12 Hours of Sebring 2025

A follow-up to 12 Hours of Sebring, a perfect Florida fly-in destination…

This year, we arrived early to the race, scheduled for International Day to Combat Islamophobia. We traveled by Cirrus, an example of the kind of technology that has enabled all of the world’s religions and cultures to mix on a regular basis. Here’s the old mule at 8:10 am:

I purchased tickets in advance (12 and under free) and we caught a ride from the FBO to within a few steps of the entry gate at the Seven Sebring Hotel, thus giving us plenty of time to catch the 8:50 am grid walk (outdoors, but so crowded that it was sometimes tough to make headway). Computers and telemetry are critical, apparently:

Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing is the safety car:

It would be fun to get one of these just to remind young people that they will never learn how to drive a manual transmission (unfortunately, not available on the cheaper CT5-V, which still has way more than enough horsepower for street driving).

Here’s a different style of Cadillac:

For working class Republicans who appreciate the world’s finest screwdrivers, a car sponsored by Wiha:

For Democrats, TDS Racing (also great for pilots: “Fear the TAF” (terminal area forecast)):

Crowdstrike, the DEI-committed company that is famous for having reduced the U.S. economy to a crawl, sponsors a 180+ mph LMP2 car:

The Iron Dames Porsche was branded this year as “Women Driven by Dreams” and the car, to be driven only by people identifying as “women”, was covered in painted-on Post-It-style notes.

“Break Barriers and Spread” is perhaps a truncation?

Check out “I want to get a car” at the top of the tire below:

Also note the “To never change for anyone” dream. Wouldn’t most humans be improved with at least some amount of change?

Here’s my favorite dream:

Ford had a pavilion right next to the grid and anyone who registered got a free baseball hat (confiscated by my 15-year-old daughter) and the right to use their top deck:

Here’s the view from the top deck, just as the race was getting underway. I was still recovering from my disappointment that nobody nearby agreed to take a knee with me during the National Anthem (sung beautifully by a Sebring local whose name I didn’t catch).

iPhone 5X works pretty well from this deck:

There are no drinks or bathrooms on the Ford viewing deck so we departed after 45 minutes. A small museum is next door and displays a 26 horsepower Crosley Hot Shot that won the first race at the track, in 1951, because of engine size-adjusted scoring.

The Corvette pavilion featured a cutaway ZR1 (1064 horsepower to get you to Publix at 233 mph, but you lose the front trunk so there is no place to put the groceries as there would be on a regular Corvette (194 mph) or Z06 (195 mph)) and cutaway twin-turbo ZR1 engine:

A 1/5th the price of previous title holders, this is the fastest production car around some of the world’s racetracks (example), but I still wouldn’t want a ZR1 due to the lack of storage space. A street car needs to serve a transportation function, in my opinion. (The ZR1 can’t function as a Sebring competitor; it has twice as much horsepower as allowed in the GT Daytona classes.)

Here are a couple of Corvettes going underneath the Corvette bridge:

Some folks doing the race right…

A potential clue as to why nobody would kneel with me during “The Star-Spangled Banner”: a Deplorable flies a custom “DOGE” flag:

The fan guide distributed at the entrance suggests turn 13 for pictures with the airport in the background, but that would work only if you were on top of an RV or a top of some kind. The grandstands at Turn 3 have a pretty good view:

One of the best views is from a bridge near Turn 5. The non-sidewalk side faces the track. You’re not supposed to stand there because you’re at the edge of a somewhat busy road, but people do anyway. The Iron Dames perhaps forgot to include a dream of “stay on the track” and, therefore, the proudly all-female-driven Porsche made an off-track excursion. This was the only off-track driving that I personally saw. The Iron Dames finished #11 in their class, more or less in the middle (still an occasion for celebration, though, under Are women the new children?):

Another photo from this bridge, with an Oshkosh-sponsored Corvette in the lead:

(Sponsored by the U.S. government contractor, Oshkosh Corporation, selected despite an apparent lack of experience to build the next generation USPS delivery truck ($6 billion project, started in 2015, that has thus far yielded 93 trucks)).

We left before the 10:10 pm end of the race, but it seems that the Corvette team isn’t doing well compared to previous years. Porsche won 1st place in the GTD Pro race, while the Corvette factory team finished 7th and 9th (some electrical system problems were apparently to blame). The independent teams racing Corvettes didn’t finish higher than 8 in the GTD class (won by a Mercedes-AMG car). Porsche won the GTP (fastest purpose-built race car class), both 1 and 2 spots, while Cadillac managed 4.