At the end of this hour, we will be halfway through the 12 Hours of Sebring. Max Angelelli and Eric Curran are both running well right now. Curran had the wheel come off the car. Curran is two laps down to the race leaders. Make that three. Both these blokes are running hard. Max Angelelli has also had issues today, with the brakes, on his #10 Velocity Worldwide Corvette Prototype. Eric Curran got by Max Angelelli. So, #31 is on the same lap now, as the #10. Running through the Le Mans corner, and onto the back straight. Richard Lietz tries to run down Bryan Sellers in GT Le Mans.
Action Express Racing is thirteen laps away from reaching the 10,000 miles raced mark since the team started in the Tudor Championship. Whoops. A Prototype Challenge car, goes behind the wall. The #11 machine, of Chris Cumming, sharing with Bruno Junquiera, and Gustavo Menenez. Menenez is racing in the European Formula 3 Championship, this year. Andrew Palmer leads Prototype Challenge, and running fifth overall. He is ahead of some of the more stout Prototypes. Is gearbox a euphemism for other parts breaking on the car? Hmmm. If you want to keep people on your side in racing, don't throw your team staff, under the bus.
Magnus Racing does not use cool suits for their drivers. A cool suit is 35 pounds. But, Magnus Racing does not want the extra weight. The windows on GT Daytona cars, are not regulated for cockpit temperature. Cloud cover is helping temperature not being so hot. Christian Fittipaldi hits the pit lane. These blokes are on a mission. Joao Barbosa will take over the car from Fittipaldi. The #07 Mazda SkyActiv diesel prototype is back in the garage. SpeedSource is now, headed for the house, sadly.
Johannes van Overbeek has taken over the #2 HPD ARX-03b from Jon Fogarty. We are getting close to the halfway mark in this race. One of the BMW's goes to the garage. The right front suspension is damaged. It is the lower A arm. The #44 GT Daytona Porsche of John Potter, has a flat tire, coming into the pits, thankfully. Potter hit something, as there is a mirror gone. Brian Redman had a left rear tire come off the Porsche 917, at Spa. That was in 1970, and had to be very, very scary.
We're almost halfway through the 12 Hours of Sebring, and attrition, is beginning to take it's toll. A blanket of clouds, dissipates the heat, at Sebring, momentarily, as the #4 Corvette has made a pit stop and the #3 is now pitting. They have their rear view camera, and, a laser system, to show how close a following car, is. The #912 factory Porsche also pits. Correction. Tommy Milner is now in the #4 car, as Mark Drumwright has spun and crashed the #16 Prototype Challenge machine, in the hairpin. Drumwright is fine. The car, is not.
The #24 BMW Z4 GTE pits. Jens Klingman, out. Lucas Luhr, in. These guys will have to watch out, as their sister car, has already run into problems. This is our fifth full course yellow, while the Magnus Porsche remains in the pits. That car, came into contact with the slow running #49 Ferrari 458 Italia. The brake rotors are broken in half. John Potter is beside himself. Andy Lally is trying to calm him down. Potter, is distraught.
The brake rotor, and the stub axle, both fell off. 157 laps, (581 miles) completed. We remain under yellow. Prototypes, can pit, as the wave by already occurred. Joao Barbosa, is in the lane now. So is the #90 VisitFlorida.com Corvette Prototype. They will add oil into the car, too. #5 took no tires. Richard Westbrook, has a dripping drink bottle. Ganassi Racing is starting it's march to the front of this field. We approach a restart, and soon, will have six hours remaining. Halfway home.
No comments:
Post a Comment