Sebring International Raceway is the go-to testing spot for both endurance racing reams like Corvette Racing and IndyCar outfits like Team Penske.
The circuit’s bumpy nature, mix of high- and low-speed corners and long straights make it the perfect place to test, giving teams all sorts of data to use at the wide variety of circuits they will visit throughout the racing season. It’s no surprise, then, that Corvette Racing has spent a ton of time at Sebring in recent months validating its new mid-engine Corvette C8.R chassis.
“Sebring’s the best place to do testing, it’s the roughest track we go to,” explained Corvette Racing’s Jordan Taylor in a recent interview with Mobil1 The Grid. “You know, 12 Hours here is probably harder than 24 Hours at Daytona, so the more laps you can do at Sebring the more you can learn about a car durability wise, and it’s a place that’s so many different types of corners. You have high speed, low speed, bumpy, smooth, you get a little bit of everything here at Sebring.”
Oliver Gavin, who has been with Corvette Racing since 2002, has run countless laps at Sebring over the years with the team. Gavin has been a crucial part of the Corvette C8.R’s development process, with the Brit having raced every generation of Corvette Racing car since the team’s inception.
“When I first started with Corvette Racing here we were (at Sebring) every month it seemed, just never away from the place,” Gavin told Mobil 1 The Grid. “Just doing lap after lap after lap, really trying to validate (the car), whether it’s gearboxes, drivetrain, or whether it’s engines, whether it’s suspension parts.”
Corvette Racing won’t be able to put its development work from its most recent visit to Sebring to the test for quite a while, unfortunately. With the coronavirus pandemic canceling all major sporting events, it’s not clear when we’ll see the Corvette C8.R on track next. For now, though, you can hear what Taylor, Gavin and the other Corvette Racing crew members have to say about their recent Sebring test outings in the video embedded below.
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Comments
Most prominent among the cancellations, in my humble view, is the postponement of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, originally scheduled from mid June, to the weekend of September 19/20, 2020.
Let’s see if this date can be held. There is not yet found neither a specific therapy nor a vaccination, so the danger of a wild, pandemic contagion of the virus SARS-Cov-2 will hover for quite some time, certainly longer than a few weeks.
Prove it.
At this point there is much to learn an no one can say how long or short.
This could mutate it’s way out or it could turn the other direction. For now plan for tomorrow and adjust to needs.
We have enough inconclusive doom and bloomers as it is.
What do you want me to prove? That the Corona-Crisis will take longer than a few weeks?
Let’s talk again in two months. Trump’s wet dream of full churches on Easter Sunday will not materialize.
I see it more realistic to expect that the USA will become the epicentre of the Covid-19 storm, with thousands of deads and serious economic consequences. Maybe the military will come to the conclusion that they should remove Trump from the office of POTUS in order to install a proper management of the crisis.
South Korean government circles tell the world, that Trump has asked South Korea for help in this crisis:
“Trump Asks Moon for Medical Equipment to Fight Coronavirus” in the conservative Korean daily “Chosun Ilbo”
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2020/03/25/2020032502835.html
Look at the other hand to Cuba: while Trump claims that nobody could have seen the crisis coming, the Cubans have seen it already in January and set up a plan to fight it, prepare 3 laboratories for testing and directing the whole operation, preparing hospitals for treatment of SARS-Cov-2 infected people, prepare a number of sites for quarantaining people suspected to be infected, and preparing all whole health workers and those working in and for tourism for what is coming, so that all those know immediately what to do instead of starting to think about it when it is too late. Besides, Cuba has a health system of world renown, not only with top of the world scientific institutions, but also at the “bottom end” a system of “family doctors” which are not little enterprises looking for customers, but who know all the people living and being provided for in the living quarter serverd by this “family doctor” practices.
As one result, Cuba can send doctors and nurses in poor countries on all continents, the latest being a brigade of 36 doctors and 15 nurses sent to Italy.
You will know for whom the bell has tolled when US state governments being to ask Cuba for help.
For Cuba the slogan ist “Patria es humanidad” or “Our fatherland is humanity”, POTUS Trump calls for USA against all of humanity as “America first, America first, America first”. This is bound to fail.