Earl Bamber and Laurens Vanthoor have escaped a pitlane clash with the sister Porsche 911 RSR to clinch a podium finish in GTLM in the third round of the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship held at Sebring.
The Kiwi handed over the opening stint to Vanthoor who immediately shot into the lead having overtaken his teammate in the opening corner and working his way past both front-row Corvettes to steal the lead before the end of the opening tour.
But once in the lead, Vanthoor struggled to build any margin over the challenging pack as a caution was waved on lap 13 to recover a standard LMP2 car.
The yellow meant every car cycled through pitlane with Oliver Tandy in the leading Corvette narrowly avoiding being sentenced with an unsafe release as he was held behind Nick Tandy in #911 Porsche.
But there was drama to come moments later when Tandy was released directly into the path of Vanthoor. The teammates made contact and resulted in Vanthoor’s bumper skewed across the pitlane.
It didn’t fare any better for Tandy who picked up a puncture on had to limp around the circuit back to the pitlane for repairs while Vanthoor was dealt a contentious drive-through penalty for a pitlane infringement.
The Corvettes were then unrivalled as they powered to a 1-2 finish with Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner claiming victory in class.
Bamber inherited the wheel from Vanthoor not long after the pitlane incident as the Kiwi went on the charge to hunt down the BMW pairing to snare third with a little over 20-minutes on the clock.
Tandy struggled to recover from the incident and finished sixth and last in class, though did set the fastest lap in the back stages of the race.
Pipo Derani and Felipe Nasr claimed the overall victory in the Daytona Prototype class for Cadillac’s second victory of the season.
Australian racer Ryan Briscoe and co-driver Renger van der Zande finished on the second step of the podium in the second Cadillac, albeit 36-seconds behind the eventual race winners.
