Antonio Fuoco absolutely tore the field apart to win the #21’s second IMSA race of the last three. Lilou Wadoux drove in both of those races, of course, and she was unstoppable as well. I have a new favorite Ferrari 296.

Even so, there is another GTD car upon which I urge readers not to sleep. The #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage of Zacharie Robichon, Tom Gamble, and pole winner and Formula 1 offspring Eduardo Barrichello just went back-to-back on the podium, taking P2 in class at Sebring. “Dudu,” as Barrichello insists on being called, now leads the drivers’ championship.

In summary, IMSA racing rules.