| DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (March 21, 2019) –Last Saturday’s 67th Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Presented by Advance Auto Parts was a tremendous success both on and off the racetrack for IMSA and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. The four-day event – billed as “Super Sebring” with the IMSA MICHELIN Pilot Challenge’s Alan Jay 120, the one-hour, 45-minute IMSA Prototype Challenge race and the addition of Friday’s inaugural 1,000 Miles of Sebring FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) race set an all-time Sebring International Raceway attendance record. Ticket sales and camping increased by more than 40 percent from 2018 to 2019. Event merchandise sales reached unprecedented levels this year, more than double what was considered an impressive sales figure in 2018. U.S. television viewership of the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Presented by Advance Auto Parts on CNBC and NBCSN saw a 46 percent increase over 2018. On the track, three of the four classes in the Twelve Hours saw margins of victory under three seconds. That included an all-time record margin of victory overall of 1.030 seconds by the winning No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac DPi-V.R of Felipe Nasr, Pipo Derani and Eric Curran over the second-place No. 10 Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi co-driven by Jordan Taylor, Renger van der Zande and Matthieu Vaxiviere.“We could not be prouder of what we collectively accomplished last weekend at Sebring,” said IMSA President Scott Atherton. “Two world-class sports endurance sports car races were flawlessly organized and executed, garnering rave reviews from fans, media, competitors and stakeholders. “After 12 hours of intense racing, much of it occurring in challenging wet conditions, the margin of victory was just one second. The bottom line is, I am not aware of any other motorsports event that has generated this level of record-setting performance and year-over-year growth.” Next up for the WeatherTech Championship is the 100-minute BUBBA burger Sports Car Grand Prix at Long Beach on Saturday, April 13. The race features only the DPi and GT Le Mans (GTLM) classes as part of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach event weekend. |
