Adventures of a Sebring rookie

Monday
We departed on Monday for our flight from Amsterdam to Orlando. Everything went well. That is, when you forget about the six hour delay on the flight due to technical problems. Arrived at Orlando and having been checked about six times by US customs, we went to our hotel, a Holiday Inn with a swimming pool but a bit pricy to my taste. But hey, I’m Dutch, aren’t I?

Tuesday
Tuesday starts with renting a Cadillac STS. If you’re gonna do it, you might as well do it in style! We decide to check out Orlando city center. Don’t. Because there is no city center. Orlando is all about amusement parks, which neither travel mate Julian, nore I appreciate very much. At night we went to Downtown Disney, which offers a wide variety of bars and clubs to almost everbody’s liking. But I just didn’t have my mind to it: I wanted to be in Sebring!

Wednesday
At last, we’re able to go to Sebring! Gates open early in the morning and since we expect quite a crowd at the opening hours, we decide to enter at 11 AM. We took a while getting there, mainly because I’m navigatorly challenged. But somehow we succeeded to arrive at around 11 anyway. I called Amazing Randy when we got there and he told us how to get to Turn 10, where we would have our stay. He would be there to direct us to our accommodations. To our astonishment, a group of about ten men are waving and cheering in our direction. Julian and I look at each other, laugh our tits off and proceed. Everybody seems to want to shake hands with these two crazy Dutch who crossed the ocean, just for Sebring and Turn 10 in particular.

We meet Amazing Randy, Jupiter John, Lee Self, Mike Carr (dude, where’s Mike Carr?), Sandy, Ronnie and all the other freaks who make Turn 10 what it is. We are immediately fed with BBQ and bean salad, followed by the kitchen’s motto: “If you get hungry on Sebring, it’s your own fault!” Beer is plenty and cool and Randy apparently has done the greatest job imaginable setting us up with camping gear. Not only for us, but also for Vettefan, fellow Sebring rookie and a great girl from Queens, NY. As can be expected from her nickname, she likes her Vettes, which might have to do with a certain guy she knows in the Corvette team. She joins the freak show later that afternoon. She looks better than expected, although expectations were low, since Vettefan means fat fan in Dutch.

Thursday
As on Wednesday, all day free practices from a wide variety of car classes and quite amusing as well. The Audi is distressingly quiet, but what acceleration! What sheer ease with which the Audi plays with their so called competition! The Astons and Vettes sound fantastic as always and there’s lots of entertaining support races. Time to dress appropriate in Drinking for Holland T-shirt. I must have heard the sentence “That’s a nice shirt!” about ten times that day, including from the corner workers from Turn 10. Next year I’ll bring more shirts, because a lot of guys and girls wanted to have one!

I gave last year’s shirt, cap and polo to a bunch of guys I had to disappoint, among which a photographer, who returned the favour next day with great prints of the Spyker cars he made that very afternoon. Sandy wears a T-shirt with quite a hilarious text on it: “f**k YOU, YOU f**k*ng f**k!”.
In the afternoon, Jan Magnussen and Olivier Beretta from the Corvette team come over for a chat and a drink at Turn 10. Really easy going guys who signed my Drinking for Holland T-shirt and the Steve McQueen banner I brought.

At night, we went to a central venue where all fans drive to their camping spot or just drive around for fun. It is apparently customary to throw beads at girls who appreciate that gesture with showing their tits. Not all girls seem familiar with that tradition and just take the beads from you and disappear with a nasty grin on their faces. One other girl appreciates tradition plenty more and offers a beaver shot. I practice my Al Bundy skills yelling “HOOTERS!!!” AND “SHOW ME YOUR TITS!!!” and start feeling quite comfortable, thank you.

At Turn 10, we have a couple of cold ones. Some of our American friend do the same, but at far more impressive speed than our beer intake. One of them forgets that he told me the same joke over and over again: “At Turn 10, there’s two things we hate: the intolerant…and the Dutch!”, followed by a thundering laugh and a breathtaking slap on my back.

Friday
Team Impala day. Team Impala is an imaginary racing team, run by part of the Turn 10 guys. Once introduced to spice up the traditional autograph sessions in the paddock. At some point they decided to place their signing table between those of the teams and sit there as a racing team, with drivers Mi Carr, Amazing Randy and Any Monkey Willdeau. The latter dressed as a gorilla. A silverback actually, since we couldn’t find any other colour than silver to tape his monkey suit. The crowd love it and pick up the photos and autographs. By this time I was sure that I was amongst the craziest Americans you’ll find anywhere and laughed my ass off.
I brought my Spyker pictures to have them signed by the drivers. Mike Hezemans was in one of the cars and I had a chat with him. He took me to the back where the other drivers were. Donny Crevels and Jeroen Bleekemolen gave me their autographs. Peter Kox was being massaged at that moment. Donny Crevels saw that I didn’t want to disturb Kox, so he took the pictures from me to have them signed by Peter as well, which he did while being massaged, which looked quite funny.
Everything and everyone is very easy to approach, the atmosphere and weather are great I decide to visit some Sebringfans.com members who invite me for a chat, a beer or a seat on their RV to check out the practice sessions. After that: The bikini contest! Some of the girls are really hot, others just suffer from the heat. But all together enough to get the testosterone flowing. I’m having my picture taken with two charming contenders.

At night the Turn 10 slide show. I didn’t know what to expect, since my memories of family slide shows aren’t too jolly. It happened to be hilarious, perfectly presented and made by Lee Self. SonofSebring has brought a fine rum which he mixes for me with a modest size coke in a bucket size glass. It gets serious when he presents his moonshine. 93% Alcohol, the smell alone would faint a horse. The first shot crawls his way through my internals, ending in a kick in the brains. Serious sh*t! Lock it up and throw away the key! The adventures thereafter are not necessarily suitable for publication but they involve a Tampa girl wearing a cowboy hat and who liked the sound of Dutch, when spoken dirty.

Saturday
Raceday! The driver’s parade is unusual: we’re getting mooned by one one the drivers! That’s our job, isn’t it? Never seen that before. I laugh off what’s left of me and ignite my orange smoke bombs at the warm up lap. I burn my finger on one of those suckers and walk around with ice on it for a couple of hours. I’m fine now, thank you.

I don’t really follow what’s going on in the race, other than a scoreboard update now and then. I’ll read the details afterwards and I’ve had the race taped. I spent my time taking pictures in the paddock and at some track corners. De race ends with fireworks and a great and memorable Audi win. And a Corvette win, for that matter.

After the race, our neighbours at Turn 10 demolish their wooden scaffold to make a bonfire, just 40 feet away from our tent and with an unwished wind direction. Some burning stuff lands on our tent and burns holes in it, not to speak of the smell of burning sofas marinating all our stuff. Vettefan freaks out, because she lost her $ 4000 camera, which fortunately appeared to the rightful owner after the race.

Sebring has really been mindblowing and will be an annual trip for me, as Le Mans will. I can really recommend anyone unfamiliar with the event to have a go in 2007. As they say at Turn 10: “Sebring is a party and there happens to be a race!”