With night well-and-truly descended on the Sebring Circuit, the closing stages of the 12 hour race have begun, with most of the class leaders just a spin or a pitstop mistake away from the chasing pack.
In the LMP1 class, Lucas di Grassi continues to lead in the #2 Audi R18 ahead of team-mate Oliver Jarvis. However, both of the Audi’s tenth hours brought frightening moments to the drivers.
Di Grassi, whose lead has consistently been around ten seconds for the last hour, narrowly avoided a collision with the #81 Bar1 PC car of Al Carter spinning in front of him at turn 10. Di Grassi, well-aware of what was happening, managed to bring his car almost to a dead stop to avoid a late drama.
Meanwhile, Oliver Jarvis was having his own incident, making contact with the rear of the #31 GTC car of Mario Farnbacher. The Porsche sustained light damage, but both cars continued without spinning.
In LMP2, it is a HPD 1-2 with the #551 and #552 cars first and second – with the latter almost a minute behind its sister car.
The #52 ORECA remains in the lead of the PC class by just 20 seconds, currently being driven by David Ostella. The #8 car of Kyle Marcelli is in second.
In the GT Class, the #91 Viper – which had lead earlier in the race – had a mechanical problem at a pitstop which lead to the SRT car being pushed behind the concrete wall in the pitlane, with helpless Ryan Dalziel having to sit in the car as his crew tried to troubleshoot the problem. He had been second before the stop, and returned 6th, and several laps down.
Olivier Beretta leads the class in the #62 Ferrari F458.
The GTC lead didn’t change in hour 10, with the #66 Porsche more than a lap ahead of the #22 machine.
2013 12 Hours of Sebring class standings after 10 hours
P1
#2 di Grassi/Kristensen/McNish
#1 Fassler/Treluyer/Jarvis
#12 Prost/Heidfeld/Jani
P2
#551 Tucker/Franchitti/Briscoe
#552 Tucker/Hunter-Reay/Pagenaud
#41 Kimber-Smith/Zugel/Lux
PC
#52 D. Cheng/Guasch/Ostella
# 8Marcelli/Cumming/Johansson
#05 Bennett/Braun/Wilkins
GT
#62 Bruni/Beretta/Malucelli
#4 Gavin/Milner/Westbrook
#17 Henzler/Sellers/Tandy
GTC
#66 Keating/Faulkner/Stanton
#22 MacNeil/Bleekemolen/von Moltke
#45 Canache, Jr./Pumpelly/Wong
