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Starting the 12th hour, the lead gap falls as low as 7 seconds (66—59) before the second placed #59 Fabcar must pit. It emerges 65 seconds adrift.
The Saleen powers on in pursuit of lost time - a flurry of quick laps including two in the 1:51s are beginning to make an impact on the Mosler ahead. The quickest of all of them, a 1:51.4 is good enough for third fastest race lap overall, so far bettered only by the #59 Fabcar and #88 Multimatic.
The leader pits on lap 328 and the #59 Brumos Fabcar moves ahead. Whatever happens now Kevin Buckler and The Racers Group can look back on this race as a fantastic success. They have led the race so far for a total of 156 laps, including an unbroken sequence of 103 laps. Forget the DP / SRP controversy, that's a fantastic achievement by any measure and we're not even halfway there yet.
The #66 car emerges 27 seconds adrift of the new leader.
The #34 Ferrari's woes mean that a GTS car (The #46 Morgan Dollar Corvette) is back in the overall top 10.
10 minutes until the halfway point and there is an unscheduled stop for the leader! A tire went down at start / finish so that the car had to crawl around for service. Scott Sharp took over from Goodyear and they have dropped to third behind the Rennwerks entry. It is now DP cars 3-4-5, Brumos-Cegwa-Multimatic.
The hard-charging #66 car is back in the lead with the #83 Rennwerks Porsche now in second – it’s a GT 1-2 overall for the second time in the race.
The Fabcar rejoins in 3rd place after a 5 minute stop, with the Multimatic closing in.
The Picchio is now back on track, albeit in 33rd slot 146 laps behind the leader. 6th place overall is (still!) the leading SRPII car, the metronomic #97 Lucchini.
Ryan Hampton slid into the wall in the #34 Ferri / Risi 360, at the same exact spot as did Brent Martini in the Washington 360. Luca di Montezemolo has called to complain that Porsche has installed a Ferrari magnet at Daytona. The Risi team expected repairs to take a half-hour. The main problem is that the starter motor bracket has become dislodged.
Mauro Casadei is quite despondent about Ried’s choice of changing a cylinder head on the no. 51 Porsche immediately before the start. He reckons that it caused the car’s early failure.
The race reaches crossed flags under the half-mast Old Glory with the Buckler team in an almost dominant two-lap lead. The Multimatic-Ford is now the fastest car on course, putting some concern into the Brumos pits. Further down the field, the Perspective Mosler has returned to the race. It lies fourth in class, behind the Morgan Corvette, Russkie 996, and the “fast” Rollcentre Mosler.
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