Club Arnage

Who's planning to go? I know Chris and Tom are, and I am.

afraid not...

Checking in ...

Unfortunatly not, have fun.

Not this year, perhaps Watkins Glen, Road America, or Mosport later in the summer.
Fax

It's on the radar.
Just won't know until quite late, maybe around mid March.

I had my first trip booked about 6 or 7 years ago, but it got scuppered, so I'm looking to make amends.

Mid March would be quite late, given that the race date is 15 March...  :o

I was supposed to be in Tampa/St.Petersburg the week after Sebring on business, so was planning to go a couple of days earlier and be there.
My boss, however, has scuppered my plans and wants to be in Florida herself instead of me. The biatch.

Not this year...... :'(

Hell Yeah !
Phil

The place would not be the same without you Phil, say Hi to Pidge.

>Martini...LB

We will absolutely be there since it's only 90 miles from home.  Our reserved spot is paid for and we are beginning the prep work.  We will also make a run the The Rolex for the first time in quite a number of years (100 miles in the opposite direction from Sebring) to see the new series.  We are all holding our collective breaths.

I certainly hope that the CA guys going to Sebring make an attempt to visit us this year.  We are reserved in the spots on the asphalt road driver's left coming out of turn three right past the berm...shouldn't be too hard...even for pissed Brits to find us

We have a nice compound and hope you guys visit.  We have toured the track in the past but have no way to identify the CA guys in the drunken crowd.  We all look alike by Saturday...burned and hammered so find us if you will a bit earlier than Saturday.

Well Thank you Martini. I will hoist the Guernsey flag in your absence.
Phil

Hi gatordad,  You know wher camp CA is. I will make more effort to invade your encampment  ;D
Phil

Checking flights at the moment ... + 200 € pricedrop compared to last week, think it's time to book !

This should get the blood boiling during the cold winter!

http://sebringraceway.com/

Thinking about camping for one or two nights as the hotel where we stayed in the past years is completely sold out.
Can't find any other decent hotel in a reasonable distance so we might crash into Walmart, buy some campinggear and join the CA-camp.  Have been thinking about renting a motorhome but that's too much hassle to pick it up, clean it, bring it back in on Monday ...

Just need to figure out a way to be able to load the batteries of my cameras, laptop and phone.

In the past, I asked nicely at the Aston team in the paddock and they plugged my camera battery charger in to their power in a spare socket. Phone you should be able to charge in the car. Lap top ask one of the local campers that has an RV.

Hi Dottore,
               You know you are welcome at Camp CA. Bring a Belgian flag to add to Pidge's collection. Is Johnny attending this year? if so he better bring a Dutch flag.
Phil

Please forgive my hijacking of this thread.
My understanding is that only a limited number of people are coming over for the race this year - but that you will be stopping off for a lager shandy at The Fish on Fire before heading south to the track.

Any and/or all of you are reminded of my wife's insatiable appetite for PG Tips tea bags. If you have room for tea bags in your luggage, I will compensate you with Beer on Fire and hot-wings by way of trade. The more tea bags I harvest, the more brownie points I earn with the old bag, so I am hugely motivated to reward those who might help me out.
Thanks in advance and I look forward to seeing you Mon/Tues of race week at the Foffer - and later in the week in Green Park.

Hi Matt,
           So far we have Geoff Tom George Kristof  Johnny and ME for Monday evening. probably 7:30 by the time they get through the airport.   Will be good to see you again.
Phil

Jumping on a plane in 11 hours ... bring it on !!

You have a PM...get in touch with me asap...I have a solution to your issue at Sebring.

Did anyone from here post this video named "Porsche 919 and Audi R18 LMP1 Cars at Sebring" ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyM79Nq9cUA

The voice at 38 secs into the video and again at 48 secs sounds familiar. Have fun and thanks a lot and enjoy. The 919 sounds a bit disappointing -
or is it just too fast. The Z4 noise is nice but that won't be at LM.

That's it for Sebring 2014 ...

Good to see Tom, Phil, Geoff, Chris, some new and more familiar faces again.  Thursday was quite chilly and cold in the morning & night practice, Friday and Saturday nice Sebring weather as we're used to.  

Eventful race with 11 full course cautions, at a certain point I wanted t ask my money back ... Didn't see much of the accidents though, guess I was at the wrong place at the wrong time during the whole race.  At the end of the day, there were too many cautions, too many bad calls, too long cautions ... pretty f*cked up if you ask me.   When we were at the back of the Ulmann straight, cars were literally stopping there behind the SC, never seen such a thing in the days of ALMS.  That last caution of 30 minutes made me sick, why do you need such a long caution when there's a car who went off half a mile from the track ?  Apparently to get that bloody turtle in front again, so Na$crap can claim a tight finish and one of their turtles is at the top spot of the podium.  I felt sick about it !   Apparently they f*cked up again with penalty's that have been given to the wrong cars, guess they'll never learn.  What really struck me on Thursday and Friday was the lack of attendance; much less than other years, many open spots and even during the race on Saturday I managed to drive the car around and park where I wanted ... never been able to do that before.  Sportscar fans aren't really interested in turtles, bop and other sh*t, those 500 who went to Grand Am before won't make a difference either.  

If this is the way it has to go with TSCC, this might have been my last Sebring, maybe it's time to focus on other events like Bonneville, Pikes Peak, Rennsport Reunion and Pebble Beach just to name a few ...  Don't get me wrong, I had a great weekend - as always - but the racing between the fcc's didn't get to me like in the past.

Yes the series seems to be running like a well oiled shambles.

Bad penalty calls, inept and haphazard fire marshalling, too quick to send out SC or kept out too long because they were ill equipped to remove stricken cars from the track promptly.

I love Sebring and I'm disappointed with what it has become.

We could all see this coming.  I had lunch the other day with a good friend who used to work for one of the Grand-Am teams.  He quit the sport because he could see the direction sportscar racing here in North America was going.
Like I've said before, the best thing that could happen is the whole thing go tits up, the France family finally get tired of blowing money on it, and realize they don't know a f**k*ng thing about sportscar racing, and let it die.  Perhaps then someone who actually knows what the hell they're doing will resurrect sportscar racing in America.
Until that happens, I've gone to my last sportscar race over here.
Dottore, there's still some great racing over here, its just that you have to look away from all the over pimped, over hyped made for TV crap.  Take in a NHRA meeting, or go see the USAC Silver Crown, and Sprinters.  Pikes, and Bonney are must see's.  Or catch one of the big desert off-road races like the Baja.
Fax

I'll agree with Fax (again).

In my opinion, niche motorsports are what is good about the US now.

When I was at Sebring in 2007, I went up to Gainesville on the Sunday to take in the NHRA Gatornationals - absolutely superb. Some pics here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/13111644@N00/sets/72157625341393264/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/13111644@N00/sets/72157625341393264/)

And, the Holy Grail for me, I managed to get to Bonneville Speed Week in 2012.  Some pics here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/13111644@N00/sets/72157631424099364/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/13111644@N00/sets/72157631424099364/)

I'm not sure I will bother to get over to Sebring for the 12 Hours again unless there's a dramatic change in the line up / regs.
 

I love those photo's Steve especially the IR ones. I've always wanted to do Pikes Peak and Speed week which I'm sure when I looked before used to be pretty close to each other calendar wise but they're about a month apart this year. Also Pikes Peak being all tarmac now has taken the shine of it slightly for me but one day perhaps.  :)

After watching events unfurl and now reading comments above I've removed Sebring from my bucket list.   :(

Whatever happened to "local cautions" the way it used to be?  I was not at the race for the first time in over a decade but was watching on the 'puter.  When the car ran off the hairpin turn and died on the old hairpin part of the track it was 200 yards from the current track.  Pull him behind the wall while waving a local yellow and let the racing continue.  Cannot believe how long it took to get back to racing.

It takes forever to get around the track under caution and every time the SC came through Sunset I expected the lights to be off...groan...they weren't.  NASCAR waves yellows to bunch up the field and "make it more exciting" for the fan.  It does the exact opposite...we will need to vote with our feet.  Check out the crowd at Bristol last weekend...

Agreed Gatordad, the crowd at Bristol was laughable.  One of my colleagues was there, and said it was even worse looking in person.  Yes, the weather was foul, but that's never stopped racing fans from turning out there before.  Sadly they're going to screw up sportscar racing over here the way they wrecked the AMA Superbike series, and now their own beloved Sprint Cup series.  This latest generation of France family moron's wants to turn racing into a made for TV, arena style event, totally the opposite of what draw's fans to the sport in the first place.  They're all a bunch of stick & ball fans, to them racing is just the family business, and they feel it's essential to choreograph every race into a "game seven" finish, and its just comes off as phoney, and staged.  The boobs are losing fans hand over fist, but don't have enough sense to see what the problem is.  Like the idiot grandson at 16th & Georgetown in Indy, they're all a bunch of kids of privilege, who were born on third, but think they hit a triple, and assume, because they are descended from some of the sports iconic founding fathers, that they are touched by the same genius.
Fax

...and then the ultimate irony that after hours red-flagged at Bristol the rain stops the race with two laps to go and they declare the winner with nobody watching.

My biggest fear is that these idiots will broadcast Le Mans in the same way they did Sebring.  Come on and show some real racing why doncha?