Since the 1950s, Florida has been one of the hotbeds of endurance racing, hosting the prestigious 24 Hours of Daytona (at Daytona) and the 12 Hours of Sebring (at Sebring). This weekend, the 24 Hours of LeMons drops by Sebring International Raceway in a less-than-prestigious manner on America’s Independence Day weekend for the “Humidi TT.” As one might imagine at a circuit hewn from the swamps for the bumpy concrete of a World War II airfield, summer days are rife with miserable weather. Early-week forecasts call for highs in mid-90s with a good chance of rain and approximately 2,000 percent humidity.
Maybe it’s Florida’s location far from most teams’ bases, maybe it’s the holiday weekend, or maybe it’s the wretched weather, but the Humidi TT sees only 28 entries, meaning racers should find plenty of space on the full 3.74-mile Sebring circuit. The field is the smallest since 2012’s Season Ender at Eagles Canyon Raceway (32 starters) and 2011’s race at Grand Bayou (18 starters). Nevertheless, what the race lacks in quantity, it should more than make up for in quality. Peruse the unofficial entry list here and make the jump for a short preview of the race.

CLASS C

Normally, this preview would start with a look at the cars expected to compete for outright victory, but the quality of Class C at this race will be spectacular and deserves first examination. Chief concern among the C entries will be a pair of absolutely perfect LeMons-worthy tête-à-tête matchups.
The first matchup is the obvious one: Two Chrysler Sebrings racing at Sebring (above). This writer has long considered the concept of a “12 Hours of Sebrings” race potentially a high point in American motoring, so Sebrings racing at Sebring alone remains an exciting proposition. However, the race-within-a-race gets interesting because the two teams with skin in the game happen to be two of the most legendarily effluent teams in LeMons history: NSF Racing (purveyors of super-sketchy Mopar metal and progenitors of the co-HCOTY LeMons K-Car) and Speedycop & The Gang of Outlaws (Builder of all things crazy, including the other co-HCOTY Spirit of LeMons).
To recap: The co-HCOTY heavyweights are set to duel in Chrysler Sebrings at Sebring International Raceway. Will they actually be in Class C? Who knows? Who cares? They’re likely racing each other primarily and any other success is a miracle coincidental.
The second great matchup is actually a rematch of a race-within-a-race that was overshadowed by the Spirit of LeMons‘ debut at Carolina Motorsports Park in 2013. This was, of course, the Class of ’64 race between Escape Velocity Racing’s 1964 Dodge Dart and Team Fairlylame’s 1964 Ford Fairlane. The Slant Six-powered Dart ran away with that Class of ’64 race and also took home Index of Effluency honors at MSR Houston last year, but expect Fairlylame to come back strong with their heap.
But wait, there’s more big American iron! Much, much more. After tilling around Barber Motorsports Park in a delightfully nautical fashion, Team Sputnik’s 1971 Plymouth Fury (above) will make a run at the Index of Effluency. Sputnik were once relatively sane, capturing three consecutive Class C wins in a Nissan Stanza Wagon, but their involvement in the K-It-Forward “project” launched them off the deep end. And now these Russians will race tired Mopar muscle at America’s iconic track on Independence Day weekend. Effluence abounds.
The real pièce de résistance of the field comes from Versailles: A 1977 Lincoln Versailles of Wetland American Racing. The Windsor V8 hopefully bears the Malaise Era smog controls that choked its 351 cubic inches down to 1990s Ford Escort GT-levels of horsepower. The first-time car should find itself in the Index of Effluency discussion if it can parade around like a proper purveyor of Florida luxury.
Idle Clatter’s painfully slow Mercedes 300SD may very well be the favorite to win Class C. It’s likely to run a bit slower than Escape Velocity’s Dart (probably the other likely contender with Fairlylame) but the fuel-sipping diesel may give a leg up if the Merc drivers can stand the oppressive Sebring heat and humidity to run long stints.
 

CLASS A

Crapcan racing has changed a lot since LeMons’ last (and only) visit to Florida for the season finale at Palm Beach International Raceway on New Year’s Eve, 2010. In the intervening time, ChumpCar World Series has hosted several races at PBIR, Sebring, and Daytona International Speedway. As such, ChumpCar maintains a team base in Florida that LeMons simply hasn’t kept. And while it’s not a real battle and no actual bragging rights are at stake, two of Florida’s most successful Chump teams will enter the fracas where they’ll face one of the best LeMons teams in the country. Whatever else happens, these three teams should face off in a great race.
At the top of the teams to watch list, predictably, is RC Spiders’ Mercedes 190E (above). The Cosworth-powered Merc runs long stints and navigates traffic well (though traffic shouldn’t be a huge factor this weekend) while running consistent lap times. Those are all three individual recipes for success; that they maintain all three characteristics separates them from the rest of a given LeMons field. They’ve won each of their last three races and four of the last five, so consider them the favorites.
Their biggest challenge comes from a pair of Chump teams with tons of experience at Sebring. The Jacky Ickx Mitsubishi 3000GT won at Sebring last September in nasty mixed-weather conditions. It was their second Chump win at Sebring, having won a seven-hour race on the short course in 2010, and the Gulf-livered Mitsu possesses the best chance at the first DSM LeMons win. Team Infinniti’s Infiniti J30 finished just behind Jacky Ickx at Sebring last fall, snatching P2 on the exit of the race’s very last corner. While they’ve only won once in their long crapcan history, their manual-swapped automatic J30 has run hundreds of laps at Sebring and has experience on its side.
The real variable in the mix for both teams will be how long they can run on a tank of fuel. ChumpCar limits driver stints to two hours, so it remains to be seen if they can match RC Spiders on stint length. Saturday’s nine-hour session requires three-hour stints to make a two-stop strategy work, which may be asking a lot with the heat and with the large sections of the circuit run at wide-open throttle. If the playing field is even with each of the contenders needing three stops, there’s likely nothing between them.

Endurance racing is notoriously fickle and it remains entirely possible that the three frontrunners could suffer mechanical issues. In a small field, taying on the track and keeping out of the pits takes on added importance. Rolling Chicane Racing’s Honda Civic (above) occasionally suffers for reliability issues, but when its running, the team run with at the top of the timing sheet. They registered a second-place finish in 2013 and if it rains, the light front-wheel-drive hatchback could have something for the more powerful rear-drive favorites. Terminally Confused’s Civic has developed over the past couple years into a Top 10 car, so expect them to pray for rain and do their best to keep churning out laps.
Two (related) California teams will run at Sebring to check the fabled runways off the team members’ collective bucket lists. Earlier this year, The Cannonball Bandits towed out from the Bay Area to run their Vortec V8-swapped Toyota Supra at Daytona. They left the Supra in Florida and will return to it at Sebring with an outside chance, but they’ll have to have ironed out all the niggling little problems that have plagued their efforts in the past. Whatever else happens, the V8 Supra is extraordinarily fast. If the team can keep it intact and run it hard, it’s unlikely they’ll anyone will catch them. The Bandits’ sister team, New York Rock Exchange, is also registered with their Ford Focus, a car that normally wouldn’t have much of a chance in California but could make the most of the smaller Sebring field.

This writer’s handpicked longshot is indeed the longest of long shots, but Come Monday Motorsports have developed a pretty trick Porsche 928 over the last couple years. It’s finished as high as P9, but that result is sprinkled in with mid-pack finishes and weekends at the bottom of the timing sheets. So basically, they’re a team whose high ceiling and low floor resembles Tampa Bay Rays’ fandom.
More longshots: 2-Broke 2-Care (BMW E30), Douchebag Racing (BMW E36 or Cadillac Catera, which would be a Class C favorite), and Radar Love (E30), Neveready (Mazda RX-7)
 

CLASS B

It’s hard to know what to make of Class B in such a small field, but with high temperatures expected and a racetrack known to absolutely wear out purpose-built racecars (let alone slightly repurposed street cars), a Class B car could conceivably win outright. Naturally, these cars are all subject to being classed up or down, since classing is done at the track, but these are just one writers’ opinion of the cars from afar.
Should Floridiot Motorsports’ Porsche 944 (above) end up in Class B somehow, they would be the frontrunners. They’ve finished several times in the Top 25 of very deep ChumpCar fields, but they really don’t have the outright pace to win under normal circumstances. That could put them in Class B or maybe not. If so, they would be the class favorites and a car that could, with some luck, win overall from the middle class.
Longtime LeMoneers TARP (an acronym that has stood for a half-dozen different slogans) finished second in Class B and P10 overall at Eagles Canyon earlier this year despite lacking overall pace or fuel mileage. Their result was a testament to the importance of reliability, so if their Simca-clad Toyota MR2 stays in one piece and its 4AGE doesn’t abruptly call “Quitsies,” they should contest for the long-coveted Class B win.
The same logic applies to the CarolinaHonda.com/Duff Beer Civic, long campaigned by a group of homebrewers. Their Civic has never been fast and only occasionally finishes a race without mechanical trouble, but the class field could be small enough that the winner is decided by who manages their woes fastest rather than who goes without them entirely.

Relative newcomers Thrift Shop Racing (Mazda Protege), Froogle Racing (Ford Mustang), and Wine O Racing (Toyota Camry Solara, above) don’t have much track record for prediction, but this could be a rare race that finds beginners’ luck determing the outcome.
Class B longshots: Formula None (Saab 900S), STD (Volvo 850), Chicken Hawk (Ford Thunderbird).
 
 

 
[Photos: Murilee Martin]