Audi team edges Peugeot to win Sebring
SEBRING, Fla. -- Winning the 12 Hours of Sebring with a new car is an old story for Tom Kristensen.
Still, the Dane, who has become the king of sports car endurance racing with a record eight wins in the 24 Hours of Le mans and five more -- another record -- on Sebring's bumpy 3.7-mile, 17-turn airport circuit, was amazed by the latest one.
"To win with such a young car and on such a tough racetrack, it's really extraordinary," Kristensen said Saturday night after combining with teammates Allan McNish and Rinaldo "Dindo" Capello to give Audi's latest diesel-powered sports car prototype, the R15, a win in its race debut.
The same trio won the American Le Mans Series opener at Sebring in a brand new Audi R10 in 2006 and Kristensen teamed with Frank Biela and Emanuele Pirro to win here in the all new Audi R8 in 2000, the first of eight straight Sebring victories for the German manufacturer.
Porsche ended the Florida string last year, but Kristensen, McNish and Capello took some solace in beating French rival Peugeot at Le Mans.
"For me, personally, the biggest win is last year at Le Mans because that was against all odds," Kristensen said. "But this is still spectacular because we come here with a new car. This is just such a huge team effort."
Capello, a four-time winner at Sebring, had no doubt which is his favorite win.
"This one, for me, was better than Le Mans. At Le Mans, it was all about reliability and not speed. We came here with a new car and, at the end of every stint, it was just a few tenths [of a second between cars] for the entire 12 hours."
The winning trio set two records, covering 383 laps and averaging 117.986 mph. The previous marks were 370 laps and 115.85 mph in 1986.
What it all came down to in the 57th Sebring classic, though, was a head-to-head duel in the last two hours between McNish and Peugeot's Franck Montagny.
The Audi pitted for tires and fuel with almost exactly one hour to go, giving up the lead to the Peugeot and knowing McNish would have to make one more quick stop for gas to get to the end. The Scot was in the lead when Montagny pitted with 44 minutes remaining.
"I knew I had to get [a lead of] 55 seconds to get in and out with a comfortable gap," said McNish, a three-time winner here. "Somehow, I kept the gap."
He did better than that, building a lead of more than 62 seconds. McNish was able to make a 10-second stop for gas and came out with 14 minutes to go still leading by more than 25 seconds. He was able to cruise the rest of the way, finishing a comfortable 22.279 seconds ahead of the Peugeot, shared by Montagny, Formula One driver Sebastien Bourdais and Stephane Sarrazine.
"It was fun, a good race," said Montagny, whose team had to make an extra stop with a punctured tire late in the ninth hour and got out of pit sequence. "It just didn't work out the way we hoped. But we gave it our best."
The second of the new Audi R15s, this one shared by Mike Rockenfeller, Lucas Luhr and Marco Werner finished third, two laps behind the leaders. The LMP2 class winning year-old Acura of Adrian Fernandez and Luis Diaz followed in fourth place, another 21 laps behind.
A second Peugeot 908, co-driven by Nic Manassian, Pedro Lamy and Christian Klien, finished fifth after making a long stop to repair its air conditioning system early in the race. Sixth went to the GT1-class winning Corvette of Jan Magnussen, Johnny O'Connell and Antonio Garcia.
The Ferrari of Pierre Kaffer, Jamie Melo and Mika Salo won the GT2 class in eighth overall.
One of the big stories heading into the race was the debut of two of Acura's new gasoline-powered and radically designed ARX 02a. Both were fast but wound up far back in the field.
The pole-winning ARX of Scott Dixon, Gil de Ferran and Simon Pagenaud developed a severe vibration and completed only 246 laps and finished 18th, while the new Acura co-driven by David Brabham, Dario Franchitti and Scott Sharp had two off-course excursions, a problem with the starter and wound up 15th, 81 laps behind the winners.
"We were much quicker through the turns than the Audi and Peugeot, but we couldn't match their power on the straights," said Franchitti, whose regular ride is in the IndyCar Series. "I know this team will be really strong on some of the smaller tracks that are coming up."
Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press
