The fourth hour of the Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring featured a fifth full course caution period that severely dented the victory chances of one previously front running team.
The hour begun under the full course caution put out after the contact between the Risi Competizione GTLM Ferrari and the GTD MOMO/NGT Porsche.
When racing restarted it was Scott Dixon who led a top five of Daytona Prototypes in the #02 Chip Ganassi Racing Riley-Ford, Sebastien Bourdais in second ahead of the Wayne Taylor Racing and Spirit of Daytona Racing Corvette DPs and Memo Rojas in the other Ganassi car, though the Mexican was increasingly pressured by David Brabbham in the Extreme Speed Motorsports HPD.
Dixon, however, was the first of the fron runners to pit under green flag conditions. Bourdais and Max Angelelli in the Taylor car coming in soon after.
Crucially though their stops came immediately after Bruce Hamilton had placed the #87 BAR1 Motorsports PC car into the turn ten tyre wall. Bourdais made it into the pits before they were closed, Angelelli, however was not as lucky being called into serve a 60 second stop-go once the race had returned to green.
That promoted ESM’s #1 to third place, but the real driver on the charge after the restart was Sage Karam in the #02.
He passed Angelelli for second on the restart (the Italian yet to serve his penalty at the time) before passing Bourdais for the lead at turn 10 later on the same lap. He started to move away, but as the hour came to a close, where points for the Patron Endurance Cup will be awarded, Bourdais had caught him once more and was challenging for the lead.
RSR Racing’s monopoly of the PC lead was broken. David Ostella lead for a time in the Performance Tech Motorsports #38, but it was Frankie Montecalvo who led at the end of the hour to bank points for PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports, though the pair of RSR entries were running second and third.
The #91 SRT Motorsports Viper led in GTLM, while in GTD it was Dane Cameron and Turner Motorsports who led, having started the race from the pitlane after technical issues forced them to forfeit the class pole Cameron had won on Friday.
2014 12 Hours of Sebring class standings after 4 hours
P
#02 – Chip Ganassi Racing – Dixon/Kanaan/Karam
#5 – Action Express Racing – Bourdais/Barbosa/Fittipaldi
#1 – Extreme Speed Motorsports – Brabham/Dalziel/Sharp
PC
#52 – PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports – Montecalvo/Guasch/Jeannette
#09 – RSR Racing – Junqueira/Ende/Heinemeier Hansson
#08 – RSR Racing – Tagliani/Cumming/Mitchell
GTLM
#91 – SRT Motorsports – Farnbacher/Goossens/Hunter-Reay
#4 – Corvette Racing – Gavin/Milner/Liddell
#912 – Porsche North America – Bergmeister/Long/Christensen
GTD
#94 – Turner Motorsports – Cameron/Dalla Lana/Palttala/Lewis
#63 – Scuderia Corsa – Balzan/Case/Marcelli/Westphal
#44 – Magnus Racing – Potter/Lally/Seefried
