A previous 24 Hours of Le Mans winner shined yet again during the qualifying session at the 12 Hours of Sebring when Neel Jani beat the track record for a prototype in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with a time of 1:48:178, an improvement of nearly three seconds on the time established by Olivier Pla in 2015 (1:51:152) with a Ligier JS P2.

The Swiss driver joined the Rebellion Racing team for two races - the Rolex 24 at Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring - before joining Porsche for the kickoff of the World Endurance Championship (WEC). This weekend, the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans winner will share the wheel of the Oreca 07 with Nick Heidfeld (a longtime member of the Swiss team) and Sébastien Buemi, official Toyota driver at Le Mans and one of his main rivals.

Like Neel Jani in Prototype, Ford made its mark in GTLM (the equivalent of LM GTE Pro overseas) with a new track record for Ryan Briscoe, third at Le Mans in 2016, in 1:55:939 - 2.5 seconds faster than the time clocked by Bill Auberlen and the BMW M6 last year.

Unlike the Prototype class in which the first five cars are within the same second, it's the first nine in GTLM - in other words, 90% of the field: only Risi Competizione's Ferrari 488 is at nearly two seconds. The battle between the three Ford GTs, the two Chevrolet Corvette C7.Rs, the two Porsche 911 RSRs, the two BMW M6s and the Ferrari 488 GTE is extremely promising, often the case in this class.

The start of the 12 Hours of Sebring, live-streamed on the IMSA website for those outside of North America, will be given Saturday, March 18th at 10:40 a.m., 2:40 p.m. in the U.K.

Timing Results

Photo (Copyright-Richard Dole/IMSA): Rebellion Racing's #13 Oreca in which Neel clinched the pole at the 65th edition of the 12 Hours of Sebring.