50 years after Porsche took their first victory at the 12 Hours of Sebring with Hans Herrmann and Olivier Gendebien six of the German marque's works drivers will enter the 58th running of the race on March 20.
Porsche have notched up 18 overall victories and 63 class victories (and has led 4,198 laps) in America's oldest sportscar race and 2010. Now as Hans Herrmann returns to Sebring four Porsche cars will contest the race across two classes – and that's before considering the GT Challenge class, exclusively for Porsches.
The focus for the Stuttgart firm will be in GT2, where a trio of 997 GT3 RSRs will be led by Flying Lizard Motorsports. Reigning class champions Joerg Bergmeister and Patrick Long will be joined by their fellow works driver, German Marc Lieb, sharing the no.45 car. “This is the toughest race on the calendar, but we've done a lot of testing and are well prepared,” says Bergmiester, before warning that simply having a team of works drivers does not guarantee success. “But still, Sebring is always good for a surprise.”
The second Flying Lizard car is no less packed with talent Americans Seth Neiman and Darren Law, experienced drivers in their own right teamed with Richard Lietz, another of the stable of works drivers.
The only other Porsche in the class, after the late withdrawal of the Black Swan Racing entry will be the returning Falken Tire squad – two more works drivers, Wolf Henzler and Patrick Pilet, joining regular driver Bryan Sellers for the race.
Porsche fans will also see a challenge in the LMP2 class with Cytosport returning for 2010 with a Porsche RS Spyder where team owner Greg Pickett will be joined by Germans Klaus Graf and Sascha Maasen, himself a former works driver for Porsche.
The 58th running of the 12 Hours of Sebring will start March 20 at 10:30am (local time).
