An Inside Look at the 12 Hours

[cdh]

Need a laugh, here it is - a Sebring 12 Hour primer, as it were. Brilliant

K e i t h_O r i - Sebring, an inside look

Monday, May 02, 2011

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"You want to know why I came back?" Elvis asked me, in person, early in the evening of March 19.
"It's because the drugs are better here than they are in hell!"

Camping in Green Park

Elvis would know. He was flying fast and low on something not prescribed by a physician. And he was directing traffic.

Only at the 12 Hours of Sebring, a world-class party held by Elvis and 124,999 of his friends, which
coincidentally takes place at the exact same time as one of the world's great sports car races. In
the pantheon of sports car races there is Le Mans, Sebring and everything else. Sebring, though,
only comes second in the way that Frazier did to Ali.

The party, on the other hand, is second to none. It is one of those somebody-spiked-my-beer-with-a-horse-tranquilizer,
"Alice in Wonderland" overload trips. It is absolute, raging, for-the-love-of-God anarchy. It is people with three
stories of scaffolding welded on the back of a denuded '75 Ford pickup chassis, with drunk people on each
floor, driving at 35 mph. It is 10 guys wandering around for three days in head-to-toe cow costumes with
working udders. It is a place where police won't take their own squad cars for fear of vandalism. It is
spring-breaking coeds flashing their boobs, portable barbecue smokers the size of mother-in-law
suites, recreational use of explosives and 4-by-4s towing 13 rows of bleachers. In other words,
it is the best of Florida.

The party and the race have been going on a long time in Sebring, a fact that is explained clearly at the
city line. Sebring's welcome sign reads,

Sebring, Florida
HOME OF THE 12 HOURS of SEBRING INTERNATIONAL SPORTS CAR RACE and Downtown Historic Area

They have their priorities straight.

The race has happened 58 times, while the party has happened 59 times. (The race was canceled
in 1973 due to the oil crisis, but several thousand people showed up for the party anyway, confirming
what everyone who's ever been already knows; this is a big-ass party surrounded by a nifty car race
that makes for interesting viewing during periods of consciousness.)

The professionally weird

To get in on the party you have to get to the track by Friday. Some folks actually arrive the

Impromptu shrine

previous
weekend and they're wound pretty tight by Friday night. The race happens Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to
10:30 p.m., and by that time even the die-hards -- the folks who bring their own D-cup, anatomically
correct, water-squirting plastic breasts, for example -- are running on empty.

The other notable feature at the front gate was the small "Firearms Prohibited" sign. Suffice it to say
that a high proportion of the spectators were probably insured by companies whose middle name
was "&," and you get the idea that sign was as disregarded as a "drug-free work place" posting at
a construction site.

The track's infield is divided into spectator parking, family camping and Green Park. The official track
map, which you get after paying admission, illustrates to parents with kids in tow what a really poor
choice they've made for family-friendly fun, in case they happened to miss all the race fans parading
about with inflatable sex dolls. The entire family camping is suitable for a few family-sized tents, in
the infield of a track that's 3.7 miles around.

Donning my intrepid reporter hat, I went looking for the family camping area, because I had to know
what members of said families were thinking coming here. Asking around proved of little value.
"Family camping?" replied one guy grilling what looked to be a recently feral animal. "That's got to be
joke. Like that gun sign." I made the mistake of asking a man in a cow outfit who mocked me with a
churlish "mooooooooo!" So ended my search for the family camping area.

Bikini Contest

As for the rest of the infield, the infamous Green Park is where the professionally weird go for
company. There, in years past, spectators have turned to burning cars for entertainment value
(or improved lighting). Green Park is where people erect elaborate, multi-level viewing platforms
with concrete foundations, stairs and up-to-code electrical service, powered by generators that
likely went missing from the Department of Defense. More often than not, the platforms sported
18-inch satellite dishes hooked up to TV sets tuned to stations far more racy than racing. We
pitched camp immediately.

While waiting for evening, we decided to take advantage of the access afforded by our press passes
(working journalists here!) and check out some of the early races from pit lane. We didn't really need
to be in pit lane, but it's hard to resist being envied by every fence-hanger in the paddock.

Those not allowed in the hot pits -- as trackside pit lane is called -- think the name derives from the
juxtaposition of running engines and racing fuel. They are wrong. The hot pits are hot because only
breathtakingly beautiful women are found there: Hawaiian Tropic Girls (A team and B team), Pirelli
Girls, etc. My favorite was a startling, seven-foot Asian bombshell who relegated whatever she was
promoting to insignificance. Professional drivers know these ladies as Friends of Racing.

Cars racing, or something

The weekend begins with the Star Mazda formula car series, which nobody came to watch, but
they put on a good opening act. With the 240-horsepower Mazda RX-8 engine in a car that weighs
1,100 pounds, these cars accelerate like a John Daly tee shot.

Next up was the Skip Barber Formula Dodge series.

Staying tuned-in

After the race it was time for some track food. The sheer number of hot dog stands made me think
that Home Depots across Florida were doing without outside food vendors this weekend. I settled
for a $6 hamburger purchased from a guy wearing a "Possum: The Other White Meat" T-shirt. Of
course I needed a beverage to go with my burger, so the next stop was the beer wagon, where
the local VFW was selling $3 cups that could subsequently be used to pot a large plant: the bargain
of the weekend.

Sheriff Godwin

A little after 10 p.m. we managed to almost get run over by an Audi Quattro wagon storming up
the road. Seeing the car park about 50 yards ahead and being more than a little annoyed at almost
becoming the fifth ring on an Audi hood ornament, I felt a discussion was in order.

Approaching the Audi, I saw a dark-clad driver get out. Just as I opened my mouth to begin a
one-sided discourse, I noticed his sidearm. I was frozen, slightly off-balance, with my mouth wide
open and finger in pointing position as I realized I was about to yell at a cop. He turned to look at
me, probably thinking I was a mime. It would hardly have been the strangest thinghe'd seen that
evening. With a good-natured look, he turned toward a rapidly approaching ambulance. We stood
there watching the EMTs work overa person at a nearby camp who was unconscious and bleeding,
looking like the victim of an industrial accident. A cop explained that this gentleman, now in neck
brace and backboard, had been in a fight.

"With what ?" I asked incredulously.

"Damned if I know," the officer said matter-of-factly, "but he lost."

Racing Too

I asked a few more questions, but the cop wasn't in the mood to answer them. He smiled and just
laughed, saying only that he was just trying to get through the night.

I did learn that the Highlands County Sheriff office had upgraded their vehicles since the last time
I was here more than 10 years ago. At some point they had made the decision not to use their
squad cars for Sebring track duty. In 1993 they rented white Chevy Cavaliers and stuck magnetic
"police" signs on the door. The undercover cars -- the same Cavaliers without the magnetic signs -
surprised quite a few people that year, including one irate perp cops collared on the hood of my car.

The downside that year was that in the absence of visible police presence the natives were
completely unrestrained. One camper, I recall, blasted the side of a cop Cavalier with a potato gun.
The cops inside jumped out, thinking from the report and the impact that they were taking fire.

The cop by the ambulance politely referred me to a gentleman sitting on a four-wheel ATV in the
middle of all the commotion. The man was wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a red plaid flannel shirt
over it and a worn Florida Gators baseball hat. He looked like someone from the Agriculture Network's
central casting, and I was feeling fairly perplexed. Of course, I'd had $9 worth of VFW beer.

"OK," I said looking back to the officer. "But who is that?"

"The sheriff, of course." He looked at me as if I had failed to recognize Dubya himself.

Speed Trap

"Of what?" I asked with enough sincerity not to get my ass kicked.

"Highlands County."

"The guy on the ATV, with the plaid shirt, is your sheriff?"

"Uh-huh." The officer replied, with a slight smile.

I walked through the crowd of drunks to introduce myself. He told me his name was Howard Godwin,
sheriff of Highlands County. "You've got to be shitting me," I thought to myself.

Orange County Sheriff Kevin Beary likely would have arrived in a helicopter, and he'd probably have a
SWAT-team sniper pick off a few of the bigger troublemakers, then club the rest into submission.
Sheriff Godwin had a different approach.

"Sheriff, I notice you seem to have struck a pretty good balance between keeping things under control
and being too heavy-handed," I said.

"Well, I've found over the years that you get better results from people if you don't get overly confrontational
and make enemies with them. If you're nice, most times they'll listen to you. Plus, there aren't really enough
of us to be heavy-handed," he said, surveying his troops. "Don't want to say that too loud," he added
with a slight grin.

I was beginning to like this guy.

"I notice your deputies are all driving Audi wagons instead of squad cars. Are they rented?" I asked.

"The Audis are what they call 'manufacturer vehicles'. See, I just didn't think it was fair to expose the
taxpayers' vehicles to this kind of risk, so we got these Audis provided by the track."

The Audis, which he pronounced "O-dees," were a step up from the Cavaliers of years past, yet they
adhered to the primary rule: When policing Sebring, use someone else's car.

Caption Needed

While we were talking, a beautiful teenage girl in a cowboy hat walked towards us from a group of
rowdy teens. "Hey Daddy!" she said, giving Godwin a hug.

"Y'see," Sheriff Godwin continued, after introducing his daughter, "folks don't necessarily like us on
Friday or Saturday, but come Sunday when they're all safe and on their way home, they love us. We
get thank-yous and all kinds of stuff as they're leaving. So that's what we're here to do - get everyone
to Sunday."

We walked back through the near-complete insanity to the relative safety of our tent. We had some
late-arriving neighbors.

"Dude, how could you forget the tent poles? What the fuck are we gonna use now, MacGyver?"
one asked the other.

"Listen, you corndog-smuggling fucker," the other cheerfully replied.

With that I went to sleep trying to imagine what exactly constitutes a corndog smuggler.

Start your engines

We woke to the music of high-performance motors being flogged within an inch of their life, and headed
for the pits. To get to the pits for the start of the race we had to meander back through Green Park, past
a camper with plastic pink flamingos and a working 5-foot concrete water fountain in the front yard, past
a little hole in the ground marked "Saddam's former palatial estate" and right by the adult store. Adult store?

I spent all of my teenage years and many of my adult ones hanging out at racetracks, and I've seen track
vendors selling some odd stuff -- colon-cleaning drinks, stimulants promising to keep truckers awake for
12 hours, recently invented religions, etc. But I had never seen a trackside adult store. No wonder every
third person in the infield had an inflate-a-date.

I didn't get any further than the corner of the adult store tent when a small sign marking an adjacent grassy
area caught my eye: "Family camping," it read.

The start of the race is all pomp and circumstance, with Friends of Racing bearing the flag of the driver's
country of origin, or maybe the car's country of origin. Each was getting photographed more than all the
drivers combined.

Batmobiles

There are four different classes of cars that race in the 12 Hours of Sebring: purpose-built racers looking
for all the world like Batmobiles with smaller engines; Corvettes/Dodge Vipers, and Porsche 911s and the
cars that will lose to them.

The Batmobiles, aka LeMans Prototype 1 or LMP1 category cars, look like something out of Blade Runner
with picnic-table-sized wings on the back. The fastest ones are built by Audi and Peugeot, and so the
drama this year isn't so much what kind of car will win, but which Audi or Peugeot. At the other end of the
field is the GT class dominated by the Porsche 911 and some Ferraris and Corvettes.

In an endurance race, such as Sebring, cars are driven by teams of three or four drivers who take shifts
throughout the race. Unlike NASCAR, drivers of all skill levels are on the track at once. At the sharp end of
the field you have highly paid professional gunslingers driving very fast cars, and the other end you have
people with more money than talent. This creates what is called a "speed differential" or a "talent gap,"
which on the track often leads to a situation called a "shunt," which is what happens when a driver runs
out of road and talent at the same time.

After the starting ceremony we receded to the hot pits for the actual start of the race, only to be told that
we couldn't be in the hot pits anymore because we weren't wearing fire suits. Making journalists wear fire
suits in the hot pits is a new rule this year, and may have been enacted as late as that morning. A fire suit
is as necessary for a journalist as a Pope hat, and I didn't have either.

But comply I did. Before long I located one for $60, a steal, as custom suits go for up to $1,000. My cheap suit
was modeled after a Farmer John outfit. It was ugly in an agrarian way, and may in fact have been designed
to protect farmers from cow-fueled methane explosions or something.

Nonetheless, there I was in the hot pits rubbing elbows with folks like Indy 500 winner Danny Sullivan, Formula
One drivers Allan McNish and Justin Wilson, and Champ Car driver "Mad" Max Papis.

Rockets' red glare

The clock ticked away, the cars circled the course and when 10:30 p.m. arrived, everyone from Danny Sullivan
to the 10 guys in cow costumes seemed to be grateful for the finish.

As the checkered flag fell, fans cheered, drivers hugged and Green Park was rocked by violent explosions
that nobody paid any attention to. At that moment Green Park was probably the only place in America where a
terrorist attack could go completely unnoticed.

While the winners mounted the victory podium and sprayed champagne, magnificent fireworks lit up the sky. As
we were leaving the track I congratulated an official, and noted that the fireworks had really capped off the moment.

Historic Spot

"Yeah, that was something, wasn't it?" he agreed.

"Do you do that every year?" I asked, my question being met with a blank look.

"Son, the track doesn't hire them people. Those came out of Green Park."

Of course they did.





Green Park at Night


all photos by P h i l W o o d a r d

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[GT-Subject]

That is Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

[Slowhands]

A great story that captures the gonzo nature of a week at the 12-hour, Doug!!! Thanks for sharing. Anyone who hasn't camped out at Sebring from at least Thursday to Sunday needs to stick that sucker on their bucket list. What's not to like about an orgiastic celebration of adrenaline, technology, and sex-and-drugs-and-Southern-fried-rock'n'roll. Oh yeah, and racing. If you don't experience at least a little fear and loathing over the weekend, then you didn't visit the infield.

In '07 I shared a monster Prevost RV with three other drivers to run the Panoz GT support race (like the guy said in the story, talent is not a prerequisite). We were parked right up against the fence in the Skippy shop paddock outside Turn 17. What a great outpost. Staying in a Prevost for the 12-hour is probably a lot like staying at the Hotel de Ville for Monaco-- a nice place to crash for the few hours you actually sleep. The rest of the time it served as a giant lounge chair platform for watching everybody come screaming in to Sunset three wide at a buck-eighty-five with an air-conditioned Speed Channel hookup when the sunburn got too bad and a safe place to stash our driving gear. oh yeah, and a fridge and ice box. Cruising around the infield in our golf cart was like being on a freak-show safari sprinkled with smokin' hot wildlife in different states of altered consciousness, much of it congenital, I'm afraid. (Well they probably wouldn't be professional eye candy for auto parts and suntan lotion companies if they actually knew how to do something productive.)

Burning Man ain't got nothing on the Sebring 12 Hour. One of these days I'm going to do it again.

[cdh]

You cover it pretty well Harsha. As I was saying to Big Dick (thanks again for sending the article) my one and only 12 Hour
was 1980something...I was, shall we say, very caught up in the spirit(s) of the event...all this and racing too....