(March 30th, 2020- San Diego, CA) Was it the longest 12 hours of my life or the quickest? Physically and mentally, I felt like the 12 hours of Sebring took more out of me than any other race I’ve competed in. From the green flag at 10:10am to the checkered at 10:10pm on Saturday, March 12th, it all feels like a blur. A blur filled with adrenaline, bumps, and wicked fast race cars. It has been some time since I last wrote a blog, but after reflecting on my first IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car event, I thought it would be fun to highlight the new experience.

From the start of my career, I found myself pushing hard on the open-wheel route and aiming for INDYCAR, but in recent years, I’ve found a very happy home in sportscars. Over the last three years, I’ve been fortunate to gain valuable experience with the LMP3 platform and MLT Motorsports racing in the IMSA Prototype Challenge (IPC); and most recently, all our hard work paid off when we won the IPC championship for the 2021 season. IPC is incredibly fun and features hard racing in a more or less “sprint” (1 hour and 45 minutes) format. To make it even better, you race on the same weekend as “the big show” (i.e., WeatherTech), which provides an extra bit of motivation when you’re so close to the pinnacle of sports car racing every weekend.

Racing in WeatherTech has consistently been a goal and dream of mine. Watching 50+ race cars battle it out for 6, 10, 12, and 24 hours straight is exhilarating. Needless to say, when I got the call from Billy Glavin at JRIII asking if I would like to join their team for the 12 hours of Sebring event, I couldn’t say “yes” fast enough. It was nearly a perfect opportunity. JRIII presents an extremely competitive program (as I raced against JRIII throughout the 2021 IPC season). They also maintain a strong driver pairing with Ari Balogh and Garrett Grist and has a wonderful atmosphere with a great attitude. Before diving deep into the weekend details, I should preface this blog by saying I can’t thank JRIII, Airbnb, and Billy enough for this opportunity.

Pre-race. Heading into the race weekend, I felt confident given everything listed above, but I also knew I needed to learn a lot in the short time before taking the green flag on Saturday. I haven’t felt like I was “behind the 8 ball”, in terms of experience, in a while. I guess that happens when you step up into WeatherTech series for the first time! Nevertheless, I was ready to begin working and approached each session similar to previous my prior outings. My main goal for the practice sessions was to gain experience passing and being passed with minimal risk and minimal time loss. From there, I would filter in the standard items with improving myself, the car, and checking off any items the team had for me.

Throughout the practice sessions I became more and more comfortable working through the GTD cars and specifically understanding where they were slower (and sometimes faster!) than us. It was interesting to see how differently the GTD cars performed. Having raced with Racers Edge Motorsports last year in the Acura NSX GT3 EVO, I knew differences existed between the platforms, but being at a WeatherTech event gave me a new perspective on being in the LMP3 abd trying to pass a Lexus versus an Acura, an Aston Martin, and so on. This dynamic makes you strategize when and where a pass needs to be made. Honestly though, strategizing and executing a pass on a slower car was not incredibly challenging. I think it is something we consistently do as drivers, whether you’re in a mixed class format or in a spec series. It’s something we have become accustomed to.

What was particularly new and challenging for me was getting passed by DPi and LMP2 cars. Being nearly 10 seconds per lap slower than 15 other race cars on track is a intense dynamic. I’ve never looked in my mirrors so many times during a race. Unlike when you are passing a slower car, you don’t necessarily have time or the ability to choose when or how to change positions. A DPi may not be in sight when you exit Turn 17, but it’ll be underneath you at the apex of Turn 3. This general uncertainty is something I had to get comfortable with, and luckily, I had a fantastic spotter helping me throughout the race.

Race Day. Absorbing everything we learned from the 4 practice sessions and qualifying, the team felt cautiously optimistic going into the race. Our pace wasn’t stellar, but we had a very driveable car that we were confident would come to us when the sun sets. Ari would start the car for us after qualifying P8.

As he strapped in the car, I wished him a fun and safe stint. From there, 12 hours of intense racing began. I’ve watched the 12 hours of Sebring as a fan and spectator many times, and what I’ve learned is--anything can happen--at any time during the race. Some of the wildest starts, battles, and finishes in IMSA have happened at this race. What I certainly didn’t expect was for the first 3 hours of the race to be completely without caution. Ari did a great job of completing a triple stint to start us off and a caution came out just as we needed it to bring us back on the lead lap. Anyone who lives in Florida or was at that race can understand truly how challenging it is to do a triple stint without caution around Sebring. The heat was brutal. The humidity was brutal. Sebring is brutal.

I jumped in after Ari and was slated to drive a triple stint. As with most races, cautions breed cautions, and the first stint that I was in the car was mainly practicing IMSA’s wave around and class split procedure. These yellows worked into our favor as we went from being on the lead lap back in 6th and off cycle with strategy to all the way up to 3rd and on cycle with the leaders. Two more stints of clean racing found us in consistent contention with the top 3, and at the halfway point, we were able to get Garrett in the car. This gave me about 1.5 hours to go get a quick meal, rehydrate, stretch, and cool off. A big shout out to Billy’s dad for making the best peanut butter sandwich and fruit entrée I’ve had.

With Garrett in the car now, we were in a very solid fight for a podium and even snagged the lead a couple times. Garrett is an incredibly fast driver with lots of experience. He was a great teammate throughout the weekend and absolutely killed it out on track. Our pace was better than expected and at the end of his stint we were in a solid 2nd place with the race evolving into a 5-car showdown as attrition set in. I got back into the car around the 8-hour mark to start my double stint. We were running in 2nd at the start of my stint, and I knew if we could keep the leaders in sight and keep the car clean, we could have a shot for the win. About halfway into the first part of my stint, 2 other competitors had issues which meant that it was essentially us and Sean Creech fighting for the win. It was awesome seeing the sun get lower and lower lap after lap (except for T17 which was essentially now blind). The race almost lulled into night racing and you could tell there was a change in the dynamics of the race. The pace was getting faster, DPI cars were getting aggressive, and the realization that a win at the 12 Hours of Sebring is right at our fingertips. By the end of my double stint we were about 40 seconds behind 2nd place and we were in the fight for the lead with around 1.5 hours to go. Garrett got in the car and was carving through traffic making up time on P1. The team made a great call to pit Garrett later than the Creech car (who also made a driver change during the pitstop) which allowed us to do a splash and go bringing the gap down to 15 seconds. It was so exciting to watch, and the last hour of the race was a scrap to try and run down the leaders. Lap after lap Garrett pushed as hard as he could to make up time but, in the end, we just didn’t quite have enough pace to challenge for the lead. Nevertheless, it was an amazing effort by the whole team. From all the prep work at the shop, to pitstops, strategy, engineering, and driving the result was truly a massive team effort.

I remember walking down pit road towards the podium after the checkered flag flew, fireworks going off the backstraight, a huge sofa couch bonfire in the infield, thinking to myself how lucky I am. To get the opportunity to race in WeatherTech and to be on the podium with a fantastic group around me is something I’ve dreamed of. I’m more determined now than I have ever been to keep pushing towards my goals and I’m very excited for the next event.

My next event will be at Mid Ohio Sports Car Course, again in the LMP3 class within WeatherTech, but this time I will be reunited with MLT Motorsports and Josh Sarchet! It will be a really great experience and I can’t wait to take everything that I’ve learned and apply it towards our race together. I also look forward to seeing the JRIII team out on track and hopefully will be having a scrap for the win with them! I can’t thank you all enough for following my progress and I hope I can write up a blog detailing my first WeatherTech win after Mid Ohio! In the meantime, I’ll be active on social media via Instagram/twitter (@dickersonracing) and facebook/youtube (Dakota Dickerson Racing).

The 12 Hours of Sebring - 2022