At Sebring, an Old Air Base Tests the Limits of Endurance Racing
Its flagship event, the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, is one of motorsport's most prestigious events. Now a round of the I.M.S.A. WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, it is part of the unofficial triple crown of sports cars, alongside the 24 Hours of Le Mans and Rolex 24 at Daytona.
Sebring is among the oldest motorsport venues in the United States, created after World War II.
'In 1941 the Army Corps of Engineers built Hendricks field, and it was a Second World War training base for B-17 and B-24 bombers,' said John Story, senior director of marketing, communications and business development at the track.
'Once they trained here they went straight to England, and then when the war ended the Army turned the base back over to the city of Sebring for $1 a year and said you can have this field for whatever you want with it,' he said. 'Along came a gentleman called Alec Ullman, a Russian American engineer, who had a liking to sports-car racing, particularly Le Mans.'
Ullman turned the runways, taxiways and access roads into a circuit, and the Sam Collier 6 Hour Memorial race took place on New Year's Eve 1950. In mid-March in 1952, the 12 Hours of Sebring was first held, and the race has been run annually, with the exception of 1974, because of the energy crisis.
Sebring's layout was initially fairly rudimentary and was over five miles long.
'They were running between hay bales, cones, airplanes, there were no walls, it was quite dangerous,' Stone said. 'Drivers would historically get lost in the middle of the race if they were running by themselves.'
The current 3.7-mile layout still incorporates sections of the original airfield. That creates a unique feel, with around half the circuit asphalt and the remainder made of the airfield's concrete slabs.
'Unlike a lot of tracks it has held on to what makes it really special,' Jack Aitken of Cadillac Whelen, among the team of drivers who won the race in 2023, said in an interview. 'These massive concrete paving slabs are pretty beaten up and poorly matched, there's differences in the height of each slab. It's extremely bumpy; it's a real test of cars, and when you're getting moved around that much, of the driver as well. It's not uncommon to hear of drivers getting out of the car with a headache.
'There's some very fast corners, in the prototype cars you're carrying fourth or fifth gear and the car is jumping, and you're losing contact with the road on two, if not three, or maybe even four wheels, so it's pretty thrilling.'
The 12-hour race begins midmorning in daylight and concludes at night, and drivers must cope with its length, as well as traffic because the four classes of cars competing have large performance differences, and the fastest cars must drive around the slower ones.
'It's a high-risk, high-reward circuit, and that's what makes it special,' Louis Delétraz, of Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing, said in an interview. 'First of all, you have to survive, which with I.M.S.A. traffic is insane, so that's one thing. It's more like survive eight hours, and then in the last four hours [the aim] is get to the front, then the last hour is war.'
Teams try to optimize setup for the cooler nights, so cars and drivers must manage the hotter daytime weather.
'Being quick in the day is nice, but it's not particularly useful, especially after a couple of restarts towards the end and things have reset,' Aitken said. 'It's quite an attritional race, we see mistakes through the years — including my car last year — and it's not a very forgiving track. If you get off the circuit it's very easy to end up in the wall, so it's about taking care of the car, surviving through the heat of the day, then it all gets quite racy at nighttime.'
Delétraz won in 2024 after taking the lead with just five minutes remaining.
'It was my biggest win, especially the way it happened; at night the visibility is low, I had a 15-minute fight with Sébastien Bourdais, a legend, and it was amazing,' Delétraz said. 'I was so stressed in the car, but I wanted it so badly, I remember I was screaming in my helmet when I passed him. When we won it was surreal, because it's such a big race.'
Aitken's victory came on his Sebring 12 hours debut in 2023. He was running fourth, but the three leading cars collided with 20 minutes remaining, and he vaulted into the lead.
'The Sebring 12 hours is a pretty special one to win as your first race,' he said. 'The way it came about was quite lucky, it was more about staying out of trouble and benefiting from others' misfortune, so you do feel a bit sorry for those that have lost out, but that's racing.'
Last year over 100,000 spectators attended, Story said, and many turn it into a weekend-long festival.
'There's a nonstop party, it's a really fun weekend, it's in the middle of nowhere, and there's still 100,000 people, we love it,' Delétraz said.
Aitken added that Sebring veterans had told him he should visit the fan areas.
'I.M.S.A. do a pretty good job of staying true to the event,' he said. 'It really is a party atmosphere. The setups that people come to the race with, to not only make themselves comfortable at the track, but to make other people's experiences better is pretty amazing.
'They set up their own bars, little spots to eat, they've got barbecues going, viewing areas with old sofas, some guy had a fish tank last year — I'm not sure what the fish tank brought to the event, but it was something. I think it attracts that kind of community that sports cars often has, and the fans seem to take care of each other and always enjoy themselves. It's a cool event.'
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Indianapolis Star
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