Each year the 12 Hours of Sebring is a great opportunity to see sports car racing's best battle it out through the elements for the win. But this year would bring something even more special. The FIA World Endurance Championship's 1000 Miles of Sebring would run the day before Sebring 12. Here I share some of my favorite photos captured at last month's race weekend.
Each year the 12 Hours of Sebring is a great opportunity to see sports car racing’s best battle it out through the elements for the win. But this year would bring something even more special. The FIA World Endurance Championship’s 1000 Miles of Sebring would run the day before Sebring 12. It’s been a few years since I was able to attend the big 12 and this seemed like the perfect year to make my return. A perfect excuse to rent a big lens, take a Friday off and destroy my feet in a fleeting attempt to see and capture it all. Here I share some of my favorite photos captured at last month’s race weekend.
Arrival at Sebring International Raceway
The No. 39 Audi R8 of Carbahn Motorsports dominated for almost the entire race, leading 42 out of 49 laps. A first win in the series for both the team and for drivers McQuarrie and Westphal.
The Michelin Pilot Challenge race was just finishing up as I arrived at the track. Didn’t get to see much of it, but I did get a few practice shots with the lens I’d rented for the week, a Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 OS HSM Sports Lens.
Kohr Motorsports Mustang GT4 with its Grand Sanitation Service sponsorship is just waiting for you to crack a joke about “trashy” Mustangs.
WEC Paddock Area
The WEC grid walk would be opening soon at the far end of the track, near turn 16, so I made my way over. On the way through, I spotted a very busy Fernando Alonso walking through the paddock. The two-time Formula One World Champion had beaten both the long-standing track record and the pole record the day before with a lap time of 1:40.124 in the No. 8 Toyota TS050 HYBRID over Sébastien Bourdais’ 2009 lap record of 1:43.2 in a Peugeot 908 and Marcel Fassler’s 2013 Sebring 12 pole lap of 1:43.886 in an Audi R18.
Remembering Charlie Whiting on the WEC grid
Sadly, FIA Formula 1 race director Charlie Whiting had just passed away the day prior, and in his memory, the crowd clapped for a solid minute.This was followed by a flyover by three USAF planes.The beautifully decorated No. 38 Jackie Chan DC Racing Oreca 07 Gibson with team members busy checking things over as a race fan grabs a cellphone pic.
The rest of the grid was soon boiling with activity, with members of the race teams checking parameters of the race cars with various instruments and quickly wheeling in tires. Drivers who would run the beginning of the race were preparing for their drives, putting on helmets and head and neck restraints.
Thomas Laurent and Gustavo Menezes shake hands on the grid as Laurent prepares for the first driving stint in the No. 3 TVR REBELLION Racing ORECA R-13 LMP1 prototype. As someone at the track to document the race for my readers, I try to remain unbiased, but I will admit that I was rooting for TVR REBELLION Racing because I’ve been a fan of TVR since the days of GranTurismo 2. And REBELLION seems to have the best livery out there right now.This shot of Bruno Senna is one of my favorite photographs of the weekend. Just as things were wrapping up with the grid walk and the area was being cleared to start the race, I overheard someone say “hey, Bruno” and I immediately turned around. There was a Bruno I knew of in racing, Bruno Senna, and I tucked down next the man who had got his attention, and I got a quick photo with a really nice thumbs up. Fantastically good shot for something completely unplanned. It might be my best driver shot thus far.Don’t stand anywhere too long or you could end up in the way of a tire carrier or of someone else trying to get a photo! The crowd was much bigger this year than previous years of just the 12 Hour race so I wasn’t able to get much further back in the grid before it was time to clear out.
View from the new Corvette Bridge
A new addition this year is that the old drive-over Corvette Bridge has been replaced. The new bridge has 2 lanes, so traffic can flow both ways. The best part is that it’s no longer just for cars. You can get up there and get a great view from the entrance of turn 4 through turn 5 into Gurney Bend on one side (above), and from the other side, you can see the rest of the bend from just above the cars almost to the hairpin (below). Map of the track linked here. The light quality changed as the cars went through and I was very interested in shooting both from that mound and through it this year.
From the far end, in the background of this photo, you could cross the bridge and go down below to get a closer view as these fans are doing.
World Endurance Championship 1000 Miles of Sebring
You can see the heat coming off the track in this shot of the No. 56 Team Project 1 Porsche 911 RSR. Friday was really hot, as Sebring often is followed by rain after dark and rain the next day during the 12 Hours of Sebring.With enough lens, you can see all the way back to turn 4 (where the blue No. 36 Sigmatech Alpine Matmut is on the right) from the other side of the bridge. This was taken at 600mm, 1/100 sec at f/10 at ISO 100. For some of the shots, I was actually having to move further away from the bridge to have more than just a huge shot of a car.
The No. 8 Toyota TS050 HYBRID of Buemi, Nakajima, and Alonso that earned pole position as well as the lap record. Spoiler alert: it’s not hard to see that this is the car that would win the race.
WEC After Dark
After dark, the temperatures cooled down along with some light rain. Sometimes the rain can be an annoyance, but in this case it was refreshing. You can see the rain haze in front of the headlights of this No. 10 Dragonspeed – BR Engineering BR1 – Gibson – LMP1.I loved how sharp some of the Aston Martin cars came out against the lit palm trees. Those palm trees are in just about everyone’s shots this year.
It can be tricky capturing the sense of speed after not having worked with a long lens for a while, but I really like how this came out at 1/10 sec at f/5.0. Another shot of the No. 10 Dragonspeed followed by the Gulf Porsche.Shot at the same 1/10 sec at f/5.0, this shot of the No. 28 TDS Racing Oreca 07 Gibson was one of the first I shared on Instagram. Still one of my favorite shots from that night. The TDS team would unfortunately have to bow out of the race later, but they looked good up until that point.You can just barely see the crowd on the viewing mound (some of which had bleachers this year) behind this No. 95 Aston Martin Racing Vantage AMR LMGTE Pro.One thing that’s really hard to capture with these newer, presumably more efficient cars, is after-fire pops of flame. Here, I finally caught one from the No. 37 Jackie Chan DC Racing car.
Following the race, I went home to sleep for a few hours, rest my poor feet, only to get up very early the next morning to return for the soaking wet beginning of…
12 Hours of Sebring
Sebring 12 began with a very wet start. Rooster tails of spray coming off of all of the cars. This is a view down the front straight, though it’s a little hard to tell with all of the haze.
The No. 55 Mazda was actually leading early on but was soon passed by the Cadillacs, after which they seemed to dominate. Unfortunately Mazda crashed halfway through the race and ended up 2 laps behind the leader.
No. 54 Nissan was having trouble in the hairpin early on with slipping off in understeer.🎶One eyed, one horned, flying purple Porche eater sure looked strange to me… 🎶 [2022 Edit: Interesting side story: this car was actually funded by fraud. Follow the link for the full story from Marshall Pruett on Road & Track.]Ludicrous Speed!!… They’ve gone plaid!Gotta love the throwback tribute livery to legendary Porsche dealership and race sponsor Brumos Porsche.This might be my favorite race shot of the weekend, the No. 86 Meyers Shank Acura NSX GT3 Evo lifting its inner front tire around a turn. Captured at 1/10 sec at f/22.The Chip Ganassi Ford GTs ran 1-2 in GTLM with No. 67 being followed by 66.The winner of the 12 Hours of Sebring, No. 31 Whelen Cadillac.
Final Statistics for my 2019 Super Sebring: Hours of Racing: 20 Number of Steps Taken: 36,000+ Number of Foot Blisters: 3 Number of Photographs Taken: 6,300+
“Das Renn Treffen“ (German for “the race meet”) is an annual Porsche meet that claims to be “the greatest Porsche event in South Florida.” I might go further to say the greatest on the East Coast (although later I did learn that Werks Reunion is even bigger!). “DRT” as it is also known, entered its fourth-year last month, taking place on February 11 down in South Miami, Florida. Organizers were expecting around 450 Porsches to attend. I don’t know what the exact number was, but it was huge. Several streets filled with Porsches both old and new. Here are a few that stood out to me during #DRT2018.
The familiar smell of race exhaust greeted me warmly as I entered the grounds of Sebring International Raceway this past Saturday. Old race cars screamed by at incredible speeds below
