GT2: WINGED LIZARD v PRANCING HORSE

While the 55th 12 Mobile 12 Hours of Sebring will surely be remembered for Audi’s eighth overall win – and second straight for the R10 diesel – the stunning debut of the Acura LMP2 program and the fourth win in – the past five years for Corvette, few will soon forget the epic battle for GT2 honors between the Rizi Competizione Ferrari 430 GT of Mika Salo, Jaime Melo and Johnny Mowlem and the Flying Lizard Porsche 911 GT3 RSR driven by Johannes van Overbeek, Jorg Bergmeister and Marc Lieb.

For most of the final three hours the Ferrari held the advantage, but seldom by more than two or three seconds. On the next to last pit stop with 90 minutes remaining, though, Lieb beat Melo out of the pits by a whisker than the two proceeded to run nose to tail for a couple of laps before the Brazilian forced his way through in heavy traffic and proceeded to open up a 38-second lead.

That’s when things got really interesting. With little more than a half hour remaining, the Flying Lizard Porsche pitted with Lieb handing over to Bergmeister. A couple of minutes later the Ferrari pitted with Melo staying in the car. But a crewman was seen working on the car with his helmet visor open, and the car was held in the pits an extra 20 seconds – one of at least two dozen such penalties meted out during the day –and that 38-second lead was more than halved.

And Bergmeister went to work cutting it down even more, lapping as much as 1.5 seconds a lap quicker than the Melo. At 9:40 pm the gap was down to 6.1sec, by 9:53 it was under two seconds and at 10 o’clock it was 0.532sec. But Melo and Bergmeister crossed the finish line before the winning Audi R10 and so had one more lap to complete. Melo went wide at the hairpin and Bergmeister stuck his nose underneath, only to be rebuffed at the following chicane. Down the Ulmann straight they went with Bergmeister slamming down the inside and into the lead. But not for long.

“On the last stint I was having braking problems and couldn’t push hard under braking,” Melo explained. “The Porsche overtook me before Turn 17. I braked a little bit early, and on the exit I tried to put the throttle open as early as possible.

“I couldn’t lose the race on the last turn, so I was just trying to think what to do next. I had to try something.”

Including doing more than a little “rubbing” on the run to the finish line, enough, as it turned out, to take the checkered flag just 0.202sec clear of Bergmeister.

The win was the first at Sebring for Ferrari since Didier Theys, Mauro Baldi and Gianpierro Moretti drove a Ferrari 333SP to victory here in 1998.