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Porsche Perfection Times Two at the 73rd Twelve Hours of Sebring
Forbes, in its “real-time billionaires ranking,” pegs the net worth of automotive mogul Roger Penske at $5.6 billion. There isn’t much that Penske, 88, who has spent decades as one of the top motorsports team owners, can’t buy. But there is one thing that has eluded him in 65 years of racing: the 150-pound, champagne-resistant trophy presented for winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans, indubitably the world’s most important sports car endurance race.
“When you think about our team—we’re approaching 600 wins—winning Le Mans would be like 500 of ’em,” Penske told Hagerty in a 2022 interview, done at a private track test of the new Porsche 963.
Is 2025 Penske’s year? Winning Le Mans is never a given, but this looks like his most competitive opportunity ever. After all, Team Penske’s Porsche 963 GTP car won the Rolex 24 at Daytona in January, and on Saturday, took first and second in the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, held since 1951 on a road course in Central Florida that is partly constructed on the rough, cobby concrete that made up the World War II–era Hendricks Army Airfield. Though the race itself is only half as long as Daytona, Sebring’s 3.71-mile track is so punishing that the Twelve Hours is considered the most valid, appropriately grueling test for June’s Le Mans at the 8.5-mile Circuit de la Sarthe in France.
So what’s the prognosis?
“I’ll talk about the roll we’re on,” said Nick Tandy, driver of the number 7 Porsche 963, which won Sebring and Daytona, in the post-race press conference. “You rarely see a sports team or an operation that does a single event without any faults or mistakes. We’ve just been celebrating with probably 40 people that have flawlessly run a car for 36 hours, obviously Daytona and Sebring combined. It’s a testament to what Porsche and Porsche Penske have put together as a group of people that allow us to go racing, and have this success without a mistake.”
Kevin Estre, driver of the second-place number 6 Penske Porsche: “A great day for the team. 1-2. Very strong operation. No mistakes in the pits. No penalties. No contact. This shows that we were all doing a good job.”
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Saturday’s Sebring win was accomplished by Britain’s Tandy, Brazilian Felipe Nasr and Laurens Vanthoor from Belgium, the same trio that won Daytona. In second place, 2.239 seconds back, was Penske Porsche number 6, driven by Matt Campbell from Australia and Frenchmen Mathieu Jaminet and Estre. That team finished third at Daytona, bracketing the number 60 Meyer Shank Acura. Meyer Shank’s number 93 Acura finished third at Sebring, while its number 60 sister car was 10th. Fourth was the plucky Whelen Action Express Cadillac, fifth was the Rahal Letterman Lanigan BMW.
So is Penske ready for the 93rd running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans? “I think the car and the team and the drivers, everybody involved in the project, has shown so far that what we’re capable of,” winning driver Vanthoor told Hagerty. “It’s the ultimate level, Le Mans. Everyone is there. All the competition is there. Everybody is aiming for that race. It’s the ultimate showdown. Yeah, I think it’s quite apparent that we have everything in place to be successful.”
But in the past two years, since the introduction of the 963 model, “We haven’t succeeded,” at Le Mans. “It’s obviously very clearly the goal of Porsche, of Roger Penske, the whole organization, of us,” said Vanthoor.
The Ferrari 499P won Le Mans in 2023 and 2024. Finishing second both years was the Toyota GR010. Those two cars race regularly in the FIA World Endurance Championship overseas, but not in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship here, so the two American Penske Porsches haven’t benchmarked their toughest competition for Le Mans.
But Penske also has a two-car WEC Porsche team, and Porsche finished the 2024 Manufacturers Championship second to Toyota, but only two points back. Toyotas won four WEC races last year, Penske Porsches won three, and Ferraris won only one, but it was the one that counted—Le Mans. None of the other six manufacturers in that WEC class won at all.
“Yeah,” said the low-key Vanthoor, “let’s see if this year is the year. We’re definitely trying. But we’re not the only ones.”
This Sebring victory was especially meaningful to veteran Porsche factory driver Tandy, who unofficially assumes the mantle of the king of endurance racing. He’s now the first sports car driver to take overall wins in what is regarded globally as the six most important such events: the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the 10-hour Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta, plus the 24-hour races at the Nürburgring in Germany, and Spa in Belgium.
Tandy, 40, first became a Porsche works driver in 2013, continuing through 2021, when he signed with Chevrolet to drive the Corvette C8.R. He returned to Porsche for the 2023 season to race the 963 in its debut year.
This Sebring was especially frustrating for defending champion Wayne Taylor Racing, which fields two Cadillacs, numbers 10 and 40, in the top GTP class. The 40 car, which won last year when Taylor was racing Acuras, retired before the end of the race, while the number 10 finished, albeit in seventh. Team owner Taylor blamed IMSA officiating for the number 10’s poor finish this year. His son, Ricky, was driving during the first hour of the event, when IMSA penalized them for punting a slower Ferrari into the wall.
But Wayne Taylor insists there was no contact, taking to IMSA Radio for a lengthy harangue, insisting that he’d seen video that exonerated his son. “We looked at the footage, he never touched the car. Ricky said he never touched the car. And the race director’s response was that he made a ‘bad call’.” The team never overcame the stiff penalty, which called for parking the number 10 in the pits for 60 seconds. The typically opinionated Taylor, an accomplished ex-driver with two Rolex 24 at Daytona wins on his resume, called the penalty “inexcusable.”
In all, the 2025 Twelve Hours was in large part an unusually smooth race, with lengthy periods of green-flag racing. The winners in all four classes were decisively ahead when the checkered flag flew, with only one late-race pass, and that was in the GTD class. With 14 minutes left, Phillip Ellis, driving the defending champion Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, eased inside the leading Vasser Sullivan Lexus RCF GT3 driven by Jack Hawksworth. Ellis then shoved Hawksworth out of the way in a distinctively NASCAR-esque move, and went on to win.
After the race, Ellis defended the pass. “Obviously there was some rubbing here and there. That’s part of good racing. Nothing was over the limit. Just used whatever I had to use,” he said, then went on to suggest that Hawksworth deserved it. “I understand that he’s not super happy with it. To be honest, I just gave him back what he gave me a couple laps before in turn seven. Hey, we all know Jack. I have a lot of respect for him. He’s a great guy. But that’s how he races, as well. You reap what you sew.”
The nonplussed Hawksworth disagreed. “I don’t mind hip and shoulder, but he ran into the back of me and moved me out of the way,” he told Sportscar365. “So, look, he’s got one coming. That’s racing. Obviously, I’m disappointed.” Finishing third in GTD behind the Mercedes and the Lexus was the Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo.
Speaking of Heart of Racing, that team also fielded the first U.S. appearance of the Aston Martin Valkyrie, which finished a credible ninth in the GTP class, two laps behind the winning Porsche 963. Not bad for a new car, certainly better than the 17th and 32nd finishes Valkyries notched in the WEC season opener at Qatar for the two-car team (two entries are mandatory in the WEC). Its delightful-sounding, naturally aspirated V-12 was music to the ears of Sebring fans used to rumbling V-8s or barking V-6 engines.
In the LMP2 class, where all competitors run an identical Oreca chassis and Gibson V-8, the number 43 of Inter Europol Competition, driven by Tom Dillmann, Bijoy Garg, and Jeremy Clarke, won with a comfortable lead over the Tower Motorsports car of Sebastien Bourdais, John Farano, and Sebastian Alvarez. Third was the TDS Racing entry, which driver Steven Thomas had qualified on the pole.
“It’s so cool to win the Twelve Hours of Sebring, a legendary race,” said Dillman, the Frenchman who drove in the closing stint. “When you’re racing in IMSA, you have the chance to go for the win in some amazing events, like Daytona, Sebring, and Petit Le Mans. To have won one of them, it means a lot.”
With 15 minutes to go, it appeared the CrowdStrike entry was on its way to the LMP2 win, when driver Malthe Jakobsen ran into the Daytona-winning GTD AWA Corvette, and then had to serve a penalty for the wreck. He ended up sixth in class.
Finally, in the GTR Pro class, the win went to the 2024 IMSA season champion AO Racing team, in a Porsche 911 GT3 R. That’s the familiar lime green car known as “Rexy,” painted up with a Tyrannosaurus rex scheme, complete with enormous teeth, and driven by Laurin Heinrich, Klaus Bachler, and Alessio Picariello, a Belgian newcomer to the team, who was pleased to get his first IMSA win. “To share it with Laurin and Klaus is so special because the atmosphere between us is so good. They are good friends. We have so much fun. Then also to be part of AO, to drive Rexy, which is so popular.”
Rexy has an AO team car, “Spike,” an LMP2 entry that looks like a cartoon dragon. Both are immensely popular with kids, and the Rexy and Spike souvenir booth at the Rolex 24 at Daytona completely sold out. Incidentally Spike, carrying the number 99, finished Sebring seventh in class.
Landing in second and third in GTD Pro was the pair of Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 Evos, with drivers Dan Harper, Max Hesse, and Jesse Krohn in the number 48, finishing ahead of the number 1 BMW of Madison Snow, Neil Verhagen, and Connor De Phillippi.
Next up for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship: The 50th anniversary of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach on April 11–13, where they’ll share the weekend with the IndyCar series.
And as for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, that’s June 14–15. You can bet those days are circled in red on Roger Penske’s calendar.
