Rotten luck continues in 12 Hours of Sebring
The No. 85 Porsche with drivers Pascal Theis and Marton Tihanyi looked to be on its way to a fantastic second-place finish in Round 2 of the 2022 VSCA SportsCar Championship with the final half hour of the race approaching.
That’s when the yellow flag waved and reset the field for a wild 15-minute sprint to the finale. The No. 85 Porsche team had gambled on getting no FCY for the rest of the race, but now had to scramble. Under yellow flag, the team pitted to take on the fuel it needed to make it to the finish but took no tires.
The pit stop was quick enough to pass other GT3 competitors and on the restart, Tihanyi was looking to catch up with the cars that were able to afford to stay out under caution. A hard and dramatic battle with the No. 13 Porsche of FR13DA Sports Group ensued. The two cars banged doors and fenders multiple times but kept it clean, racing for position until the FR13DA machine lost it into turn one and Tihanyi took over the position.
Just a minute later electrical issues slowed Tihanyi and he came to a crawling halt as the battery of the car went dead, just minutes away from the conclusion of the race, with a potential top-five finish in sight, the No. 85 Porsche team now ended up P17 instead.
“Brutal. Absolutely brutal. This is gutting. We don’t know what happened, but the battery gave out for some reason. I got past the 13 and then half a lap later I noticed I lost power and then there was no power anymore at all and I had to stop the car.”, Tihanyi explained.
“Obviously that’s a tough end for us in this race. We battled hard, we had a good strategy but that late caution really screwed things up for us big time. But I guess it doesn’t matter now...”, the 22-year-old Hungarian added.
Multiple technical issues also set back the No. 14 Dallara P217 P2 Prototype team with drivers Jason Birnie, Niclas Pedersen and newly signed Patrick Schindler.
Three times, the team had to make unscheduled pit stops for repairs when various technical issues occurred on the car, dropping the team back multiple laps.
Thanks to a tough fight and committed effort by all three drivers and the pit crew, the No. 14 team was able to get back within one lap of the leaders shortly before the end and picked up a couple of positions when other teams found trouble in the closing stages of the race, to claim P8 in the end.
“This race was so annoying. We had great pace, but whenever we had something going for us, something would happen to set us back, be it a technical issue or an incident in front of us. It’s extremely frustrating when you can feel the potential in the car, but can’t put it to use.”, Jason Birnie said.
To round things out, the 12 Hours of Sebring ultimately ended in disappointment for the No. 84 Porsche 911 GT3 R team and drivers Manuel Mayer and Nelson Eberth
The two Bavarians managed to race their way all the way into the top-six early on, but it wasn’t meant to be as Eberth, who was recently signed by Fischer Motorsport as the newest team driver, was involved in two incidents that had dire consequences for the team for rest of the race.
In the eighth hour of the race, Eberth lost control on the exit of turn 13 and was hit in the rear by the No. 26 P2 Prototype of INtense Autosport, which lead to rear-end damage on the Fischer Motorsport Porsche, though the team was able to continue on without losing much time. However the car was now down on top speed and no longer competitive.
Just over one hour remaining in the race, Eberth was on his out lap, after the team completed its final driver change pit stop of the day, the No. 12 Porsche of RS e-Sport spun in the turn seven hairpin directly in front of him, locked up the brakes and the two cars collided, damaging the front axle of the Fischer Motorsport Porsche.
Eberth had to bring the car back to pit lane and the team needed 12 minutes to replace the axle, dropping the team to a disappointing P22 finish, several laps down.
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© 2022 Fischer Motorsport
The No. 85 Porsche heading into 'Sunset', the infamous turn 17 at Sebring. Once the sun had gone down, the team ran out of luck en route to a P17 finish.
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“There was just absolutely nowhere for me to go. I saw the 12 car spin, he locked up the brakes and i wanted to go past on the inside, but there wasn’t enough room so we got hit right on the left front wheel, which broke the axle. You can’t make this stuff up. This is just rotten luck.”, Eberth said.
For Mayer and Eberth it continues a disappointing start to the 2022 season, after both have been involved in crashes at Daytona already, that prevented a competitive finish.
“We will not give up. At some point our luck will change. We focus on what we can control. And that starts by giving it our all every single time we go out there. Everybody in the team gives 100%. So we owe this to each other. And hopefully when we continue to do this, our luck will eventually change.”, Manuel Mayer explained.
In the official series point standings, the No. 14 Dallara P217 team now sits in sixth place, 190 points out of first. The No. 85 Porsche team, despite its dramatic end at Sebring, still sits seventh in points, 100 points behind the series leaders. The No. 84 Porsche team is 15th in points, 160 points behind.
The VSCA SportsCar Championship returns to action on April 23rd at Laguna Seca. Fischer Motorsport meanwhile travels back to Germany to focus on the iRacing Nürburgring 24 Hours on April 9th at the team’s home track Nürburgring Nordschleife.
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