Report and Photos by Louis Galanos
Historic Sportscar Racing (HSR) held its Sebring Historic Fall Classic 2010 on October 21-24 at the 3.70-mile Sebring International Raceway in Florida.
For the past 14 years the Sebring International Raceway has been host to the season-ending event in HSR racing calendar. That event was usually held during the first week in December.
This year an unexpectedly large monkey wrench was thrown into the HSR calendar. First the popular Daytona Continental event, held in November, was canceled due to much needed track paving at the Speedway.
Second, four months into the 2010 schedule the folks at the Sebring International Raceway (SIR) informed HSR they could no longer have the first week in December for their year-end event. This December date has been a fixture in the HSR calendar for 14 years.
It seems that the management at SIR had decided to give that December date to Bobby Rahal and his newly-formed Legends of Motorsports.
Despite the Daytona cancellation and the earlier than normal end-of-year event the recently concluded (October 22-24) HSR Sebring Fall Classic went off without any major problems. It was blessed with blue skies, light breezes, mild temperatures and some great racing.
The phrase “great racing” might be an understatement when you consider that with the International/American challenge race held on Saturday the margin between the first and second place car was a whisker-thin margin of just five-one-thousand of a second.
No one who witnessed the finish could tell who had won. The transponder read-out had to be called upon to determine the winner. In this case it was Larry Ligas of Pinellas Park, Florida in his 1961 Jaguar XKE beating Dennis Olthoff in his 1966 GT40 MKII. Your eyes are not deceiving you folks, a 1961 Jaguar beat a 1966 GT40. Maybe the Golden Era of Sportscar Racing is not quite dead.
