For this weekend’s Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring, there are 38 cars entered in the difficult endurance race. Effectively, this is slightly larger than the full-time entry for the season.
In Prototypes, there are 11 teams entered and a number of driver changes. Brendon Hartley is the third driver in Action Express Racing’s No. 5 Cadillac, while Wayne Taylor Racing announced at the Rolex 24 that Matthew Vaxivière will replace the Toyota GAZOO Racing duo of Fernando Alonso and Kamui Kobayashi in the No. 10 Cadillac. Given that the FIA World Endurance Championship races 1000 miles (or eight hours) on Friday at Sebring, Toyota would not allow the two to compete.
The LMP2 class has only two entries. These are the full-time cars from Performance Tech Motorsports and PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports. For Performance Tech, Cameron Cassels is listed alongside Kyle Masson. Neither team has listed a third driver, which is mandatory for all four races in the Michelin Endurance Cup in 2019.
GT Le Mans has only eight entries. Risi Competizione had previously indicated that they were going to compete in Sebring, but announced their withdrawal a couple of weeks ago.
Full-season racer Tom Blomqvist will make his regular debut in the No. 25 BMW M8 GTE for BMW Team RLL. He was supposed to race at Daytona, but had visa issues that made it difficult for him to get into the United States. Augusto Farfus drove in his place.
GT Daytona has 17 entries. Likely the most notable change in the class is the inclusion of Christina Nielsen in the Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian No. 57 alongside Ana Beatriz and Katherine Legge. Nielsen was originally brought in only as a substitute at Daytona for Jackie Heinricher, who had crashed in pre-season testing and hurt her back. Last week, the team announced that Nielsen will drive in all four Michelin Endurance Cup races in the No. 57 Acura. Heinricher’s GT Daytona debut has been pushed back to Mid-Ohio in May.
Precision Performance Motorsports has a revised lineup. Steve Dunn is still in the car, but he is now joined by Brandon Gdovic, son of team owner Rick Gdovic. At the time the entry list was released, the team had not indicated who their third driver would be. Tuesday morning, the team announced that Lawson Aschenbach will join the squad. The veteran racer most recently drove for Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian, but was not retained by the team after last season. He sat out the Rolex 24 at Daytona.
The Mobli 1 12 Hours of Sebring is scheduled to go green at 10:40 a.m. EDT Saturday morning. The race will start on CNBC, then move to the NBC Sports App before finishing on NBCSN.
Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the site's FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site's Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.
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