270 replies to this topic

[Prost1997T]

A GTLM Corvette crashes out with Oliver Gavin at the wheel. Full course yellow.

[jonpollak]

It's on now

[jonpollak]

007 leads in class

[Imateria]

007 leads in class

Big fight, half a second in it at the moment.

[jonpollak]

And Dixie stalls it

[Prost1997T]

2nd is the best Dixon/Ganassi can do, they haven't had the outright speed all weekend.

[paulb]

Go Fisi!

[Afterburner]

Up on the terrace for the end of the race. Again wishing I could share pictures with you guys. Been a fun day overall even if my favorites barely made it halfway.

Hats off to the #5. They earned this one.

[paulb]

Nuts, 62 late pit.

[Exb]

well that bit of late drama has woken me up again.

[paulb]

so its after 12hrs and then the 5 gets the white flag??

 

Congrats to all the winners. I'm happy for Bourdais and I love the bodywork on the GTD winner.

Edited by paulb, 22 March 2015 - 02:48.

[Dan333SP]

Total disaster for the GTD Vipers with less than 5 minutes to go

[Dolph]

Heh-heh, congrats to the Action Express trio - good pitstop strategy and Bourdais lapping the other leaders clinched it. That's one car that doesn't have a weak driver in it.

[RosannaG]

Congratulations to all the winner... Antonio García and Alex Riberas in particular.   

 

Antonio, Jan & Ryan two of two... Not bad!     

[Risil]

Went to bed with two hours left on the clock. Great result for the Action Express #5. Quick at Daytona, irresistible at Sebring. Bourdais must have an(other) Indycar title in him.

 

And few cautions, good refereeing and crashes only being caused by honest driving, not ineptitude. Now let's have a few more prototypes in the field 12 months from now.

Edited by Risil, 22 March 2015 - 11:05.

[B Squared]

Bourdais must have an(other) Indycar title in him.

I do not believe that will be possible with his current team.

[JHSingo]

Didn't get to see as much as the race as I'd have liked, and found it a little disappointing there were no battles for the win going down to the wire.

 

Overall though, I enjoyed what I did see. Was an awful lot better than last year's demolition derby, even if the caution periods were still annoyingly long.

 

Sebring just has something special, and it's still a great shame it isn't on the WEC calendar, along with any of the other fantastic venues in North America. One day, it would be great to see LMP1s back blasting around there in a race again.

 

As an aside, it looked like a beautiful sunset. Looking forward to seeing some photos.

[OvDrone]

Cool first Sebring race for me. Congrats to the winners. Hats off to the #5 and #3.

 

The highlights are live now on Fox Sports 1, for anyone interested.

[Sheepmachine]

Congratulations to sea bass and co for winning the race.



Looks like it all kicked off when I went to bed.
It was fun following the race with everyone.

[Afterburner]

Well, that's another one in the books. Had the opportunity to work most of the week leading up to the race this year, so that was pretty cool, as I got to see the atmosphere change in the lead-up to the race. You can say what you will about Le Mans--about how it's a magical, all night party. In a sense, I think Sebring might actually trump it in terms of being 'unique'. While France has got an all-night party with alcohol, Sebring has got an all-night party with alcohol and rednecks--I don't think our friends across the pond can really compete with that. TV does not do the experience justice. What follows is a not-so-brief account of the weekend; I wanted to keep things short but I also wanted to try and share my experiences with you guys as best as I could. This long-winded post is the middle ground.

 

As always, one comes back from Sebring with a few stories to tell (there will be a lack of pictures in this post as my image-host of choice is still down--maybe you'll see them when they come back online). First off, I made the trip with family, and we stayed at a friend's house about an hour and a half away from the track. This meant that in order to reach all of our 6:30 AM meetings throughout the week, we'd have to wake up at around 4:30 AM. Sleep deprivation was all but inevitable.

 

One of my relatives had a test session on Tuesday before festivities began, so we all went out to the track together. Marshals had nothing to do on Tuesday as the track was maintained by Sebring employees, so my brother and I took the opportunity to explore regions of the track which would be potentially dangerous to visit on Saturday (no joke). Being there on Tuesday was kind of a shock because it was so empty--with series pre-season testing moved to Daytona, much of the regular crowd had yet to arrive.

 

On Wednesday, the official sun-baking began with the first series of practice and race sessions. My brother and I were sentenced to Turn 15, around the southern loop and paddock section of the track. Tudor wasn't going to be out today, but most of the die-hards began to arrive. Fortunately, on the paddock side, the crowd is far more typical of a sportscar racing crowd and less typical of the natives which can be found around other sections of the track (I'm looking at you, Green Park--more on this later). In spite of this, Wednesday marked the first of many sights that I could only fathom as being accepted at Sebring: a sign before the bridge from 17 to the infield had been modified from its original text, 'Tune into talk-radio for flag to flag coverage! 750 AM on your dial!', to read 'Tune into talk-radio for fag to fag coverage! 750 AM on your anal!'. This is Wednesday morning, mind you. Sebring.

 

Though there was a distinct lack of Honda turbo whistle and Corvette DP sonic punishment, the day was still pleasurable. In spite of the sunscreen hangover from the day before, Thursday was slightly cooler and marked the arrival of the Tudor cars. From 15's flag station (which is in fact much closer to 14) these things look wicked fast (I'd also like to add that though the DPs are butt-ugly on TV, they're quite sexy at speed from a few meters away). The first major incident of the day occurred when a Viper pulled off-track at our station and ran over a bag of potting soil that had been left out for anchoring advertisements later on in the weekend. It smelled for the rest of the day, so I decided I'd eventually have to stop by and give the Viper guys a hard time about it. Following a chaotic IMSA Lights race that saw a yellow flag appear at at least one station on each lap most of the excitement on Wednesday subsided until the afternoon, in which a historic sportscar session commenced and I was greeted with the sight of a most unusual and exotic prototype racer which I later discovered was a Praga R1. Praga chooses to market their car as such:

 

 

I can't say I fault them for trying. (Though those overalls are clearly not fireproof. Too bad.)

 

A friend of ours was coming to visit the track on Friday, so my brother and I took the day off. This gave us the opportunity to explore different regions of the track and basically go sight-seeing.

 

There are many sights to see at Sebring.

 

The morning kicked off with an old Chapparal 2 racer being parked at the base of the Fangio Terrace, evidently the last Chevrolet-powered car to win the 12 Hours, back in 1965 (until this race, of course). I couldn't help but stop to marvel at the dual personality conveyed in its appearance--simple and elegant yet still brutish. Though I took pictures of the car, I can't share them, so you'll have to cope with something I found on the interwebs:

 

 

As I was leaving the car, I passed a group of fans masquerading as Greek gods and goddesses heading towards it, the heavyset Zeus leading them holding a yellow roadsign which proudly proclaimed, 'SHIT GOING ON'. Even the security guards were stopping to take pictures of them as they walked by. Sebring.

 

I spent most of the CTSC race on the Fangio Terrace, trying my best to nod off and catch up a little bit on my sleep. Our friend showed up around noon and we watched some Tudor qualifying on the terrace, and then ventured out to Turn 17, where part of the fence had been torn down allowing spectator access to a makeshift grandstand constructed with scaffolding only a few meters from the track. The view of the drivers' lines through 17 from here was nothing short of epic--and the highlight of the day for me was hearing Ryan Dalziel put his outdated and off-the-pace ARX-03b on the front row, ahead of the tube-frame armada but just short of pole, which was taken by Krohn Racing. On our way back to the tower to meet with the rest of the family, we passed one of the Viper team's golf-carts, so packed with team personnel that one of them was riding on the front--long red hair on her black uniform shimmering in the Florida sun, she was one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen. The cart was gone in seconds, and I didn't realise I had been standing still from the moment I saw it until my brother asked why I'd stopped walking. Sebring.

 

Race day began bright and early. Warm-up proceeded without a hitch (with the exception of my losing one of a pair of fingerless gloves somewhere between parking and turn 15) and left us free to walk the grid, which for some explicable reason was set up on pit road, leaving little room to walk and resulting in the experience feeling very much like negotiating Tommorwland at peak hours on the most-attended day of the year, with a few differences--namely, the near-complete lack of screaming toddlers and the presence of people dressed up as Roman warriors (complete with the red scrub-brush helmets). Or like the man wearing a hat adorned with a naked Barbie doll holding a camera (well, not really, she was wearing pasties) and emblazoned with the words 'Ho-Pro'. Sebring.

 

After the grid-walk, my brother headed back to 15 for the race start, dodging a few more spectators including a herd of bipedal cows and a woman whose shirt read, 'I'm a hybrid: I run on wine and chocolate.' Despite not being able to observe it directly, the start was still magical--you could feel the energy in the air as soon as you heard all the engines go full tilt on the start/finish straight. Our two hours on, four hours off rotation meant that my brother and I would still get opportunities to work the track (and more importantly, get out of the sun). The first stint went pretty smoothly, with only two full-course yellows, one of which was caused by Oz Negri, Jr. getting a little too impatient behind interclass traffic and going curb-hopping. The transition from road to barriers was nearly instant and finished about 50 meters in front of me. I will never forget that crash.

 

As we went to yellow, my 1-hour stint flagging came to an end and I got to work safety in the shade of the marshals' post. When I caught up with the rest of the marshals at our turn about how the race was going on, I realised nearly all of my favourite cars had basically hit race-ending trouble save for one thus far. Evidently, I had the power of the jinx with me this weekend (sorry Jp, that was my doing  ).

 

After lunch at the turn, my brother and I left to go watch from the terrace again. As interesting as the race was, I couldn't help but catch a cat-nap for only a few minutes while I wasn't busy. When I woke up, one of my gloves was gone--the second pair I'd broken up today. I don't know who nabs one glove off a napping corner marshal, but I'm pretty sure it's someone you're more likely to find at Sebring than anywhere else. After resolving that it was lost for good, we decided to tour the infield briefly, passing an ongoing bikini contest and a giant truck made to look like an enormous C7.R carrying a bunch of drunk fans along the 'midway' (you might've actually seen this thing on TV, it was that big). Sebring.

 

Our next shift was from 4:30 - 6:30. On our way back to the corner, we passed a group of fans who were wearing knight-armor made from discarded boxes of cheap wine (helmets with working visors included) and another group who were making a mosaic in the chain-link fence near Turn 1 with used beer bottles (apparently the necks fit through enough to wedge the bottoms securely in the fence). Within literally five seconds of equipping myself with the radio and turning it on, the first thing I hear from race control is 'Full-course yellow, all stations should be double-yellow'. From here on out, the race got pretty chaotic. In between sporadic blue-flagging and several near-misses at 15, chaos reigned supreme elsewhere on the track--after we went green, someone was attempting to interfere with radio communications between race control and the corners by leaving an open mic on our channel. Shortly after this issue had been resolved, 17 called in with a report that a crazed, clearly inebriated spectator had jumped the fence near the end of the paddock and run across the track (the marshal at 17, clearly from the British side of the pond, noted incredulously that the man ignored the stepladder sitting less than two feet from where he had climbed it). Race control calmly replied, 'okay, well, whatever happens, just flag the situation appropriately, security will handle the rest, thank you 17'. Shortly after this, turn 7 reported that a strange-looking man with a barrel of fuel was headed towards Green Park. Control thanked them for the report, 'especially considering it was on that side of the track'. Sebring.

 

After our last shift was complete, my brother and I waited around for the dinner delivery, in the meantime donating a spare Tudor 2015 Worker pin to an adorable little girl who was attending her first sportscar race with her family in an RV at our station (they'll be back next year--she loved it, and the pin was the icing on the cake; hopefully another young fan in the making). My brother took off all his gear, while I elected to leave my orange vest and equipment on until we reached the terrace. Once we'd retrieved dinner, we made the trek back to the terrace to eat with our sister, who was also on break. Before we had left the padock, a suspicious-looking man approached us and asked, 'Hey, do y'all like to smoke cigarettes?'. 'No, thank you.' We're still walking, and he's following us now. 'Well, you ought to try.' 'No really, we're fine.' 'You sure?' 'Yes, sorry.' 'All right.' Minutes later, as we were about to cross the road out of the paddock, a truck full of people in the back and in the cab was coming towards us. A young, not-entirely-unattractive but obviously not sober Floridian leaned over her colleges in the back of the cab, and yelled out the window at me, 'Hey, you look sexy in that vest!' Sebring.

 

After dodging another man who aggressively wrestled a cigarette out of a woman's hand and a series of fans now donning light-up bracelets (and another group of fans who had adorned their dog with them as well), we reached the terrace. The sun had begun its rapid descent to the west, the temperature came down, and the place became magical. The atmosphere of twilight at a sportscar race is impossible to describe to no-one who's ever been--there's an infectious energy in the air that seems to be running through the cars, the lights, the people... everything. After dinner, our sister returned to work, while my brother and our friend decided to trek out to turn 7.

 

This was the first time we had left the far tamer southern loop of the track and gone farther north than the vendor midway along the front straight all weekend, and the change in 'neighborhood' was immediately noticeable. Now, if you're unfamiliar with Sebring, the region around the northern loop of the track, from turn 7 to turn 10, is known as Green Park. Over the years, people have gotten up to some pretty... 'interesting' stuff here. I'll just leave it by saying that over half the track's security team is concentrated in this one area and that the downtown neighborhoods of most cities are probably a safer place to be based on stories I've heard from fellow workers. On the path running along turn 7--the fringe of the Borderlands, as my brother and I called it--we passed two overflowing trash bins and a separate mountain of trash about a meter high, just behind the fence on the RV side. The RVs themselves were an odd collage of racing history and redneck pop art. This year's evening competition point between the RVs parked along turn 7 was to see whose horn was the loudest; within a few minutes of us arriving at the turn, most of the RV occupants started blowing their horns at one another for reasons I still fail to comprehend. One of these motorhomes, the 'Taj', had a 'For Sale' sign mounted on its side. Across the track, another similar RV proudly displayed a painstakingly constructed spray-paint banner which read 'BUY THIS TAJ BLOWS'. Sebring.

 

We went back to the Fangio Terrace for the end of the race. As the laps ticked down it become obvious that Action Express had steamrolled everyone and that the P2's would have to wait yet another year before their last chance to beat the DPs on their home turf. Oddly enough, I didn't mind too much this year, as while it was obviously a one-sided battle last year, I felt like the P2 teams had thrown away all their opportunities and their drivers simply weren't as good as those behind the wheel of the DPs. A part of me wishes that the rumoured ACO/FIA split goes ahead and IMSA (who has been strengthening ties with the ACO--my sources say DPs at Le Mans this year is a possibility) becomes the ACO's primary partner, so that in the future we might have a proper, more affordable LMP1 class available again for big-engined prototypes based on sportscars. As I type this, the image of a topless, monocoque-chassis Corvette DP with an unfettered engine comes to mind. Total hotness. (Keep in mind that I have always hated the DPs, but if you've ever wondered why they're still around, you should watch them run in person some time. They grow on you very quickly.)

 

Anyway, the end of the race, with the chequered flags and the fireworks, came and went, and we hung around the track until race control was cleaned up and the podium ceremonies had finished, talking with fellow race workers (one of which was our amazing race control staff, Jim, whose voice you may have heard from race control during Indycar broadcasts; his partners in crime Joanna and Doug have a running contest amongst them as to who can amass the fewest full-course yellows while working control throughout the year, so in case you're worried they're throwing them willy-nilly in either sport, trust me, they aren't). There was a lot of optimism amongst the people who worked the race--Tudor's future is looking very bright this year, in my opinion.

 

We got home at 3:15 AM, up for nearly 24 hours straight throughout the day. As I lay down and tried to get to sleep, I couldn't help but reminisce about the weekend, and everything that had passed. In spite of losing a ton of sleep over the week, everyone had a really great time and enjoyed every moment of it. It is at this point that I implore you all to plan on joining me at the next 12 Hour gathering we have down here in the sunshine state--even if it might be boring hanging around turn 15 and then the terrace all day while I try to catch some shade, I'd love to meet up with some of you guys, and I couldn't think of a better race to do it. The friend with which my brother and I watched the race was one we had known from Xbox for over seven years but had never met in person--and we had so much fun at the track just watching the race and shooting the breeze about racing, I'd like to think that if you guys showed up, it'd be similar. Sebring has a special atmosphere that I still don't think I've properly described throughout this entire post. While I didn't enjoy my time down there last year as much as most of my visits to other pro races, this year's trip to Sebring was amongst my favourites, and I can't wait until next year to go back.

 

And as much as I want to close on that, there is one more particularly hilarious moment which came to mind that occurred on Friday, which I thought I'd save to the end to maybe help you come away thinking that reading this whole thing was worthwhile. Just after I'd viewed the Chapparal, I went to use one of the port-a-toilets around the bridge area of the track (not one that a spectator had willingly left open while occupied--apparently that's a thing), and found the lid inside it closed. As I lifted the lid, I found... a large sticker plastered to the inside of the lid.

 

It was none other than our beloved DJ Willy P, shooting me the bird with both barrels.

 

Sebring.

Edited by Afterburner, 23 March 2015 - 23:44.

[paulb]

Thanks for the fantastic report AB. You just put Sebring on my bucket list.