Club Arnage

The entries for the 54th 12 Hours of Sebring are now posted.
http://www.sebringraceway.com/pdfs/2006-ALMS-Sebring-Entries.pdf
Fax

LMP1 and GT1 are a bit thin on entrants. 
Also, no Ferrari 550 / 575 / 360 and it would have been nice (but controversial) to have seen the Maserati again.

There's usually a few last minute stragglers.  Not always about quantity, but quality ;) Risi's got a Ferrari 430 listed.
Fax

And good to see LNT (albeit with a Panoz).

Good to see BMW back, hopefully it will lead to a bigger presence next year.

I thought Lexus where joining the GT2 battle as well but there not on the entry list?

number of entries over the past few years.

2000 - 42
2001 - 38
2002 - 47 - SWEET!
2003 - 41
2004 - 44
2005 - 38

2006 - 37 with hopefully a few more to come?

It sure gets lonely waiting for cars to go past at dusk after 10-15 are out,
you can actually hear yourself talk... sigh... more is better.

-Lee

I would imagine the LMP2 class will swell considerably next year when the Porsche becomes available to privateers.
Fax

I thought this was supposed to be the second best race in the world!!?

Just drink more so you see double I suppose....hmmmm...might try that

Martini...

Steady, Martini (I'm sorry mate, but every time I see your moniker, I get a picture of the character in One Flew Over The Cuckoos Next...)
It doesn't seem that long ago when the rolling start at LM had less than twenty cars in it. That was a year for spending a lot of time in the bars...
H

When was that then?
And don't call me Monica...well not midweek anyway (joke by the way)


martinicuckoobahbahmoo...

Now you're asking. It may have been the year I sold my camping pass for £600 on e-bay, photocopied my arse, passport and grandstand tickets, and was a regular around the fruit and veg market.

Without googling, I'd say it was early nineties, maybe 92. There was in fact just over 20 cars, maybe twenty two or thereabouts, but a couple had to start from the pits. Whether or not that was because they were so crap they hadn't qualified and the ACO didn't have the nerve to reduce the field further, or they had broke some other rule, I'm not sure.
This was in the halcyon days of (a wonderful chap) Jean Marie Balestres' tenure, a man who wouldn't know one end of a race car from another, but I'd bet he'd memorized the numbers of his Swiss bank accounts.
It wasn't a classic.
H

Martin,
37 cars on 3.7 mile circut is plenty busy.  Last time I checked, it was mostly a ALMS sweep of the top spots on the podium in each class at Le Mans.  Funny thing about the guys who race at Sebring, they actually race the rest of the season as well, might explain why they wipe the floor with the Euros when they go over.
Fax

I am not saying a word...you shouted at me last time...


Martini...

Wise move!

Goes back to my quality over quantity point.  Porsche obviously considers the ALMS and Sebring a high priority, they're sending two LMP's to Sebring but not Le Mans.  Perhaps Pesca can bring one of his green sh**tboxes over and get his doors blown off again like he did a couple of years ago.  The Zytek was impressive in qualifying in its couple of outings over here last year though.
Fax

Martini,
The year was in fact 1992, I can't believe I guessed right!
The ACO yearbook has 14 cars marked as finishers, although I think that's giving them the benefit of the doubt and they are in fact trying to talk it up a little. As usual, some of the last cars were walking wounded, pushed out of the pits just to make the last lap and therefore qualify as a finisher. The last recorded finisher is shown as being almost 100 laps behind.
This was Peugeots first victory, and it must have been Jean Marie Bastardos' remit to make sure a French car took the win, after all, a Japanese car won it the previous year, and that was a bit hard to take for the ACO.
To be fair to Peugeot and Jean Todt though, they thoroughly deserved their final win in 93, the 905s were truly spectacular. I can still vividly recall standing about 100m up from the start of the pit straight at around 2am Sunday watching them squirm out of the Ford chicane and then pile on the noise and power through the gears. It was very, very impressive, - their fastest lap was 3:21, compared to Audis 3:37 last year...
H
Oh, and don't be scared of Fax, he's just been a bit grumpy since he discovered James Hunt had a very active feminine side, and Emmo liked arranging flowers in his spare time.

It may have been a clean sweep, but only one win used a car not made in Europe. Not sure how many cars on the grid this year at Sebring have roots in the US, maybe only Panoz and Corvette? the rest come from european companys (ok some may have been put together in the US like the M3).

The Porsche LMP2 car was paid for by the US importer, once the European teams get hold of them then we will see just how fast they are, Penske pah!... ;D

BigH is right about the 905' the TS010 where very good cars as well. As Fax says its about quality and 92 had that.

However it pissed down that year and my tent leaked, the BRM made a fleeting return visit using a 20 year old engine and lasted about 20 mins, it was not all great I suppose.

My point all along is that big grid counts are over-rated.  At Daytona they start massive grids for the Rolex (70-80 cars) but two-thirds of them cobbled together death-traps and are gone within three hours.
At Sebring the grid count stands at ONLY 37 but its a very, very high quality grid, I'll take that over a grid of 50 or 60 rolling disasters any day.  At Le Mans they start fifity something cars but I've been there several times when, by seven o'clock on Sunday morning you've got eight cars circulating at any one time.  On a circut that long, you want to talk about gaps between cars!  Noridc, as for Penske Racing, their record speaks for itself.
Fax

On other quick point about the grid size, with a handful of exceptions, that will be the entry list for every ALMS race this year!  You won't hear me complaining at Mid-Ohio in May with that line-up sitting on the starting grid.
I was fairly or unfairly taking a swipe at the teams that show at Le Mans for their only race of the year.  I won't be a hypocrite though, trust me its worse for the Indy 500.
You end up with a garage area full of cars that look like they were assembled by racoons.  The poor bastard who decides to try and qualify one of these usually ends his month of May in Methodist Hospital.
Fax

I totally agree, they really piss me off as well, spending loads to build or buy a car that sits in a garage for 99% of the year is crazy.

The ACO needs to support the teams that do come out more, it may hurt some and I am sure there will be whines when some 'big shot' team is left out, but in my book you either show up or shut up.

Some good news (I think)

Audi Sport North America will run the entire ALMS series

Champion will work closely with Joest at Sebring with the R10's, then ASNA will run the R8's at the three following rounds.
Champion will then run the new R10 when it returns from Le Mans (subject to getting an entry, yeah right) from Salt Lake City.

Here's a link from the ALMS page:

http://americanlemans.com/News/Article.aspx?NewsID=1762