Motorsport: Kiwi driver Earl Bamber preparing for emotional farewell for Porsche at Twelve Hours of Sebring

Kiwi Earl Bamber will race for Porsche GT for the final time this weekend at the 12 Hours of Sebring. Photo / Photosport

This weekend's IMSA Twelve Hours of Sebring will be bittersweet for Porsche factory driver and New Zealander Earl Bamber. It will be the last race for the Porsche GT programme in the GT Le Mans category after seven years, and Bamber has been part of the programme from the beginning.

"It's a sad ending but it has been a great seven years with the programme," Bamber told the Weekend Herald on his way to the track.

"We've built up something quite special in that time and it's where I stared my career as a Porsche factory driver and it's special to be here for their last race.

"I'm really looking forward to doing the race and going out on a high. Either way, there will be some emotion with all the guys who have been on my car for the last seven years."

He's certainly going out in style this weekend, racing in both the number 911 and number 912 car during the 12 hour race.

"I'm entered in both cars, so have double the chance of getting on the podium or winning. There's a bit of a shortage of drivers so they [Porsche] entered me across both cars.

"I won't be exceeding drive limits in one car and as long as I don't exceed the seven hours racing limit I'll be okay. It'll be a challenge and something I haven't done before so it should be fun.

"Making sure I get into the right car at the right time isn't my job," said Bamber with a laugh, "it's those smart guys in garage's job. I just have to keep them both off the wall."

Bamber and his regular co-driver Laurens Vanthoor are the defending champions of the IMSA Championship, but have had a year to forget in 2020. It all started out so well with two seconds and a third, and then the wheels fell off.

A run of six races blighted by bad luck, mechanical gremlins, miscalculations and driver error saw the pair drop down the points ladder. It wasn't until their last outing at Laguna Seca where they managed to win - Bamber now has won a race on every track on the calendar - that their points haul started to look a bit more respectful.

They now sit sixth in the championship with no hope of defending their title.

"In the middle of the season we just had one thing after another go wrong," says Bamber.

"We had a good hard look at ourselves. We were on for a good result at Road Atlanta and a Porsche one-two but we made contact on the last lap. That's life I suppose.

"Then we went to Laguna Seca where we'd never won at. Our engineer had a really good strategy and we had a good car. I'd say it was the first race of the season we did a race that we wanted to do.

"We're nowhere in the points though as we missed Mid-Ohio due to Covid. This weekend is obviously the final race of the programme and we're just going all out for glory."

Now that Porsche has pulled out of America GT racing, Bamber isn't quite too sure what 2021 will be like for him. After this weekend's race he's heading back to New Zealand to see what washes out over the next month or so.

"There are plans for next year, but I can't really say at the moment. I'll still be a Porsche driver and with the company in some capacity and that's all I can say.

"There's interest from drivers for our Earl Bamber Motorsport team but Covid is causing a fair amount of grief. It's the same for a lot of other people and it's hard to make any concrete plans.

"I'll just have to see what happens over the next month or so and see what races I have to do."