Sebring 12 Hours – Early On Race Morning
Getting Going

So the forecast is for none of the rain that ruined the SPEED World Challenge event yesterday.

Paco the Chihuahua has made his GT1 pick, and he’s gone for the #4 Corvette C6.R: if it’s going to be an intense struggle throughout the rest of the field, in the other three classes, you can be sure that it’s going to be no less intense between the Corvette trios. Paco has 12 years’ worth of experience listening to the cars testing and racing here – but is he right about Peugeot winning the diesel race, and Porsches winning LMP2 and GT2?

Tony Burgess is racing the Autocon Creation here, and he confirms that his programme with the team is “Sebring, Mosport, Petit and Laguna Seca. It will be the regular drivers (McMurry, Lewis and Willman) at Le Mans.”

Burgess passed on the news that “I’ve made the commitment to Kruse-Schiller Motorsports for Le Mans, and my name is on the entry,” and that “there might be an opportunity to run with them in the Le Mans Series, but that’s not the case at the moment.”

One who has definitely confirmed his LMS and Le Mans plans is Ralf Kelleners – who has missed out here with the withdrawal of the Corsa Motorsports Ferrari,

“Yes, the LMS and Le Mans, with Peter Dumbreck and Roman Rusinov. The new car, the Laviolette, hasn’t run yet, and it might only get a roll-out before Barcelona, but Spyker has high expectations for the new chassis, which is much stiffer, and the revised engine. They’re working very hard on the larger capacity engine.”

Perhaps the happiest man at the track this week has been Paul Drayson, who is loving every minute of the 12 Hours event.

“Thursday night was very special, racing round at night among my heroes, with the lights flashing into the darkness……”

The Drayson-Barwell team is desperate to get hold of the first of the new Vantages before Long Beach, and has no intention of running the DBRS9 for more than two races. The 12 Hours will be into the unknown, as the Aston Martin hasn’t run more than four hours in testing. Not that it has met problems, more than that is how long they ran. “It’s a GT3 car,” pointed out Chris Needell. “We’ve got the endurance gearbox, but really the car was designed to run in one hour races.”

Team owner Steve Pruitt was in reflective mood before the formal announcement that the Corsa Ferrari wouldn’t race here.

“We’d love nothing more than to have Hankook make the ‘silver bullet’.”

Clearly any team heading into a new tyre agreement does so hoping that it will find that magic tyre, but that hasn’t been the case – yet. “We started into this programme with the greatest of expectations, and Hankook wanted to get into the deep end of the pool,” Pruitt continued, “but this isn’t a spec. tyre series and they’ve done nothing of this ilk before. The mistake was a lack of adequate testing.”

The Michelins are still the favoured tyre in the ALMS, and it would be remarkable if Michelin-shod cars didn’t win all four classes today – but it is refreshing to see so many other tyre manufacturers taking them on. Dunlop made the breakthrough last year in Europe. Who is next?

We’re assuming that the B-K Lola Mazda will be ready to go for the warm-up – but we’ll head off and check.