Marino Franchitti wins Twelve Hours of Sebring

SEBRING, Fla. -- After 11 hours 39 minutes of racing, the 62nd annual Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring still didn't have a clear leader.

That's when Marino Franchitti took off.

Franchitti bolted away from the field on a restart with 21 minutes left and went on to win the annual 12-hour sports car endurance race Saturday at Sebring International Raceway, giving Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates a win in its first Sebring race and helping co-drivers Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas and the team score benchmark victories.

The victory made Ganassi the first motorsports team owner to win the Indianapolis 500, the Daytona 500, the Brickyard 400, the Rolex 24 at Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring.

Franchitti, the 35-year-old younger brother of recently retired IndyCar driver Dario Franchitti, won a class at Sebring for the second consecutive year and further padded his growing sports car resume.

"I had a good restart, so I just had to hit my marks," Franchitti said. "Traffic didn't work out too well at the end -- I let them get closer -- but I managed to have a good last couple of laps and extend the lead again a little bit. I knew if I didn't mess up, we'd be fine. I just had to concentrate on hitting the marks."

The merger this year of the Grand-Am and American Le Mans Series under NASCAR-controlled IMSA TUDOR United SportsCar Championship put Ganassi's sports car operation at Sebring -- formerly an ALMS event -- for the first time in the team's 14 years of existence.

The result was Ganassi's 159th overall win as a team owner, Franchitti's second consecutive class win at Sebring -- he won the P2 class last year with Level 5 Motorsports -- and Pruett's second class win at Sebring and first since he teamed with Bruce Jenner to win in 1986.

Ganassi's team changed from BMW to Ford engines during the offseason and added several new drivers, including Franchitti and Tony Kanaan and Sage Karam, who helped the team's No. 02 car finish sixth Saturday.

"We brought a lot of upgrades here to Sebring, and the hard work we put in since January really paid off," said Pruett, now the winningest driver in modern sports car history with 57 overall wins. "What a great event, though. I haven't been to Sebring in years, and I know this is one that is really high up on Chip's list of races to win."

Franchitti made a pit stop just before a yellow flag flew with 51 minutes remaining. He stayed out when the leaders, including Ryan Dalziel, Sebastien Bourdais and Olivier Pla, pitted, and inherited the lead. When the race restarted with 21 minutes left, Franchitti's No. 01 Ford Riley DP held off Dalziel, who finished 4.682 seconds behind in the No. 1 Extreme Speed Motorsports Honda-powered HPD ARX-03b with co-drivers Scott Sharp and David Brabham.

Dalziel finished just 4.273 seconds ahead of Action Express Racing's No. 5 Corvette DP co-driven by Sebastien Bourdais, Joao Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi.

Franchitti credited the car's improved performance after the sun went down, something the team noticed in practice sessions before the race.

"We knew the car would be good in the dark," he said. "I just had a nice clean track in front of me."

Colin Braun won the Prototype Challenge class in the No. 54 ORECA FLM09 with co-drivers Jon Bennett and James Gue. Jorg Bergmeister won the GT Le Mans class with co-drivers Patrick Long and Michael Christensen in the No. 912 Porsche 911 RSR.