SEBRING, Fla. — The Peugeot 908 driven by Franck Montagny, Sebastien Bourdais and Stephane Sarrazin held a narrow lead over one of the new Audi R15 entries Saturday at the halfway point of the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.
Montagny was at the wheel of the lead car, with Allan McNish, sharing the Audi with Tom Kristensen and Rinaldo Capelli, just 13.474 seconds behind on the 3.7-mile, 17-turn track at Sebring International Raceway.
“This is going to be a great race,” said Kristensen, an eight-time winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. “The track is rubbering in and the temperatures are dropping, so I expect to see faster lap times coming.”
The leaders started at the back of the 28-car field after having to replace their power steering pump before the race. But, with Montagny starting, the No. 08 Peugeot sliced through traffic, quickly caught the leaders and eventually got out front.
The lead would have been bigger except for a spin by Formula One driver Bourdais, which cost his team 24 seconds.
As expected, the main competition for the returning diesel-powered Peugeots came from the diesel-powered LMP1 class entries from Audi and the petrol-engine Acuras, both debuting all-new cars.
The second Audi, shared by Mike Rockenfeller, Marco Werner and Lucas Luhr, was just one lap off the pace at halfway, and the Acura ARX 02a driven by Gil de Ferran, pole-winner Scott Dixon and Simon Pagenaud was two laps back.
The other Acura LMP1 entry came back from a spin by David Brabham, co-driving with Dario Franchitti and Scott Sharp, to hold down fifth place, three laps behind the leader.
The second Peugeot, which led early in the race, fell to seventh, nine laps back after spending considerable time in the pits to repair the air conditioning unit.
“I was quite suffering in the car,” said Christian Klien, co-driving the French entry with Pedro Lamy and Nic Minassian. “It was very hot. It started about 10 laps before I came in.”
A year-old Acura co-driven by Adrian Fernandez and Luis Diaz was sixth, leading the LMP2 class, with a Corvette shared by Jan Magnussen, Johnny O’Connell and Antonio Garcia at the front of the GT1 class in eighth place overall, and the Ferrari of Pierre Kaffer, Jamie Melo and Mika Salo on top of the GT2 class in 10th overall.
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