Sellers reported a long brake pedal with two hours remaining, so the team replaced the rotors and calipers. But the right-front rotor didn’t seat into the hub properly, and van der Linde returned to the pits with the wheel almost coming adrift.
The car returned to the track three laps down, handing second in GTD Pro to the pole-winning AO Racing Porsche 911 of Laurin Heinrich, Seb Priaulx and Michael Christensen.
Beyond that trio, everyone else suffered all kinds of major problems.
One of the first casualties of the race was the GTD Pro Lexus, which had to undergo lengthy radiator repairs after striking a wayward LMP2 car while leading in Mike Conway’s hands in the opening hour.
The Pfaff Motorsports McLaren suffered a litany of issues, which began with a front-right upright problem while leading at the start of Hour 4.
The Corvettes ran strongly until the #3 (fire) and #4 hit trouble and joined it in the garage for some time.
Ford’s new Mustang also featured near the front at times but fell away with mechanical problems that included a rear decklid issue, while the #65 Multimatic car required a new rear wing with three hours to go.
In the pro-am category, the #57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 emerged as the dominant force during the night-time hours, in the hands of Russell Ward, Philip Ellis, Indy Dontje and Daniel Morad – and the latter brought it home.
Lexus lost a likely second placed finish when Parker Thompson’s car suffered a plenum fire in its engine with just 50 minutes to go.
Miguel Molina took the fight to Morad in the closing laps in his #21 AF Corse Ferrari 296 he shared with Simon Mann, Francois Heriau and Kei Cozzolino but had to settle for second by 3s.