DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — One of the callers on an IMSA-hosted media Zoom with drivers to preview the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring observed that the six weeks since the Rolex 24 At Daytona staged Jan. 24-25 somehow felt longer than the 15-week offseason leading into the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s traditional season opener.
“Yeah, it’s true, it feels like a lot of downtime,” responded Felipe Nasr, who is coming off his third consecutive overall and Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class victory in Daytona’s 24-hour classic in the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963, this year in partnership with co-drivers Julien Andlauer and Laurin Heinrich.
“I wish there was a race in February,” he mused. “At the same time, it feels like it went just too quick from December to offseason to Daytona, so it’s good to also have some time after Daytona, just to enjoy what just happened and gather the team and catch up with everybody and prepare for Sebring again.”
But Nasr, a three-time champion in the WeatherTech Championship’s top prototype class, and Porsche Penske Motorsport have been anything but inactive. For one thing, they recently tested at Sebring International Raceway in preparation for the 74th running of the 12-hour endurance classic, the second of five rounds in the 2026 IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup for races six hours and longer.
Nasr and the No. 7 Porsche followed up their 2025 Rolex 24 win with victories at Sebring and on the streets of Long Beach, but results faded in the second half of the season and PPM’s No. 6 entry rallied to win the GTP class championship. No stone is being left unturned as Nasr – a 15-time winner in 71 IMSA starts – looks to add another championship to the ones he achieved in 2018, 2021 and 2024. Particularly after a fourth one got away in 2025.
“We’ve been speaking and meeting up with the team – ‘catch-ups’ about what we learned from Daytona and what we learned from the Sebring test, whether it’s tires, aero, or everything that we go through at the past races,” Nasr said. “This keeps us in the loop and what we expect at Sebring. We’ve got to improve. At the same time, I’m always keeping myself sharp and preparing for Sebring, which is pretty physical for us drivers.
“I thought the car was pretty good at our test at Sebring a couple weeks ago,” he added. “I feel like it’s all in a good window and we learned a lot in that test. I feel like we’re in a good baseline to start and take it from there on the race weekend.”
Sebring is renowned for its bumpy surface, so perhaps it is appropriate that Cadillac – a marque which has for decades been associated with a smooth ride in its street cars – has compiled an impressive record at the Florida airfield circuit.
The 2024 Sebring winning trio of Jordan Taylor, Louis Deletraz, and Colton Herta has been reunited for IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup races this year in the No. 40 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac V-Series.R, and Deletraz is eager to recapture their victorious chemistry.
“We had great success in 2024, and I think that was one of the best races in my career so far,” said the 28-year-old Swiss driver, recalling one of his three IMSA race wins. “Hopefully we can do that again, and being back with Jordan and Colton is good. The Cadillac is really strong in Sebring – we were testing for two days. I think we had some time to prep well and I’m really excited because I think we’ve got a good shot at it. We’ll give it a good go, and I’m really looking forward to it.”
Tom Dillmann shared IMSA’s Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) class championship in 2024 and claimed his second career race win at the 2025 Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring with co-drivers Bijoy Garg and Jeremy Clarke. That trio is reunited in 2026 in the No. 43 Inter Europol Competition ORECA LMP2 07. They’re coming off a second-place class finish in the Rolex 24, where they were joined by Antonio Felix da Costa.
Dillmann cites the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring as one of his favorite events, and he is eager to defend his class win in the quest for a second IMSA LMP2 championship.
“As someone with a passion for motorsport, Sebring is one of those events that matters so much,” he said. “Winning last year really mattered to me – I was really happy to win that classic race. We have the same lineup this year, the same team, and the car is strong there. There’s no reason for us not to be in position to repeat the win of last year.
“We started the championship pretty well, and the goal is again to win the championship,” Dillmann added. “We need to maximize every race and make no mistakes – and we know how to do it.”
The No. 43 Inter Europol team is one of several heavy hitters in the mix vying for LMP2 honors at Sebring and in the overall championship. They include the No. 99 ORECA from defending class champion AO Racing, the two-car entry from United Autosports USA, and the No. 04 fielded by CrowdStrike Racing by APR, among others.
Toby Sowery was part of the winning No. 04 lineup at this year’s Rolex 24, along with George Kurtz, Alex Quinn, and Malthe Jakobsen. The victory at Daytona was the first in the WeatherTech Championship for 29-year-old Englishman Sowery and he’s fired up about the competition in LMP2 – one of IMSA’s hidden gems.
“LMP2 is kind of overlooked because there’s not manufacturers involved and the cars aren’t brand new, so everyone has kind of really upped their level,” he remarked. “The cars and the drivers are all so close – we’re really at the top end of the ceiling of what we can do with the car and drivers. The racing is always impressive and the cars are really reliable as well. To extract everything and win a race is no small task, and I think it definitely does get overlooked a little bit.”
