Johnny O'Connell, Jan Magnussen and Ron Fellows won in GT1 for Corvette Racing by six laps to take their second endurance victory of the season. They also won in class at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. The win Saturday gave O'Connell and Magnussen the class championship with their eighth victory.
"It's a very special win because we won the championship," said Magnussen, who won his first title. "The race today was hard between the two cars. We were pushing hard on the track and in the pits and everywhere. In the first half of the race we had to push like crazy to stay ahead of the No. 4 car. It was difficult in the daytime and in the night time."
Oliver Gavin, Olivier Beretta and Max Papis finished second in class. The two Corvettes exchanged the lead twice in the pits before misfortune again befell the #4 car. A malfunctioning throttle linkage left Gavin crawling around the track before the six-hour mark. It was eerily similar to Sebring where the trio lost laps to a broken driveshaft early on.
Jaime Melo and Mika Salo followed their GT2 endurance victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with another hard-fought endurance win in their Ferrari F430 GT. Salo finished just 2.317 seconds ahead of Flying Lizard Motorsports' Jorg Bergmeister and his Porsche 911 GT3 RSR. The result with Marc Lieb was enough for Bergmeister and Wolf Henzler to wrap up the class championship. Tafel Racing's Dirk Muller and Dominik Farnbacher placed third in their
Ferrari.
"It was really hard," Melo said of the race. "To win Le Mans and Petit Le Mans is great for the whole team. It was a very difficult race. We had to move to the back of the field at one point and we had to push hard to get back on top. The car was working very well and comfortable to drive. It made it easier for us to do it."
Henzler and Bergmeister have finished on the GT2 podium in every event this year except St. Petersburg in March. Four class victories helped give Bergmeister his third championship and Henzler his first. Flying Lizard also won its first team championship.
