Sebring tweaks might nullify Cadillac’s edge

Jeff Gordon won’t be driving in the 12 Hours of Sebring on Saturday.

But high expectations remain for the Wayne Taylor Racing No. 10 Cadillac DPi-V.R team heading to the second event of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season.

This time, though, it might be more difficult to pull off a victory.

The overall winners in January at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, Jordan Taylor and Ricky Taylor will be joined by 23-year-old Alex Lynn as Gordon, a four-time NASCAR Cup champion, returns to his broadcast responsibilities with Fox Sports and Max Angelelli enjoys retirement.

Cadillac teams took the top two spots at Daytona as the Mustang Sampling team of Joao Barbosa, Christian Fittipaldi and Filipe Albuquerque finished second, 0.0671 seconds behind.

After a testing session on the 3.5-mile, 17-turn circuit, they will face tweaked regulations at Sebring that include a smaller engine air restrictor, increased car weight, a reduction of fuel cell capacity and implementation of a refueling line restrictor.

“Obviously, the changes weren’t positive for us,” Jordan Taylor said in a news release. “We had a flawless run at Daytona and had a quick car.

“We went into that weekend with more testing and more miles than anyone else, so we were ahead of the curve. Cadillac, Dallara and ECR Engines had done their homework designing and building this car coming into 2017, and we had done days and days of testing to prepare for the season.”

Barbosa expects the changes to level competition between the prototype and GT classes at Sebring.

“This is one (of ) the roughest tracks and toughest races of the year, but I think our team and Cadillac will perform very well,” he said in a news release.

“At the test, we saw that we lost quite a bit of top speed, and for the race it’s going to be even worse. We will have only a minor advantage comparing to GT class and that will make it hard to overtake.

“But this is something we cannot control so we will do the best we can with whatever we will have for the race. Sebring can be very hot. With our Corvette DPs we were prepared for the heat, but with the little room we have in our Cadillac we will have to be creative to have the cockpit to be as cool as possible. It will be a challenging race.”