SEBRING INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY

They say a sailboat is a hole in the water into which you throw money.  Porsche racing, even at Club level, is a moving target that you throw dollars at, and watch the dollars fly away in the furious breeze in the wake of money burning, stomach churning, thrill earning sports cars.

Porsche clubs exist all over the country, for the benefit of fanatics who love the feeling of racing through winding turns and short straightaways at speeds approaching 200 miles per hour.  There are no cash prizes, only trophies, but aficionados are willing to spend as much as three million a year to compete.  It's overwhelmingly a white man's sport, but there are women drivers like my niece Christal, who competes at Sebring Iternational Raceway in Florida.  Florida has two clubs, one in South Florida and one in Tampa area.  My brother, Dan, is past president of the South Florida club and is current chairman of the biggest club race in the country, just completed at Sebring.

Sebring International is a 3+ mile track on a former airport, and the track surface has all the charm and smoothness you would expect from old concrete at an out of service airport.  The track winds around a central area called the Paddock, which has structures housing the services needed to facilitate the 400+ cars that showed up from all over the country for this February 2nd-5th event.  There were virtually no spectators other than those invited by participants; the public races at this track, on the other hand, can have 100,000 spectators.

My brother, my niece, and her boyfriend Josh arrived on Wednesday to prepare for the onslaught.  Although trucks and cars were lined up at the entrance for perhaps a mile, no one was allowed in except the volunteers preparing the site until 5 pm.  At that point, the narrow bridge into the Paddock opened to a steady stream of trucks, 5th wheels, and RVs that turned an abandoned airport runway into an open air bazaar.

Wednesday before the gates opened.



Thursday morning.

Josh put it exactly right.  He said, "It's a slippery slope."  You buy a car, and next thing you know you need tires.  Then a muffler.  Then a helmet and a fire suit.  Then a new motor.  A trailer.  A fender.  The cost of every item is astonishing--five thousand dollar wheels, ten dollar per gallon high octane gas--and it never ends.

Some of the setups have to be seen to be believed.  There are custom Peterbilts towing custom rigs, with full shops on the first level and as many as four racecars on the second.  Lifts rise to allow the cars out.  Many of these rigs are brought to the site by specialists and mechanics who travel with the cars, fine tuning and preparing them so that the drivers need only hop in and race. 


A tow vehicle.



Inside a rig.



The guys who drive these cars fall into two main camps.  There are those who drive cars towed to the site by employees are neurosurgeons, real estate developers, and other millionaires who don't mind dropping a hundred thousand for a chance to win a trophy.  Others, like my brother, buy a car for $16k and work on it themselves, paying the $2,500 entry fee by volunteering at the event.  Doesn't seem to make much difference in the fraternity.

That's really what Club racing is--a brotherhood.  The participants, particularly the many volunteers who make it all work, get together whenever possible to talk a jargon that can be unintelligible to outsiders, and to drive at breathtaking speeds around and around and around a track that takes less than three minutes and sometimes less than two to circumnavigate.  The sound, the smells, the camaraderie--it's like nothing I've ever seen.




Dan in his car before the races.



Lined up to go out.



Dan on Turn 17.  Took four tries to get this shot.



Christal in her car; Dan working on the wheel.

The sound can be overwhelming.  While I waited for Dan on Turn 17 I was nearly deafened by a few cars in particular.  With all the action, the sound, and the heat--not to mention the expense--ya gotta love it.

I cannot see myself in this world.  First of all, I have little or no mechanical aptitude, and even less patience for this kind of stuff.  You have to be willing to spend hours on concrete, working with recalcitrant metals for minimal reward, at great expense.  I don't get it.  I would be banging my knuckles on the car and banging my head against the wall.  Some people have an intuitive understanding of mechanics; they look at something and see how it works.  My sons Tom and Owen have that.  Diana had it.  I do not.

Second, the sensory overload caused by the sound, sight and smell is overwhelming to me.  Add to that the sheer number of personal interactions on a moment to moment basis and I'm up against the wall.  I was able to cope by disassociating myself from it all and floating about as an observer, but while I see the joy and passion of the members of this subculture, becoming a participant is as foreign an idea to me as is joining the army.