{"id":474689,"date":"2010-03-22T16:22:28","date_gmt":"2010-03-22T20:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.caranddriver.com\/?p=17463"},"modified":"2010-03-22T16:22:28","modified_gmt":"2010-03-22T20:22:28","slug":"monday-afternoon-crew-chief-a-party-at-sebring-disguised-as-a-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/474689","title":{"rendered":"Monday Afternoon Crew Chief: A Party at Sebring Disguised as a Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"12<\/a><\/p>\n

In my 15 years in the U.S., I had never attended either of the great endurance races\u2014the 12 Hours of Sebring or the 24 Hours of Daytona\u2014so I was glad to be able to fill in a gap in my racing education by going to Florida this past weekend to watch the event at Sebring.<\/p>\n

Why this race rather than Daytona? Simply because the cars in the American Le Mans Series are sexier\u00a0than in the Grand-Am races, with the added bonus that Peugeot sent a brace of its wicked 908 HDI FAP prototypes to Florida. Now, I know that Peugeot had a walkover because it wouldn’t agree to Audi competing with the 2009 R15, which is illegal under the 2010 rules, but I’m not sure that most of the 100,000-plus people at the event really cared that much about the closeness (or not) of the racing.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Infield<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Human<\/a>That’s because Sebring is effectively a party cunningly disguised as a motor race. We braved the infield at the track and can report that the only sporting event at which we have seen more dead beer cans and bottles was the Le Mans 24 Hours\u2014and the French event didn’t win by much. A lot of the spectators were very knowledgeable, for sure, and a lot were rooting for their favorite makes, but the racing did seem to be subsidiary to the partying. I particularly liked the posse of drinkers who were dressed as Fresian cows . . .<\/p>\n

For those of us who were sober, though, the biggest disappointment was how the race for the GT2 class unfolded. The BMW M3s, lead Risi Ferrari, Falken and Flying Lizard 911s, and the works Corvettes were all incredibly close in qualifying and ran as a train for the first couple of hours. Then the Falken car started shedding wheels, one of which clobbered the Flying Lizard car, causing it to lose a tire. Normally, this wouldn’t have been too big a problem, except the Flying Lizard car came into the pits under a full-course caution and had to sit there because the rules say the car can’t be worked on in those circumstances.<\/p>\n

\"Beer<\/a><\/p>\n

The Corvettes were running well, too, until they ran into each other at a pitstop. Oops. At that point, we were left with the two BMWs chasing the Risi Ferrari and it looked like a great race was brewing. Until, with about five hours to go, there was a full-course caution. Unfortunately for BMW, the leader was stationed between its cars and the Ferrari, so under ALMS rules, the Ferrari was waved around to the tail of the train of cars following the pace car, effectively gaining a lap on the M3s and ending the race.<\/p>\n

\"BMW<\/a><\/p>\n

BMW driver Bill Auberlen had a remedy for the situation\u2014adopt the Grand-Am pace car rules, whereby all cars between the pace car and the class leaders have to drive past the pace car and onto the rear of the train. When it’s time for the restart, the cars line up in class order, with the fastest classes at the front, so the quicker cars don’t have to fight their way past slower vehicles. Seems like a good idea to me.<\/p>\n

Related posts:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Monday Afternoon Crew Chief: NASCAR Muddies the Waters (Again)<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Monday Afternoon Crew Chief: Mercedes Divorces McLaren, Weds Brawn GP<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Monday Morning Crew Chief, Wednesday Afternoon Edition: Why Formula 1 Could Disappear Up Its Own Fundament<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In my 15 years in the U.S., I had never attended either of the great endurance races\u2014the 12 Hours of Sebring or the 24 Hours of Daytona\u2014so I was glad to be able to fill in a gap in my racing education by going to Florida this past weekend to watch the event at Sebring. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6417,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-474689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6417"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}