Kiwi Ryan Yardley began his 2024 Porsche Carrera Cup North America campaign with a podium, finishing third at Sebring International Raceway this morning.
The TOPP Racing driver has shown great pace in his opening race weekend of the year, going third fastest in the two practice outings before qualifying in the same position for the opening race, just one-tenth off Loek Hartog’s pole-setting time.
He would also finish third behind Kellymoss’s Hartog and MDK Motorsports’s Gustav Burton.
“Super nice to start the year on the podium,” Yardley told Velocity News from Sebring. “This weekend, for me, is all about having a good clean run, getting some good points and getting onto the podium. It’s super important to start the championship on a high.
“It was nice to achieve that, and we have a good shot to do it again tomorrow. We start p3 once again.
“P1 and P2 had new tyres today, while we chose to run old ones. So tomorrow, we will hopefully have a bit of an advantage. Let’s see how it plays out.”
Yardley got off to a flying start from the second row and moved up to second at Turn 1, behind only Hartog and ahead of front-row starting Burton.
The front three pulled a small gap over JDX Racing’s Alex Sedgwick over the opening circuits before a Safety Car was required six minutes in when Alan Metni’s #99 stranded on the Turn 10 runoff after taking earlier contact.
Burton took second off the Kiwi on the restart with 23 minutes to run, running on the outside around Turn 1 before cleanly cutting underneath.
The two leaders, on newer tyres, slowly pulled clear from here and Yardley did well to keep Sedgwick at bay to remain in the podium places.
Hartog took the chequered flag with a 1-second advantage over Burton, with Yardley a further 4.8 seconds behind in third, just 0.352 seconds ahead of Sedgwick.
Kiwi Madeline Stewart also enjoyed a tidy debut outing in the Porsche Carrera Cup North America for JDX Racing, stepping up after a season in the Porsche Sprint Challenge North America.
Stewart finished a tidy 17th in the 40-strong field, having earlier qualified 18th.
The Porsche Carrera Cup returns for a second race at Sebring at 12.15 pm on Saturday (NZ Time), with Yardley again starting third.
The race will be live-streamed on the Carrera Cup website.
