Morning, 1970 Sebring 12-Hour

In its day, the Sebring 12-hour race was the most important international road race in America. It was, for many years, the only place you could see the great drivers and factory teams from Europe: Moss, Fangio, Hawthorne; Ferrari, Jaguar, and Maserati. Despite its international stature, Sebring was located in the middle of nowhere Florida, surrounded by orange groves. There was absolutely no reason to run an important race here except Alec Ulmann had found this leftover WW2 AAF training base with plenty of wide concrete runways and connecting roads to design a long 5.2 mile course.

I took this shot a little after 7 am on race morning. The pits, with the distinctive Jaguar Tower, were very primitive but a huge improvement over the 2×4 and plywood structures of a decade before. They are long gone now, but the concrete straight is still used – still as bumpy as when Phil Hill drove on it.

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