12 Hours of Sebring
The 12- hour race at Sebring is one of the most famous long-distance sports car races respectively. It is held each year at the Sebring International Raceway in the same city Sebring in Florida. The season of the American Le Mans Series is traditionally opened here up to and including 2013. From 2014 the race for the first time the newly formed United SportsCar Racing Championship belongs to.
The race track
The course is notorious for its bumps that arise even from the original plant. This, and the generally high temperatures, the vehicles are exposed to tough environments, which is considered a reliable test for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. If both races were equal rules (which in the 1990s was not the case at times) was the Sebring winner often prevail at Le Mans.
The event
After the inaugural tournament in 1952, the race was included in the calendar of the World Sportscar Championship. Until the 1970s the term was traditionally the second venue for the international championship. With the greater focus of the series on the European continent and the oil crisis in 1974, the race had to be canceled. The fledgling GT championship of American motorsports organization IMSA took over the course in their calendar, the 24- hour race at Daytona. With the collapse of the GT Championship in the late 1990s parted ways the two major American long-distance races. The end of January or beginning of February discharged 24 - hour race at Daytona was now part of the Grand-Am Sports Car Series, while the 12 - hour race at Sebring was rising in the calendar of the successor series American Le Mans Series. Now the racing season for Le Mans sports car will be opened in March each year at Sebring. Since 2011, the race is also again part of an international racing series, the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup.
Since the appearance of the Audi R8 in 2000, six overall victories have been run in sequence through this vehicle. Even in the years 2006 ( R10 TDI) and 2009 (R15 TDI) Audi won with the respective LMP1 developments the race.
In the great GT class Chevrolet Corvette C6R was subject to the 49 years since the first time an Aston Martin DBR9.
Traditionally, could the Porsche 911 derivatives as currently the Porsche 996 GT3 RS and RSR countless victories win in their class, and 1976-1985 935 even as recorded nine times in a row, Porsche overall victory.