Sebring: Hour ten notes

AUDI, ACURA CLOSE IN ON HISTORIC SEBRING WINS

The Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring is winding down into darkness. With two hours to go, Marco Werner was driving his Audi R10 TDI to an eighth consecutive overall win and second in a row for the diesel-powered car on Saturday. Werner was a half minute ahead of the first of the new Acura prototypes as Bryan Herta continued to peddle the Andretti Green Racing Acura ARX closer and closer to an LMP2 win in its maiden race.

Acura comfortably held the top two spots in class as Luis Diaz in the Lowe's Fernandez Acura-powered Lola was up by five laps on the third-place class car of Timo Bernhard for Penske Racing in a Porsche RS Spyder.

Corvette Racing's Oliver Gavin remained ahead of teammate Jan Magnussen by 11 seconds as last year's race winners battled for the GT1 class crown in new driver lineups. Gavin is with Olivier Beretta and Max Papis. Magnussen is driving with Ron Fellows and Johnny O'Connell.

The GT2 class battle between Flying Lizard Motorsports and Risi Competizione was the best of the race's second half. Jaime Melo and the Ferrari F430 GT held a three-second lead over Porsche factory driver Jorg Bergmeister in the Flying Lizard Porsche 911 GT3 RSR as the clock wound down. In 2006, the two finished on the same lap as the winning factory Panoz Esperante GTLM, and a similar finish was shaping up Saturday night.

-credit: alms