Patrick Long and the Flying Lizard team were effectively out of the 60th annual Mobil One 12 Hours of Sebring before even crossing the start/finish line at the drop of the green flag. As the GT field bunched for the green flag approaching the start/finish line, Long’s teammate Jörg Bergmeister was wiped out by a GTE-AM categorized Ferrari that failed to slow in traffic, breaking the entire left rear suspension assembly of the #45 Flying Lizard Porsche 911 GT3 RSR. As the iconic race got off to its’ start, the Porsche was towed to the pits, where the Lizards replaced the entire assembly; the team lost just under an hour of green-flag racing getting the car into race-able condition.
Long, Bergmeister and teammate Marco Holzer entered the race nearly 30 laps down, determined to score championship points – the requirement of which in ALMS competition is to complete 70% of the laps of the class-winning car and take the checkered flag. Patrick said, “Sebring seems to be the toughest place for Flying Lizard, but the boys dug deep again and we were able to bank some valuable championship points. Late in the race, the residual damage from the incident at the start meant that we had to repair the left rear suspension a second time, but true to form the Lizards and their ‘never say die’ attitude had us back out and able to take the checkered flag. Relative to last year, we feel like the Porsche 911 GT3 RSR is in good shape – we’re closer to where we need to be than we were at this stage in 2011. Everyone’s in good spirits, and we’ll be hammering around the streets of Long Beach before we know it.”
The American Le Mans Series next races in Long Beach, CA on April 13-14. Live streaming of the event will be available at https://watchespn.com, and television coverage will be at 7:30pm ET, Saturday April 14 on ESPN2.