The debut of the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship at Sebring has been an action packed affair over the first three hours – however, we’ve actually seen less than two hours of racing.

The GT Daytona class SRT Viper of Ben Keating suffered a dramatic fire after 18 minutes – the car being engulfed in flames and suffering significant damage while track safety crew struggled to put out the flames.

The fire fight and resulting clean-up caused a one-hour long  yellow flag.

Action Express Racing led the race early before Muscle Milk Racing used great pit stop speed to leap frog into the lead at the second round of pit stops. However, a pit lane speeding penalty pushed Muscle Milk and Klaus Graf back down the pack. After three hours, there were still 12 prototypes on the lead lap.

In GTLM, Risi Competizione held a strong lead before suffering an incident just before the three hour mark. The car turned sharp right in turn one and impacted the tire barrier. In trying to get back on track, Mateo Malucelli end up back on the racing line and was struck by the GTD Porsche of Christina Nielsen.

The No.56 BMW suffered front end damage around the same time. Other GTLM cars to be delayed included the No.3 Corvette and the No.911 Porsche after contact.

Right at the three hour mark, the Farnbacher brothers led both GTLM and GTD – Dominik and Mario.

Click below to view the dramatic fire for the SRT Viper.