Racing has started in earnest and MotoGp is just around the corner. I am looking forward to assisting with the planning for our largest event, and meeting all the USARM members who will be there. This should be one of the best events we have ever had, let's get things going!

Happy Marshaling!!!
Ken Berri

Sam Weiss - Selected a USARM Worker of the Weekend by POC drivers at the POC event at Willow Springs, 29-30 March 2008.

Many THANKS to the USARM Course Marshals who did yet another outstanding job, keeping USARM in the forefront with their superb & ever growing skills. Those Marshals at WSIR in March were: Sam Weiss, Margie Grooms, Jim Madrid, Toby Peer, Matt Madrid, Rusty Williams, Jackie Zeigler, Gabe Head, Larry Zeigler, Bob King, Lyle Grooms, Ken Berri, Dale Boender, Mike Allison & Kati James.

After months & months of searching, USARM will finally have NEW number boards for car events! We are expecting to have a total of 8 new boards; 4 for the Laguna Seca trailer & 4 for the Infineon trailer. This will give the USARM event organizers 2 boards to use and, in the event of multiple events on the same week end, the ability to supply proper equipment for the events. Many thanks to Carl Sloan for all the leg work, personal visits & phone work that was put into this project and getting new number boards for USARM.

It is the membership of USARM and all those responsible members that helps to keep this organization growing, expanding, and helping USARM maintain the excellent standards that have been set.

Hi Everyone. In my Other life I travel with Marty Kaufman and work the American Le Mans races. As a sideline I do a running commentary and send it out to a bunch of folks and thought you might enjoy some of the activities that went on during the 12 Hours of Sebring that ran on March 15th.

The Grid is full. The fans are in pit lane and on the Grid. The flags are flying and the bagpipes are playing. The tartan clan lads and lassies are marching down the track and are taking up their position just behind the red, white and blue.

This is the 12 Hours of Sebring.

It's a beautiful day today here in Florida. Should get up into the 80s after a torrential downpour last night. There's a slight breeze with beautiful blue skies above.

The Mazda, who had a horrid crash a couple days ago is not on the grid after being totally rebuilt from the ground up. They didn't get out for practice yesterday. They hope to be able to get into the race in about 20 minutes. They have a fuel leak right now.

More and more fans are pouring into the starting Grid - Probably 5,000 people or more. All this leading up to the 56th running of the 12 Hours of Sebring. This is the 10th Anniversary of American Le Mans.

Green Flag

A few off and ons

#37 slow - rear tire going down

Contact with #1 and the #46 Flying Lizard at Turn 5 - 46 had to be towed in. #1 given stop and go penalty. Dindo driving. (Capello that is)

#16 had body contact with unknown GT car - rear damage.

#8 Mazda has been excluded. They did not start and have since been excluded for not presenting themselves within the allotted time due to a fuel leak. Very sad given all the work they did to get the car rebuilt.

We are now almost 3 hours into the race. The spectator area is full of action - The spectators here at Sebring are a real interesting group.

The Peugeot continues to lead the race with just over 30 second lead.

You might want to read up on what happened during qualifying but the brief story is that #8 Mazda had an incident and ended up on the tires at Turn 1 just about 8 minutes into qualifying. The car was destroyed but Ben Devlin was just fine - Thank goodness for the safety aspects we enforce in racing. Being a time-certain event we ended the session because it was too difficult to get him off the tires. The cars had only 8 minutes of qualifying. Therefore the times from the practice sessions were used to set the Grid - lots of ruckus about that.

46 is back on course after being fixed from the earlier incident.

That's it for now. I'll send more later.

9 Hours and just under 30 minutes remaining.

The Peugeot is back in the lead after pitting for tires, fuel and a driver change. Pedro Lamy is driving. LMP1 is the Peugeot #07 followed by Kristensen in #1 and Luca Luhr in the #2 LMP2 is Romain Dumas in the #7 Penske Porsche followed by Guy Smith tin the #16 and Adrian Fernandez in the #15. GT1is Ron Fellows in the #3 Corvette, Mr.. Borcheller in the 008 Aston Martin and the #3 driven by Johnny O'Connell

GT2 is Mika Salo in the #62 which just pitted, # 45 with Joerg Bergmeister and the # 87 driven by Mark Basseng.

Side Note - The #10 Radical R10 did not pass tech due to multiple issues. The car did not pass the original crash test and there were several other technical issues with the car. After a "discussion" they ended up withdrawing the car and will take the issues back to Radical. Their plan is to be back, probably by Salt Lake City, with 2 cars.

We had 32 cars that started. It would have been 33 if the Mazda #8 had been able to get into the race.

Another side note : The Aston Martin #007 is currently being driven by Lord Paul Drayson. He took a leave of absence from British Government to spend time racing! Can you imagine what the headlines read?

007 just went into the tires at T1 and continued. We were on pace car for awhile and just went green.

32 (Zytek) hard into the wall at Turn 11. We were very careful getting him out of the car. green

12 car spun and stopped at Turn 7 - continued

#6 Penske car - officially retired - overheated

It's 89 degrees here and humid but we still have a nice breeze.

07 pitted, took on fuel and went to the paddock to change the hydraulic pump.

The #3 car - at just after 2:00 pm driven by Ron Fellows is 8 laps ahead of the 008 Aston Martin driven by Antonio Garcia.

At 7 hours, 30 minutes remaining the run down is... 2 - Rockenfeller - P1, 7 Collard - P2, 1 - Capello - P1, 16 - Dyson - P2

#3 Magnussen is leading GT1 in overall position 10 - 4 laps behind the leader #62 - Gianmaria Bruni is leading GT2 3 laps behind Magnussen

We're on a pace car situation now due to car #62 that was damaged and left debris scattered around the track.

87 and 62 just had body contact at Turn 7. From the inside camera looks like 62 lost his breaks going into 7 and he took out 87. Jaime was driving and he doesn't make mistakes like that. It really looked like his brakes failed plus he hit a bump trying to avoid a prototype. Turns out that he lost control due to being on the wet grass. Both cars tried to limp in but didn't make it.

The #2 Audi just pulled behind the wall. Don't know why yet.

We're just past half way now with about 5 hours, 48 minutes remaining

Jan Weaver