Sebring 12-Hours
20.3.99

Five F333SPs were entered for the Sebring 12-hour endurance race, the first round of the American Le Mans Series.

The 333s were a little out-paced during qualifying, being in 6th, 7th, 10th, 14th and 25th places on the grid. The new BMWs were in 1st and 3rd places, split by the impressive Riley & Scott of Van de Poele/Saelens/Enge, with the new 4-litre Judd GV engine.

In a surprise result, the BMW V-12 LMR of Kristensen/Lehto/Muller scored the narrowest of wins over the Riley & Scott of Dyson/Leitzinger/Forbes-Robinson. The winning margin, after 12 hours of racing, was just nine seconds.

In third and fifth places came the two new Audi R8Rs driven by the experienced teams of Alboreto/Capello/Johansson and Pirro/Biela/McCarthy. They were separated by the Porsche GT1 of Boutsen/Wollek/Muller.

The highest-placed Ferrari 333 was that of Taylor/Caffi/Fangio, who had run in second for many hours but eventually finished sixth after it took 40 minutes to repair suspension damage when Caffi hit a retaining wall. The other four Ferraris failed to get past the half way distance, with the two Doran cars suffering gearbox failures, the Dollahite Racing car retiring with an oil pump failure and the second Doyle-Risi entry suffering from an electrical failure.

The emergence of new generation sports-prototypes, such as the BMW and the Audi, puts additional pressure on the need to replace the now ageing 333 design which was penned by Dallara some five years ago. The Audi chassis is also a Dallara design and already in its first race showed its potential to out-pace the Ferraris.

Photos by Gary Dodds.

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