And So It Goes… Editorial

Hardly seems like we’ve made a full journey around the sun since the 2010 Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring, yet here we are, poised to launch the 2011 American Le Mans Series season.

Looking forward, I can’t help but look back. It’s funny how we always feel we have our finger on the pulse of things, yet we never really do. If racing is anything, it is unpredictable. Both on and off the track. You can skew your predictions based on the business of business, the economy, the rules, the players, the competition and nowadays, even the environment and price of oil. Skew as you may, you’re predictions will still probably be wrong.

Personally, I anticipated a rougher road for the Series in 2009 and 2010. In 2009 I really thought we’d take a bigger hit given the state of the economy and the state of GT1. Kudos to the Series adding LMPC and GTC for 2010. It added to the content, the show and the health of the Series.

But 2011? I’m concerned on one hand, yet on the other, I’m encouraged by my own inaccurate previous predictions.

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120 Hours of Sebring

Click on image to view GalleryDid you really think it was a 12 hour race? Seriously, putting the long winter aside, if you’re an active member of a Sebring bound ALMS race team, you’re looking at a minimum of seven 18-hour days. You wake up by the car, you eat by the car… and if no one is looking, you sleep under the car. And after six long days, you get to go racing.

Yet everyone involved… and I do mean everyone, revels in it. They flock to it likes moths to a candle… milling around, tired and whipped, yet with a nervous energy likened only to that of junkies in needle park… just before they’re about to score a fix.

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The year was 1984 and I was in awe

Click on image to view GalleryThe 12 Hours of Sebring was the first motor sports race I ever saw in person.  The year was 1984 and I was in awe of the speed, the crowd, the entire Sebring experience.

26 years later very little at Sebring has changed.   The speed of the cars and the talent of the drivers is truly amazing.  The loyalty and size of the crowd is inspiring.  And the fact that so little has changed in the past quarter century, other than a new pit lane structure, is in some ways endearing, but in far more ways staggering.  That is a a topic for a blog which I will address in the very near future.

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SEEEEEEBBRRRIIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGGG!!!!!!!!

Click on image to view GalleryEvery January, Doug “dawg” Shuler would post one word to the old ALMS forum:  SEEEEEEBBRRRIIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGGG!!!!!!!!  With that briefest of reads, the winter’s cold and snow and the shitty xmas presents of socks and boxers and neckties are immediately forgotten and the nose imagines the scent of orange blossoms over synthetic oil, strip steaks grilling at Vanessa’s, and tyre rubber chunking  in turn one. Ach - I never was much with words. As old Warner Wolf would say, let’s go to the videotape…

March Madness... NOT About A Ball And A Hoop

Click to view full gallery by Rick Dole, Regis Lefebure and John ThawleyIf it’s March, we must be getting close to the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 58th running of the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Fresh from Florida. At 6 a.m. local time on Wednesday, March 17th, spectators can enter the historic raceway in preparation for the 12-hour classic that starts at 10:30 a.m. ET on Saturday, March 20th. The opening race of the 2010 American Le Mans Series presented by Tequila Patrón features the largest Sebring entry in four years.

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Historic Sebring

Just a brief addition this week as things are ramping up getting ready for the American Le Mans Series’ season opener at Sebring International Raceway. It’s quite an eye-opener to kick of the year with the 12 Hours of Sebring… it pretty much comes and goes before you’ve caught your breath. And then it seems you wake up and it’s the middle of July and you’re in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. On the road again.

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