Florida Storms Rain Out Sebring Qualifying

FL, March 17, 2005. Unfortunately, due to torrential rain, today's official qualifying for the 12 Hours of Sebring was cancelled and the grid will be made up from the practice times of Wednesday and Thursday. This is both good and bad news for Pirelli since it means that the Pirelli-shod Panoz GTR will start from the front row of the GT2 grid, but the Maserati MC12, which was still going through its process of set-up, will start 9th on the GT1 grid. Most of the Pirelli teams were looking forward to a 'wet' qualifying, since in this morning's wet practice sessions the added value of Pirelli's rain tires really shone through. With their rear mounted engines and skinnier tires, many of the GT2 class Porsches outshone their more powerful GT1 rivals, the privately run Pirelli-shod Porsche of Ivankovich/Pumpelly/Lally ending the session 2nd overall. The conditions were so wet that most of the P1 and P2 class cars didn't venture out at all. Neither did any of the Aston Martins. The Maserati MC12 was second quickest in GT1, comfortably ahead of the works Corvettes for the first time during the week. Tonight's night practice again saw the Pirelli runners shine. Still wet after the afternoon rain, the circuit remained quite treacherous. This time the Pirelli-shod Ivankovich/Pumpelly/Lally was quickest in the GT2 class, while the Maserati was again second quickest in GT1. For Saturday's race however, the weather forecast is for more of Florida's traditional sunshine, so a dry track is expected. This will create more of challenge for the brand new Maserati, which has had time to test at Sebring only for a few hours, rather than the many days undertaken by the rival teams of Corvette, Aston Martin and Saleen. Further burdened by an initial weight penalty limiting its performance, the Maserati drivers Bertolini/De Simone/Babini will be relying on the cars strong reliability to challenge their GT1 rivals in the 12 hour race. The official Pirelli representatives in GT2, the Panoz Esperantes, have proven to be among the quickest cars in their class, taking on the hordes of Porsches that constitute the bulk of GT2. In the past, niggling reliability problems have been the teams Achilles' heal but Panoz has worked hard over the winter to sort these out and the hope is for a trouble free run to a potential victory. The Auberlen/Liddell/Naspetti car will start from the front row of the GT2 grid with the Maxwell/Sellers/Jeannette sister car in 5th place.