published: Sunday, February 05, 2012

Winter testing this week at SIR

By BARRY FOSTER

Special to the News-Sun

SEBRING - It looks to be an epic Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh from Florida with both the American Le Mans Series and the World Endurance Championship boasting all-star line-ups.

Officials of the new FIA World Endurance Championship have released their roster with the new Audi R-18 Le Mans Prototypes to be challenged at Sebring by the Rebellion Toyota.

Also in the mix are LMPs from Lola, Pescalaro and Honda.

Meanwhile, the American Le Mans Series presented by Tequila Patron gets underway in earnest next week with four days of test and tune sessions.

Monday and Tuesday will see support series cars including IMSA Lites and the GT3 series.

Wednesday and Thursday the 12 Hour contenders will take to the track with nearly two dozen teams on the roster.

Le Mans Prototypes signed up include the Muscle Milk entry of Pickett Racing plus a pair of cars from Level 5 motorsports - both teams will field Honda Performance Development cars.

Also slated to run is Pecom Racing's Oreca.

A wide range of GT entries will take to the track including Corvette Racing, the Porsches of Team Falken Tire and Flying Lizards, Extreme Speed Motorsports, and Krohn Racing will field their new Ferrari F458s while BMW Motorsports will be working out a pair of their cars as well.

For star power, Dempsey Racing will attend the test session with their Hewlett Packard/Future Electronics Oreca FLM09.

It was unclear if team owner and Hollywood celebrity Patrick Dempsey would be in for this week's test.

Fans wishing to watch can purchase tickets for $10 per day.

Track officials say there will be no paddock admission or overnight camping for this event.