Penske Porsche clinch Sebring win

Romain Dumas, Timo Bernhard and Emmanuel Collard moved to the front as the LMP1 cars faltered, and then fended off challenges from Dyson Porsche and the Fernandez Acura in the closing stages.

Having earlier lost time with fuel pick-up problems, the Fernandez car edged into contention in the final hours, and at one stage narrowed the gap to the No.7 Penske Porsche to just seven seconds.

But Dumas was able to pull away and clinch the win by 13 seconds.

"It's amazing - we didn't expect this result," said Dumas. "We were here just to win the class, but we made it overall.

"We came here over the winter to prepare for this race just to try to finish first of all. It's unbelievable."

Dyson Porsche finished third and fifth. The Butch Leitzinger, Andy Lally and Marino Franchitti car stretched its fuel mileage further than its rivals in the last stints, but didn't quite have the pace to stay in the lead battle, and ended the race with smoke pouring from its engine. Their teammates in the No.16 car lost touch after Chris Dyson had a brief trip off the road with two hours to go.

Audi had to settle for an unaccustomed fourth and seventh places. At half-distance the team had looked set for a comfortable one-two finish, only for both cars to hit trouble soon afterwards.

The No.2 Audi had to return to the paddock for turbo repairs and then lost more time when Mike Rockenfeller went off and damaged the rear wing, while the No.1 car fell three laps down after a long stop for attention to its brakes.

Although Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish and Dindo Capello managed to charge back on to the lead lap by the end, they ran out of time to get back in the hunt for victory - finishing five seconds behind the third-placed No.20 Dyson Porsche.

"It was not easy," said Kristensen. "A few tiny problems cost us time in the pits at the wrong time. But no excuses, Sebring is hard. It was an unbelievable race.

"Well done to those guys (Porsche). I imagine they didn't do any mistakes, didn't put a foot wrong and kept going at their pace."

Peugeot also left Sebring disappointed. The 908 dominated the first two hours, only to then lose 25 laps while a hydraulic leak was repaired. Drivers Nicolas Minassian, Pedro Lamy and Stephane Sarrazin set a string of fastest laps during the evening, but to no avail.

Andretti-Green could consider themselves unlucky too. In Marco Andretti's hands, their Acura was the class of the LMP2 field for much of the race, but an extra stop for bodywork repairs stymied his challenge, and the car then retired after overheating in the penultimate hour.

And while the No.7 Penske Porsche ran flawlessly throughout, the sister No.6 car was the race's first retirement - a water leak taking it out within the first hour.

The Bell Motorsports Aston Martin was never a threat to the Corvettes in GT1, and when the No.3 Chevrolet broke a driveshaft early on, all their teammates Jan Magnussen, Ron Fellows and Johnny O'Connell had to do was cruise to a commanding class win.

The GT2 race was also unusually quiet. Wolf Henzler, Jorg Bergmeister and Marc Lieb led a Flying Lizard Porsche one-two, with a one-lap advantage over teammates Seith Neiman, Darren Law and Alex Davison after the dominant Risi Ferrari tangled with the second-placed Farnbacher Porsche while trying to lap it and took both out.

Leading results:

Pos  Drivers                      Car                Laps
 1.  Dumas/Bernhard/Collard       Porsche RS Spyder  351
 2.  Fernandez/Diaz               Acura ARX-01B      351
 3.  Lally/Leitzinger/Franchitti  Porsche RS Spyder  351
 4.  Kristensen/McNish/Capello    Audi R10 TDi       351
 5.  Smith/Dyson                  Porsche RS Spyder  350
 6.  Brabham/Sharp/Johansson      Acura ARX-01B      349
 7.  Luhr/Rockenfeller/Werner     Audi R10 TDi       333
 8.  Lienhard/Theys/Lammers       Porsche RS Spyder  333
 9.  Fellows/O'Connell/Magnussen  Corvette C6.R      328
10.  Field/Dayton/Berry           Lola B06/10 AER    327