May 9 - Sebring International Raceway

My wife and I are blessed to have parents who are healthy, active, and enjoy spending time with our kids.  While I was touring the states east of the Mississippi with Chris, my wife's mom, "GG", was at our house in Cincy visiting and helping out with the normal work/school week routine.  Since her home is a little west of Ocala, Florida she had offered it as a place for us to stay on our transit from Atlanta to Sebring.  We took her up on the offer while planning the trip - who doesn't want to save $100 on a hotel - but after a few days on the road, and thinking about the ~700 mile transit after Sebring, we started to check our math during the drive:

Detouring to GG's house would add something like 50 minutes to the total transit time between Atlanta and Sebring.  It was about 3 hours north of Sebring, so we would have to get up around 4am in order to get to Sebring in time to ride bikes around the track.  Weather forecast for Sebring was sunny with a high of ~92F, so it was going to be a hot one, then we'd have to drive 700 miles after the afternoon session...probably arriving at our next hotel by midnight or so...that would be a long day!  Instead we found a hotel for < $100 on the route and within 30 minutes of Sebring and decided it was worth it.

Sebring is a historic track that has hosted sports car racing since 1950.  It's a former air base, so the circuit is fast and flat.  It's also known for being bumpy - some of the pavement is original!  It was pretty special to be able to ride a bike around on the same pavement that had hosted so many legendary races and drivers.  The driver that comes to mind first for me is Phil Hill, the only American to win a Formula 1 driver's title.  If you want to read an excellent book about Phil Hill and life as an F1 driver in the 1950's and 1960's, I highly recommend "The Limit: Life and Death on the 1961 Grand Prix Circuit" by Michael Cannell.  It's well-written, and pretty shocking to consider the fatality rate in motorsports in the era when the development of tire/rubber and engine/power technologies far out-paced any development, or even thought, about safety.

We were glad to see there were some open garage spots when we arrived.  A few days before we started our One Lap in cloudy, rainy, 45F weather, but it was 90F and hot in Sebring.

 

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The long straights at Sebring showcased horsepower - 5th gear was required in 3 different places.  With the MP215 tune, which basically increases the overboost available in 3rd gear and up, we were making about 215 HP / 235 ft-lbs torque.  At 1.6L we had the smallest displacement of any of the One Lap entries.  Even with the turbo, 215 HP was not a lot in this company.  By this time we had figured out the Killer Rabbit must have a nearly-stock engine...their ET at the drag was longer than ours.  Otherwise, there were maybe 3 or 4 other cars that we out-powered: the Griswold wagon, a basically stock 2009 Civic Si, and a 2005 Acura.  The TDI Jetta was not stock and probably made more torque, but maybe similar power.  The FR-S was supercharged and the 01 Miata and 03 MR2 both had Honda/Acura V6 swaps.  So...Sebring would be about trying not to lose too many positions in the overall rather than jumping up a few.

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The GT-Rs and other big turbo cars sounded like aircraft going down the front straight.  The Corn Fed Subaru was in our run group:

The Fiesta didn't sound quite as impressive, but got around the track pretty well:

Photo:  Highland Design Studio

After that it was the usual routine:  hitch up, pack up, hit the road.  We made a stop at Grassroots Motorsports headquarters near Daytona Beach for pizza, then continued up I-95 toward South Carolina.