A drive-through penalty for pole-sitter Neel Jani bumped Dane Cameron's Action Express Racing Cadillac DPi into the lead of the 12 Hours of Sebring after one hour.
Improper use of a fire extinguisher by a member of the Rebellion Racing pit crew meant Jani had to surrender his early lead.
The Swiss driver built a healthy five-second gap at the head of the field in his ORECA-Gibson before the first round of pit stops occurred 35 minutes into the round-the-clock enduro.
Fast work by the Action Express mechanics enabled Cameron, who started third, to cycle into the lead ahead of Jani and Christian Fittipaldi in the #5 Action Express Cadillac.
Cameron also set the fastest lap – a 1:49.692s – during the first hour of running.
Early technical problems befell two of the Prototype runners early on, including the Nissan-Onroak DPi of defending race winner Pipo Derani.
Derani came into the pits with that the ESM team described as 'boost related issues', with the repairs costing 13 laps.
The #55 Mazda DPi also dropped off the lead lap when Jonathan Bomarito picked up a left-rear puncture on the second tour.
In GTLM, Dirk Müller leads in the #68 Ford GT after the sister blue oval driven by Ryan Briscoe failed to take its place at the front of the grid.
Briscoe was allowed to start at the back of the GT field, and is currently circulating ninth in class.
Second is the Corvette C7.R of Antonio Garcia, and third the Porsche 911 RSR of Dirk Werner.
Performance Tech Motorsports currently heads up the order in Prototype Challenge, whilst the Land Motorsport Audi R8 LMS is on top in GT Daytona.
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