Looking forward to the resumption of the WEC from Sebring

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Over eight hundred laps were completed last weekend between the four Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GTE's of AMR and TF Sport at the World Endurance Championship's pre-event test from the Sebring Raceway ahead of this Friday's start of the sixth round of the Championship.

Unsurprisingly really and considering these team's parallel IMSA programmes, the test saw the likes of Ford and Porsche hit the higher slots of the timing screens over the two day - four session test with the benefit of data sharing whilst the two GTE Pro cars from AMR, who have only tested at the circuit once before prior to their new GTE's official launch, were nearer the bottom of the pages.

Conversely, over in GTE Am, the factory supported #98 car of Paul Dalla-Lana, Pedro Lamy and Mathias Lauda were very much at the top of the screen in class - never more than 0.5 of a second off the ultimate class pace as the WEC GTE Am class leading car - the Project 1 Porsche hit running problems before a car destroying fire on Sunday.

Strangely for the boys in lime and blue, there was little in the way of comment being made via social media in just how the test was going for the two class of cars although the #95 crew did supply us with a fine supply of video clips of their car around the circuit. Was that a case of just being too busy or were they having issues - certainly the former would have been the case so we shall await and see.

From what we can make out, the #95 car will probably run with Marco Sorensen and Nicki Thiim doing the majority of the driving in the car come the race with the returning Darren Turner only likely to do a stint or two within the 1000mile race on Friday. Interviews with Turner seemed to lay around the progress made by the team in handling and stability within the car since Le Mans in June and particularly with the cars handling over kerbs and bumps - the latter being something which the Sebring circuit is renowned for.

The #97 GTE Pro car of Alex Lynn and Maxime Martin, they ran with just the pair of drivers at the test (and probably the race by the looks) with Jonny Adam being back supporting the guys from TF Sport in their #90 GTE Am car at their first visit to the USA.

For the marque, GTE Am is where the battle lies with both the factory supported #98 and the TF Sport car figuring in the top three within the Championship. With the class leader very much on the back foot at the event this week after the fire and still awaiting the arrival of its spare chassis from Europe, both AMR cars will be hopefully of stealing a significant points margin from their rivals to reduce the gap in the Championship as it returns to Europe in the Spring for the final two rounds of this transitional year at both Spa and Le Mans.

For the GTE Pro guys, we have learned before not to dismiss any racing possibilities based upon the result of some Free Practice or Qualifying times as they usually all count for nothing after the vigours of what is expected to be an eight hour race that will end at about midnight local time - and that is something different from any 'typical' WEC event up until now.

Thanks to TF Sport this weeks session times (set in GMT) can be seen below.