The Beginning, and The End – Sebring in The WEC.
After an uncommonly busy January the 2012 season slowed right down in February, with little racing to cover aside from a DSC debut for Sam Tickell who joined fellow Australasian type Andrew Skippy Hall to cover the 12 Hours of Bathurst.
March started to get things moving again with Steve Wood again on duty with the start of the Britcar Endurance Series and Soren ‘Zorro’ Herweg back in the saddle with the start of the VLN calendar.
March though means only one thing for most sportscar fans – Seeeeebbrriiiing!
We love it for several reasons, Our seasonal debut with Vanessa’s Hospitality and also a chance to reacquaint ourselves with our regular Sebring hosts, a local couple who actually look forward to DSC’s annual visit! Who’d have thought it!! Staying within earshot of the circuit it makes a helluva change form the old days of a (very) seedy motel in the lovely town of Wachula!
2012 saw Messrs Goodwin, ten Caat and Horrocks on parade with Russell Wittenburg a very welcome returnee in pit lane too!
Back to the track though –
Odd isn’t it, a flat (aside from the punishing bumps), featureless airfield circuit that consistently produces a true ‘event’ and very often too a hell of a race.
In 2012 there was added spice with the brand new FIA WEC having its very first race at Sebring, alongside the opening round of the 2012 ALMS – The good news was that this guaranteed an absolutely packed grid – 60 plus cars.
The bad news was that this would lead to a fair amount of race time congestion, and not a little recrimination as some aspirant ALMS race entrants would be excluded by a cap on the numbers of grid slots available.
The paddock was absolutely packed, with cars, and, as always at Sebring, with fans too – They didn’t care about the back room squabbling over paddock space, timing systems, car numbering, points structures, TV mentions etc etc etc – They just saw the cars, lots and lots of them!
And in amongst them was a car that wouldn’t race, but it would make its public debut, the Nissan DeltaWing would run demo laps after a conceptual genesis numbered in years from the genius that is Ben Bowlby and a journey into 3D reality measured in days via Nissan visionary Darren Cox, Dan Gurney’s All American Racers, Don Panoz, Duncan Dayton and the combined engineering skills of Michelin and RML.
We’d just emerged from the hammer blow news of Peugeot’s withdrawal from the WEC, an announcement that nearly spelt the end for the Championship before it began – Toyota had stepped up – but that would come later. For now Audi would surely prevail.
Sebring though would see several debut runs, not least from the brand new Honda ARX 03a, the third LMP1 iteration from the pen, or rather the screen, of Nick Wirth, with no fewer than three of the cars on the grid as JRM joined in the fun alongside WEC entrants Strakka Racing and the ALMS’s Muscle Milk.
The question was, how close could the “best customer LMP1 we know how to make” come to the pace of the factory Audis – The answer would emerge pretty quickly, not close enough! The WEC would need Toyota to provide front of the pack fireworks.
There was though almost an ideal opportunity for a privateer upset when two of the factory Audis shunted in the same incident in free practice, the factory team again fielding their previous year’s cars, the R18 Ultra and E-tron Quattro debuting in the post race test. Typically the Joest team had both the damaged R18s back up and running in double quick time.
The LMP1 privateers though would still be putting on a show of their own,abeit one that saw too many cars stumble, JRM looked set for a major upset in a car that had effectively been built up in the paddock, but they too fell back. It was an Audi 1,2 at the flag but third overall was a surprise package, the baby sister of the ARX 03a, its LMP2 version, the 03b in the hands of the tight knit and effective Starworks Motorsport, a result that would kick start a Championship winning season for Peter Baron’s squad with EnzoPotolicchio, Ryan Dalziel and Stephane Sarrazin, the Frenchman one of many refugees from the wreckage of Peugeot’s now lost WEC dreams. Another 03b won the ALMS race overall too, this time in the hands of Level 5 Motorsport, the LMP2 car coming home ahead of Dyson’s Mazda engined LMP1 Lola Coupe.
The WEC LMP1 podium though was completed by none other than the Pescarolo Team, Henri and co permitted to enter the ‘old lady; 01-Judd one last time before the new dawn with their Aston Martin tubbed 03 – Sebring would prove to be one final hurrah for the team!
The President of the FIA, the Napoleonic (in terms of physical stature), Jean Todt called a Press briefing to commemorate the debut of the latest addition to the FIA’s roster of World Championships, rather helpfully in the middle of the race!
On the way in the DSC Editor almost literally bumped into Patrick Peter – With GT numbers in the ELMS looking shakey there was a brief opportunity to let the Series Organiser hear of a couple of opportunities to boost numbers – Sadly it seemed he wasn’t interested in hearing about it, turning on his heel and walking away without a word – Classy, and, as would be seen later in the year, dead wrong!
Onto the briefing and there was a strange atmosphere in the room, Mr President was not in a good humour and after some marginally short tempered responses it came to the DSC Ed’s turn to ask a question.
“Some have been critical of the lateness of announcing calendars for the FIA World Championships and that there have been too many changes since?
“Who are these people who criticise? What do they know?” came the response.
I was left, not a little surprised, to give just a few of the examples of the date changes, location changes and cancellations that made such a farce of anyone and everyone’s attempts to plan effectively (and economically) for the season. The concerns were dismissed outright – a disappointing reaction to a legitimate question.
Whether or not Mr President agreed, somebody surely did and the 2013 calendar was out way, way earlier!
There might have been ill humour in the briefing room but there was, as always, plenty of fun and games both on track and off, and the collected DSC snappers (Messrs Lord, Downes, Hall, Lefebure and Spetz were all on parade) always love a mooch around the paddock and, in particular, around the campsites and the human zoo that is Green Park – All human life is here and much else besides, a legendary blend of beer, beads, barbeques and bare bods. It adds immeasurably to both the atmosphere and to the task of policing the event!
On track there was plenty of action, much of it of the car crunching variety, a pattern that had started even before the race went green, Dominik Farnbacher in the GTE AM Luxury Racing 458 caught out by the train in front slowing on the Ullman Straight and dealing the Flying Lizards Porsche heavy damage in the impact.
There would be heavy offs too for the other Luxury Ferrari, The Dempsey PC class Oreca and several others too, a slippery track, traffic and plenty of still very new machinery were a tricky combination.
There would though, yet again at Sebring, be spectacular fireworks before, as well as straight after, the flag as Olivier Beretta, recently discharged from his Corvette gig and now with AF Corse, was making life tricky for his old paymasters, and for the BMWs, there was a massive scrap at the head of the race and again it came down to the final lap.
In the gloom there was contact and confusion, Press room and commentators all called it wrong, citing Beretta as the guilty party as Hand’s M3 was nerfed – We were all wrong though, it wasn’t the #71 Ferrari, it was Bruni in the delayed #51 car, Hand recovered enough to take the win, but ironically Beretta had been caught out in the incident too, and the Corvette went by on the road – We don’t like contact in endurance racing but by god this was a hell of a finish, a hell of a race, and a hell of a way for Sebring to start, and finish its WEC history!
