A Sebring Diary
Thursday 0’something came early this morning. I wasn’t ready, but I could hear the cars on track, so it was more than time to get up. It’s been a difficult morning to get anything done, even more so than usual, as it’s like reunion day. Gotta catch up with the abuse from everybody… All of a sudden, in the midst of about five different conversations, cars were out on track – our cars, the ones that we are supposed to be following. Oh crap! At least timing and scoring was working in the media center, so it was possible to keep one eye on the monitors. The word of the day is ‘catch-up’. It’s tough with all of the press conferences that are going on, but between Russell, Janos and I, we’ve managed to at least get our bearings. One thing that is a big help is Vanessa’s – I think Russell is now hooked on the cookies. Russell covered the press conferences well. They are important, but to me, sometimes they are a distraction from the racing. Call me old-fashioned, or just plain old, but with such limited time at the track, it really makes concentrating on the other parts of the sport difficult. One announcement that has been missing is the expected announcement of another make in GT2, which has been assumed to be Jaguar. I guess patience is the key here. There have been some interesting rumors, or whatever you want to call them, floating here. First involves the story concerning a P1 Panoz. Lots of questions concerning this one. For at least one of the possible concepts, it seems that there is more than a bit of hoped-for rules breaks – it takes the “production” based concept like Aston Martin is running and goes at least one step beyond. Will it happen? We’ll see. Then there is the GT3 rumor. Slide GT3 cars into the equation. It makes perfect sense, but could very well be more involved than just saying that GT3 cars are OK to run. One scenario will be that only specific GT3 cars will be allowed – not just anything that falls under the GT3 classification. Timing? Who knows, but there were some that thought that the announcement may have been made today. Not this time. Again, it takes patience, grasshopper. Night practice was enlivened by an occurrence on track. The Fernandez Acura struck an unidentified critter on track. What the critter is/was is unknown – there wasn’t enough of it left to give a good idea, but rumor has it that CSI Miami will be heading our way to determine what it was. I think the corner workers flipped it over the fence in Green Park for BBQ. No damage was reported to the car, but there was a bit of a mess on it. Ewh! Tomorrow is another day. If tradition has anything on the ball, we’ll see rain again tomorrow, but maybe it was just confused and decided to visit today. That’s all for now. Friday will be a light day, with hopefully time to get some interviews in. Gary Horrocks | 
