Roger Penske’s DHL sponsored LM P2 Porsche team took the overall victory at Sebring and LM P2 cars held four of the top five places when the checkered flag dropped on the storied Florida event. The tier two cars left both Audi and Peugeot with a great deal to think about for both the ALMS series and the 24 Hours of Le Mans 90 days in the future.

The Penske team with Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas and Emmanuel Collard sharing the driving duties, drove a near perfect race and brought the Porsche marque to the number one overall position in the race for the first time 20 years while breaking the vaunted Audi eight year stranglehold on the top position.

It was owner Roger Penske’s first overall win at Sebring and gave him something of a unique triple crown with wins at the Indy 500, the Daytona 500, and now Sebring.

Of the win Collard said “The key today is that we ran without a problem – gearbox, engine and race strategy,” Collard said. “That’s why we won this race.”

It was at the very least a tweaking of the Audi Team’s nose by their Stuttgart rivals and soon to be owners (Porsche recently increased its stake in the organization that owns Volkswagon and Audi to controlling interest) but by their own admission this was an uncharacteristic sloppy performance by the diesel R10s from Ingolstatt.

The Audi team never got the break it needed — a yellow flag at the right time — and had to make significant repairs on the green flag which gave the competition the opportunity to drive to the front of the pack.

Included in a myriad of issues for the Audi team was an inadvertent punting of one of Flying Lizard Motorsports’ Porsche 911 GT3 RSRs in the opening hour which required that Dindo Capello serve a stop and go penalty. The Audi also required the change of its front rotors and a tie rod that was giving the team handling issues, all under the green flag.

When the team hit the track it was three laps down to the leader with three hours and proceeded to reel in the leaders — but ran out of time. Noted Alan McNish after the race, “We wish we would have had another 30 minutes.”

As it was the Audi finished just under six second behind the number two

The Audi-Peugeot face-off did provide some interesting racing for the first third of the event with the two LM P2 cars trading the lead until the Peugeot ran into significant hydraulic issues and needed a time-out for repairs that cost them 30 laps. The Peugeot finished 11th overall and fourth in the LM P2 class but did set a new competition lap record during this sortie with the Aud. Official lap charts show the Peugeot leading for the first 44 laps of the race and 78 of the first 85 laps.

The Corvette driven by Johnny O’Connell, Jan Magnussen and Ron Fellows won the LM GT1 class and with the win 0’Connell broke the tie for Sebring victories that he share with driving legend Phil Hill, getting his seventh win.

In LM GTS it was the Flying Lizards Porsche team that finished first and second overall with Jörg Bergmeister, Wolf Henzler and Marc Lieb driving the No. 45 Porsche 911 GT3 RSR to a two-lap victory over the sister car piloted by Darren Law, Seth Neiman and Alex Davison.

Official results are found here.