How Porsche continued its IMSA dominance at Sebring but with intra-team drama

A strategic call from the Porsche Penske Motorsport pit decided the outcome of the Daytona 24 Hours last year in favour of Felipe Nasr and his team-mates.

A year and a bit on, another decision from the pit stand appeared set to deprive the Brazilian of victory in one of the other IMSA SportsCar Championship blue riband enduros...only this time at the Sebring 12 Hours last weekend, Nasr decided otherwise. Or at least that’s how Kevin Estre, the driver who followed him across the line to record a PPM 1-2, interpreted it. 

With a little more than an hour to go, Nasr, aboard the leading #7 Porsche 963 LMDh shared with Julien Andlauer and Laurin Heinrich, was asked to cede position at the front of the field to Estre. The Frenchman, driving the #6 entry with Laurens Vanthoor and Matt Campbell, was ahead for less than four laps when Nasr put a move on him in Turn 17. The post-race allegation from Estre was that the sister car had ridden roughshod over the team’s instructions - or disobeyed team orders, to put it another way. 

This was slightly different to Daytona 2025. Porsche had split its strategies at the final pitstop under the safety car at the traditional IMSA curtain-raiser and the loser was the car Estre shared with Campbell and Mathieu Jaminet. Their misfortune was to be at the head of the pack when the yellow flags came out in hour 24. Campbell was given only two fresh tyres in the name of track position at a time that BMW looked like a genuine contender for victory. Nasr, who sat third behind Dries Vanthoor in the Rahal BMW M Hybrid V8 LMDh, got new rubber on each corner, giving him the weapons to beat his team-mate over the dash to the flag.

Tyres guided PPM’s tactics this time as well. Estre, running just behind Nasr as the 11-hour mark approached, had the newer tyres, and with Jack Aitken in the Action Express Racing Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh only just behind, it was decided that the Frenchman should be waved past into the lead so he could try to exploit his fresher Michelin medium compound rubber. At the same time, there was a need to save fuel just in case there wasn't another safety car before the end. Estre insisted he was doing just that when Nasr pounced in the final 180-degree final righthander a few minutes before the race hit 11 hours.

“I was driving the car, trying to optimise our strategy to try to get to the end because we needed to save some fuel,” said Estre after the race. “Definitely, at some point there was a call from the pit stand that was not respected; something happened which was not too fair from my side. It’s not nice, but that’s the way it is.”

Nasr chose not to address Estre’s comments, merely brushing them aside. “I am here to race and that is what I did today,” he insisted. “It’s a victory, right? It is a 1-2 for the team in the end, a big point day for the whole organisation. There are always going to be two, three sides to the story. What matters today is that we came out winning, winning for the team, for the brand.” 

Nasr's approach irked his team-mate in Sebring

Photo by: Jake Galstad / Lumen via Getty Images

Estre conceded that when the race went green for the final 18 minutes after one final yellow, he didn’t have anything for Nasr. “Towards the end, he had the pace in clean air,” he said of the race leader. “He was fast enough that I couldn’t attack.”

But had Penske chosen to do so, it could have switched the positions at the front after the last restart. Nasr raced into a lead of three or so seconds in as many laps, but Estre had a similar margin over his pursuer a couple of laps later. Aitken trailed him initially in the Action Express Caddy, but was immediately under pressure from Ricky Taylor in the best of the Wayne Taylor Racing entries from the General Motors brand. Taylor quickly passed Aitken, but had nothing for the Porsche ahead of him. When the white flag waved to signal the start of the final lap, the #10 Caddy was over five seconds in arrears of the second-placed Porsche. 

Ahead of the restart, PPM competition director Travis Long had told his drivers over the radio to build a gap and await further instruction. It appears none were issued. There was no explanation forthcoming from Porsche of the end-of-race hoo-ha, though Nasr’s pass for the lead was described as a “daring move” in an official Porsche communication. Penske president of racing Jonathan Diuguid reckoned that the team “had to make some difficult decisions today”, adding “but we made the right decisions to make sure we finished 1-2”. There was no elaboration on what those decisions were. 

The focus shouldn’t only be on Nasr, who also became the first driver to do the Daytona-Sebring double, the so-called 36 Hours of Florida, two years in a row...

Had Nasr lost a third Sebring victory - and second in a row - he would have had good reason to feel aggrieved. He and his team-mates were nailed on at the head of the leaderboard pretty much from midway through hour three. Their #7 entry led 241 of the 343 laps completed over the 12 hours, while the sister car was at the front for just 32 laps. 

The #7 Porsche was the quicker of the two factory Porsches, though there was very little in it. On a 100-lap average, the margin between them was just four hundredths. Estre, meanwhile, was the quickest driver of the six-strong PPM roster using the same sample: he was seven hundredths up on Nasr. 

The focus shouldn’t only be on Nasr, who also became the first driver to do the Daytona-Sebring double, the so-called 36 Hours of Florida, two years in a row. Heinrich starred in the early stages after the winning car had lost track position after a series of unscheduled stops for Nasr. One to check over the bodywork after some early argy-bargy was followed by another for a top-up of fuel and then a drive-through penalty for avoidable contact. 

Heinrich hauled the car up from ninth in the queue after the second safety car to the head of the pack in the space of a stint. He then drove off into a lead of more than 10s. “It was still early in the race and I wanted to take it easy,” said Heinrich, “but I was exiting the last corner when I overtook the first car [after the restart]. I thought, 'I’ve got some grip, I’ve got a good car - the tyres were in the window from the restart onwards'. I could really use that to my advantage and cycle to the front after this little setback we had.”

Nast is the first driver to complete a consecutive Daytona-Sebring double

Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Lumen via Getty Images

As well as further validating Porsche’s decision to promote the 24-year-old German to the prototype ranks for 2026, Heinrich’s drive through the field underlined the marque’s advantage in the GTP class in IMSA this season. The 963s were dominant at Daytona in January and at Sebring, running in a special livery of race sponsor Mobil harking back to Porsche’s GT1 contenders of 1990s, they were dominant again. A 20th outright victory at the Florida classic came despite a Balance of Performance adjustment of 10kg against them. 

The Porsche was strong in all departments: on one-lap pace and over a stint, and once again it was the benchmark car on the all-important first laps out of the pits on cold rubber. It seemed that PPM drivers, too, could stretch their fuel allocation while keeping the pace with relative ease when the need arose. 

The Action Express Caddy made life difficult for Nasr over the closing laps at Daytona this year, but here Porsche pretty much had things all its own way. “They can do what they want on less fuel,” reckoned Meyer Shank Racing Acura driver Renger van der Zande in the middle of the race. “I think they have a lot of speed in their pocket.”

Action Express eventually took the best of the rest spot with another podium for Aitken, Earl Bamber and Frederik Vesti, though only after the WTR Caddy that snuck ahead in final laps was penalised for exceeding the prescribed camber limits. That relegated Taylor, Filipe Albuquerque and Will Stevens to the back of the GTP field in the final classification. 

The first stanza of the IMSA campaign has been completed, and just like last year, Porsche is very much in the ascendant.

Porsche looks set to dominate the 2026 IMSA campaign

Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Lumen via Getty Images