DPerceptions

I was thrilled to finally see the newest iteration of the racing BMW M3 at Sebring.  Rahal-Letterman entered two cars and the presence of Dr. Mario Thiessen indicated that the BMW factory was seriously interested in returning their cars to racing prominence in North America.

It was not be be however.  Bill Auberlin’s #90 M3 failed to fire from the 6th spot on the grid and had to be wheeled to the pits for repair.  After nearly an hour of work the #90 did manage to join the race.  27 laps later the #90 M3 was forced to retire with an unrepairable oil leak.

The #92 of Dirk Müller started from 13th and slowly worked its way up through the field to second position.  Near the five  hour mark of the twelve hour race, the #92 M3 broke while launching from the pits and had to be retired also.

Sebring is a very rough and demanding track and for their first outing, at least one of the M3s showed the promise I was hoping to see.  I am sure that Rahal-Letterman will have sorted out the gremlins and will be back in full form for round two in St. Petersburg. My image gallery of ALMS Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring is available online.

We were headed back to the campsite from shooting the Driver Autograph Session when I saw this HUGE sign that said Parking for Scott Atherton. I walked over to shoot a picture of it and noticed this rather un-Panoz Panoz.  I am going through the files and will upload more tomorrow to Flickr and to DPerceptions.  (Edit:  Life interfered, images will be up Wednesday night)

AT&Ts data network at Sebring seemed overwhelmed. Most of the time our phones were on GSM and even when EDGE appeared, there was zero connectivity. For most of the week we could not load timing and scoring and our messages were often delayed and/or rejected. Forget getting online to upload images. Our AT&T laptop connect card refused to join the network. Once, for a few minutes on Friday, we were able to use Sebring Airport’s free wi-fi, but that crashed immediately and never came back.

I suppose that they could argue that there is little point in building an infrastructure capable of sustaining the hordes of fans who are there only 5 days out of the year. All I know is that we were irked and will look for alternatives to their system.

We are back home with a proper connection and I will try to get some images from the race online tonight.