Sebring: Toyota demonstrates its speed 🎥
RECORD ROUND The Toyota with Sébastien Buemi starts from the best grid position today, Friday, for the 1000 miles of Sebring, the sixth World Endurance Championship round. Behind the two Toyota works cars follows the fastest Rebellion. The 1000 Miles of Sebring marks the sixth round of the 2018/19 multi-year World Endurance Championship (WEC). In 2012, Sebring was the first venue of the WEC, back then counting [...]
Both cars in the front row and a new @sebringraceway 🌴🇺🇸🐊 qualifying lap record. We had a good night out in central Florida 🌃 lapping the 6.019km track lay-out 3.762secs faster than any other driver ever did in the quali.@FIAWEC #SuperSebring #1000MSebring #TOYOTA pic.twitter.com/4eqx9Eto9c
- TOYOTA GAZOO Racing WEC (@TGR_WEC) March 15, 2019
The 1000 Miles of Sebring marks the sixth round of the 2018/19 World Endurance Championship (WEC). In 2012, Sebring was the first venue of the WEC, back then the 12 Hours of Sebring counted towards the American Le Mans Series and the World Endurance Championship.
The now separate race over 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) or eight hours starts today, Friday, at 4 p.m. local time (9 p.m. in Switzerland) and ends at midnight. The 12 Hours of Sebring, the second round of the IMSA Sportscar Championship, will start at 10:40 a.m. local time (3:40 p.m. CET) on Saturday.
Record lap by Alonso
The Toyota TS050 Hybrid of Fernando Alonso, Sébastien Buemi and Kazukki Nakajima is on pole position for the WEC race. Alonso turned an unofficial record lap of 1'40.124 in Thursday's night qualifying session. Peugeot holds the official lap record with Sébastien Bourdais' fastest race lap of 1'43.274 in the Peugeot 908 HDi, set at the 2009 Sebring 12 Hours.
However, the times of the two qualifying nominees Alonso and Nakajima, whose average is 1'40.318, count for the WEC grid. The second Toyota of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López follows behind with an average of 1'40.803.
Fight for the third place
The faster of the two Rebellion R13s of Frenchmen Berthon, Laurent and American Menezes is third on the grid with 1'42.863. The two BR1-AERs from SMP Racing and the second Rebellion with the Swiss Mathias Beche, Neel Jani and Bruno Senna occupy the next positions.
These four privately fielded LMP1 cars are separated by just 15 hundredths of a second. The starting position is therefore clear: As in all previous races, victory will be decided between the two factory cars of Toyota Gazoo Racing, while the LMP1 privateer teams will fight for third place on the podium and, if necessary, finish further ahead if the Toyota has problems.
Free or paid on the Internet and on TV
The race is available on the Internet as a free livestream from 20:30 to 05:30 CET on sport1.de to be seen. Sport1 also broadcasts from 23:45 to 00:45 on free TV.
The pay TV station motorsport.tv shows the complete endurance race from 20:45 to 05:15. The Sport1 Plus channel, which is also pay-TV, will broadcast from 20:30 to 23:30 and from 03:00 to 05:30.
Simon Trummer starts from the fourth row for the 12 Hours of Sebring
The 12-hour race is on Saturday outside the U.S. and Canada only on the Internet on imsa.com to follow. With Simon Trummer, who qualified the Cadillac DPi in eighth place overall, Marcel Fässler (Corvette, 5th GT-LM), Rolf Ineichen (Lamborghini, 4th GTD), Ricardo Feller (Audi, 10th GTD) and Philipp Frommenwiler (Lexus, 17th GTD), there are as many as five Swiss drivers on the grid with a chance of a podium finish or class victory.
