Imsa at Sebring: Jack Aitken’s Pole, a New Tire, and the Heat-Soaked Unknown

The paddock at Sebring feels like a workshop built on heat and waiting, and in the middle of it, imsa teams are weighing a simple, uncomfortable trade: push early, or preserve tires for later. On the eve of the 74th Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, pole-sitter Jack Aitken framed the opening hours not as a sprint for glory, but as a test of restraint shaped by a hard limit—11 tire sets per car from qualifying through the race.

What is shaping the opening hours of the race?

It is not only pace. It is planning. Aitken believes the opening stages will likely see GTP teams double-stint their Michelin tires, a choice driven by the limited tire allocation. The way the race tends to unfold, he said, nudges teams into extending tire life early—exactly when the conditions are most punishing.

“The way the race runs, it pushes you to a double stint early in the race when it’s hot, which is pretty unpleasant, ” Aitken said. “We’ve had to do it in previous years, and it’s not been a major issue… This year we are going into a bit of the unknown because nobody has pushed that much mileage on the [new] tire in practice this weekend. I’m sure it will be fine. ”

For the people turning wrenches and the drivers climbing in and out of the cars, that “unknown” is not abstract. It is the difference between confidence and caution when the opening stint starts to stretch, the steering starts to load up, and the race begins asking questions nobody can fully answer from short practice runs.

Why does the new Michelin tire matter this weekend?

Teams are still coming to grips with Michelin’s new-for-2026 Pilot Sport Endurance tire, which is the Medium compound this weekend. The tire limit is the same for the top class as last year, but familiarity is not. Aitken described the tire as an upgrade, saying it addressed issues from the previous tire and that he would not expect degradation to be “especially worse. ”

Still, his central point was not reassurance—it was realism. Nobody, he said, has pushed that much mileage on the new tire in practice this weekend. In endurance racing, where strategy lives and dies in the margins, limited long-run experience can turn every early decision into a measured gamble.

That uncertainty hangs over imsa operations in a way that fans may only see later: engineers watching the first long stints, teams comparing wear patterns, and drivers translating feel into data—corner by corner, lap by lap—while trying not to ask too much of the tires too soon.

How did a red-flag rule reshape qualifying and the grid?

Saturday’s qualifying delivered a rare twist: it marked only the second time in series history where the quickest car in a class did not win the pole because it was stripped of its fastest lap. The reason traced back to a rule introduced at the beginning of the 2025 season—penalizing a car for bringing out a red flag in a practice session.

Ironically, PJ Hyett was involved on both occasions. The AO Racing team owner-driver crashed his No. 99 Oreca 07 Gibson in opening practice on Thursday. He later produced a benchmark 1: 50. 941 in qualifying and was on track to go quicker, but suffered a slight hiccup on his final flying lap. The result: Hyett lost the class pole, echoing last year’s Motul Petit Le Mans, where he also lost pole in a similar situation and Inter Europol Competition’s Jeremy Clarke was promoted.

This time, the shift elevated Bryan Herta Autosport with PR1/Mathiasen’s Misha Goikhberg to his first career WeatherTech Championship pole—achieved in only his second race as a newly minted FIA Bronze-rated driver, and in his first qualifying attempt in class. Asked if he had experienced anything like it, Goikhberg replied: “No. [Hyett] did throw it off in T17, so he was trying!”

For a driver, a first pole can be the cleanest headline and the most complicated emotion—earned on merit, shaped by rules, and still demanding execution when the green flag finally rewrites everything.

Which other qualifying moments set the tone for Saturday?

In GTD Pro, Jack Hawksworth hit a milestone—his 100th WeatherTech Championship race—by smashing the GTD Pro qualifying lap record in a Lexus RC F GT3. The session showed depth as well as speed: the top eight in class were made up of seven different GT3 manufacturers, separated by less than one second.

Hawksworth described a turnaround in competitiveness after a difficult start to the season. “Honestly, from the minute we rolled out in FP1, I think we were surprised at how competitive we’ve been, ” he said. “We came off the back of really being uncompetitive at Daytona. We knew we were going to be better at this race. But we’re more in the mix than we thought we were. ”

There was also a sharp reminder that Saturday speed must survive scrutiny. The No. 48 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, which had initially qualified second in GTD Pro with Luca Stolz, will start from the rear of the class after failing to meet minimum ride height requirements in post-qualifying technical inspection. It was the only technical infraction from qualifying, and it promoted the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO to a front row start.

In GTD, Heart of Racing Team’s Eduardo Barrichello scored a maiden class pole, with the top eight qualifiers featuring six GT3 manufacturers. His pole also marked the first pole for an Aston Martin in the race since 2006, when Pedro La…

As the light fades in the Sebring paddock and teams settle into the last checks before tomorrow, the storyline returns to that early, hot double-stint Aitken expects—an opening chapter written by limits, a new tire, and the uneasy calm of not fully knowing how it will behave when the race stretches long. In that tension, imsa reveals its most human truth: every confident decision is still made in the shadow of what the next stint might bring.