Smokin’at Sebring!
It warmed up rapidly at Sebring after a very cold morning – frost on the windscreen of the DSC Ed’s hire car this morning.
The gorgeous sunrise though wasn’t framed by morning mist, but rather hanging smoke after a genius local landowner, having applied for, and been denied, a ‘burn permit’ to deal with a troublesome tree stump went ahead and did it anyway, igniting a 300 acre wild fire that required intervention by local authorities to burn controlled fire breaks, the smoke drifting across the whole county and, early this morning, risking a delay to track action as the cool breeze brought in a smokey bank.
Hedman Here
Amongst those spotted in the paddock this morning was Henrik Hedman, patiently waiting for delivery of the DragonSpeed BR1 Gibson LMP1 car that will be his steed for the 2018/19 FIA WEC. The team will have the car in time to test before next month’s WEC Prologue with a further 2 day test before the season opener at Spa Francorchamps.
“We know the chassis is fast, SMP Racing have shown that in testing and we know the Gibson in LMP1 trim has been ion the dyno for a long time now, and the LMP2 version is very good. We’re all really looking forward to it, the WEC might surprise a few people this season.
Rayhall Recovered
At 3GT Lexus Sean Rayhall was looking cool, calm and collected in his shades after the lunchtime autograph session, the 2017 ELMS LMP3 Champion able to make it back to 3GT in time courtesy of an issue for the Ligier JS P3 he was pedalling in the IMSA Prototype Challenge race.
Happily Rayhall is rapidly recovering after suffering four small cuts to his eye courtesy of grit being blown by the track clearing jetblower during the drivers track walk reporting that it had given no issues during his LMP3 run
Sean had some interesting opinions on racing matters on both sides of the Atlantic, look out for a full interview next week on DSC.
New BMW M8 Is Newer Still!
The #25 BMW M8 GTE that set pole position in GTLM today is a brand new car for this race meeting after the incident at Daytona that left the original car with significant front end damage.
