You have to tip your hat to Brad Keselowski. The 27-year-old from Michigan scored an impressive win in Sunday’s NASCAR race at the 2.5-mile Pocono tri-oval in Pennsylvania. Five days before his win Keselowski crashed heavily when his brakes failed while testing a second-division Nationwide car at Road Atlanta. He broke his left ankle and badly hurt his right foot and back in the accident but refused to stand down from racing at Pocono.

You might recall that Keselowski was sent flying by Carl Edwards in a spectacular accident last year and has earned a reputation as a tough guy who’s not averse to retaliating to aggressive knocks from others. He comes from a stock car racing family from the Upper Midwest and is a third-generation racer. His father Bob won the ARCA championship in 1989, while Brad broke into NASCAR’s Sprint Cup series in 2008 and scored his first win in privateer James Finch’s car at Talladega in ‘09.

Roger Penske hired Keselowski at the end of ’09, and this year he’s replaced former Indy 500 winner Sam Hornish beside Penske’s NASCAR team leader Kurt Busch. Busch has moved into a new #22 Pennzoil/Shell car with Keselowski taking over his familiar #2 Busch beer entry and he’s been very competitive in many races, scoring his first win at the Kansas Speedway in June.

Two days after his big crash at Road Atlanta, Keselowski arrived at Pocono with a brace on his ankle insisting that he was going to race. “I just didn’t know how I was going to convince [crew chief] Paul [Wolfe] and Roger Penske that I could do it,” he said.

But race he did. Helped by a mid-race rain delay for 1hr 40min Keselowski was ready for the restart. He shot past Kyle Busch and pulled away to win the 500-mile event by half a dozen car lengths despite Busch’s best efforts to chase him down.

Afterwards Keselowski climbed gingerly from his car and gathered himself together to celebrate. “It doesn’t feel good, but I’ll be alright,” he grimaced. “It just hurt all day but it felt a whole lot better on the way to that chequered flag.”

Team-mate Busch finished third after banging fenders with Jimmie Johnson on the final lap and then went to victory circle to congratulate Keselowski. “I was amazed he raced the full race,” he said, shaking his head.

Without doubt Keselowski’s performance was one of the great iron man acts in motor sport this year and it’s surely helped cement his already solid position in Penske’s team. In the coming years you’ll be hearing more from this tough and talented young racer.

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(Following a crash in Wednesday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice Dale Earnhardt Jr will now start from the back of the grid as he will have to use a different car).

Dale Earnhardt Jr will start from pole position in the Daytona 500 NASCAR season-opener on Sunday. Earnhardt beat Hendrick Chevrolet team-mate Jeff Gordon to pole last Sunday afternoon with a lap of 48.36 seconds, averaging 186.09mph. Daytona’s track record was set back in 1987 by Bill Elliott, who lapped the high-banked 2.5-mile tri-oval in the Elliott family Ford in 42.783sec (210.364mph) at a time when there were no restrictor plates in NASCAR.

This is Earnhardt’s first Daytona 500 pole and the race will be his 400th NASCAR Sprint Cup start. Dale Jr is by far NASCAR’s most popular driver, winning the award the last eight consecutive years, so his presence on pole should help draw a big crowd and TV ratings for the race.

Saturday night’s non-championship Budweiser Shootout for last year’s race and pole winners was won by Kurt Busch in one of Roger Penske’s Dodges. Incredibly, this was 2004 champion Busch’s first win at Daytona and came in his debut aboard the yellow Shell/Pennzoil car he’s racing this year. In the closing laps Busch was running third amid the leading four-car train and he timed the run to the chequered flag off turn four perfectly, pulling out to draft past leaders Ryan Newman and Denny Hamlin on the high side.

Last year’s 500 winner Jamie McMurray helped Busch by precisely following the Penske driver’s move. McMurray pushed Busch past Newman, as Hamlin tried to pass Newman at the bottom of the banking. Hamlin crossed the line a few millimetres ahead but went down onto the apron and below the yellow line – an illegal move in NASCAR. Thus Busch took the win from McMurray, with Newman finishing third and Hamlin moved back to 12th, classified as the last driver to complete the full 75 laps.

Twenty-four cars started the Shootout, which was the first NASCAR race on the repaved Daytona track. Practice and qualifying speeds remained similar to recent years but the drivers quickly discovered that they could run 20mph quicker in a two-car draft. Everyone searched for a ‘buddy’ to work with as the race wore on, and Busch found the perfect man in McMurray.

“He stuck with us and had an unbelievable amount of power to push us and keep us in the mix,” said Busch. “When you have a friend like that with this two-car draft, that’s what it takes. It’s an unbelievable experience to try to manage the cars in front and the car behind in this whole new game.”

For 23 years NASCAR’s races at the Daytona and Talladega superspeedways have been run with restrictor plates, cutting power almost in half. It’s a game the drivers dislike but have accepted and learned to adapt to. The fresh pavement at Daytona has reshuffled the deck again, which is just fine with NASCAR, where ‘the show’ is what it’s all about. Next weekend’s 53rd running of the Daytona 500 is unlikely to provide any kind of preview of the rest of the season, but will almost surely provide a surprise or different winner to be determined in the race’s closing seconds.

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As expected Gil de Ferran has hired Tony Kanaan to replace Raphael Matos as his lead driver at the de Ferran Dragon Racing IndyCar team. Kanaan lost his job with Andretti Autosports after his long-time sponsor 7-Eleven pulled out of the sport at the end of last season. IRL champion in 2004, Kanaan tested for de Ferran last month and the pair of Brazilians soon came to an agreement for the 35-year-old veteran to drive in 2011.

“There’s been a lot of speculation,” said de Ferran. “From my standpoint, Tony brings many things. We are a young and developing operation with big ambitions and Tony brings a wealth of experience. I think we can benefit tremendously from that. He’s a champion and a race winner who’s driven all sorts of cars under many situations. I’ve no doubt that not only will he will bring his speed and determination but his experience to help us short cut a lot of the development process and hopefully bring us a little closer to our dream of becoming a major force in the IZOD IndyCar series.”

Kanaan won the 1997 Indy Lights championship and then raced in CART from 1998-2002 before moving to the IRL with Andretti-Green in 2004. He spent eight years with Michael Andretti’s team, winning 14 races as well as the ‘04 title.

“Gil and I have been close friends for a while,” said Kanaan. “When I tested for him I saw what I wanted for me as far as a race team [goes], and from that point on it made it much easier for me to make my decision. I’m going to have all the attention to myself and that feels really good.”

De Ferran said he hopes to announce sponsorship for his team in January. He also said he may run a second car in some races, most probably for Davey Hamilton who drove a handful of races for de Ferran Dragon last season. De Ferran co-owns the team with Roger Penske’s youngest son Jay and Steve Luczo. Penske and Luczo started the team in 2009 and de Ferran became their partner last year after two years running his own team in the American Le Mans Series.

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Roger Penske further expanded his retinue of sponsors on Tuesday. In the wake of previous announcements over the past week, Penske’s NASCAR and IndyCar teams confirmed that the Automobile Club of Southern California (AAA) would be an associate sponsor of Kurt Busch’s NASCAR car and Hélio Castroneves Indycar in 2011. Also, the AAA will be Busch’s primary sponsor in three races at the California Speedway (known these days as the Auto Club Speedway), Kansas and Texas Motor Speedways, and Castroneves’s primary sponsor at Long Beach and the Texas Motor Speedway.

The Automobile Club of Southern California is part of Auto Club Enterprises, which has more than 13 million members in 22 states and is the largest member of the AAA’s federation of America’s motor clubs. The Auto Club sells automobile, home and life insurance policies and provides emergency roadside assistance to its members. The AAA has been in business for more than 100 years and was the original sanctioning body for the Indy 500 and Indycar championship from 1909-55.

As we said earlier this week, Team Penske is thriving in a time when many other American race teams are struggling to find sponsorship. The Captain continues to set the pace.

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You have to take your hat off to Roger Penske. At a time when many American race teams are struggling to sell sponsorship, Penske has announced a string of new deals in the past week. Using the power of the Penske brand both within motor racing and beyond, as well as his superb ability as a salesman, Roger has completed a skein of new agreements for his NASCAR and IndyCar teams.

Last week Penske announced that Shell and Pennzoil would replace long-time backer Miller Beer as the sponsor of Kurt Busch’s NASCAR car (below). Both companies will also act as primary sponsor of Hélio Castroneves’s Indycar at next year’s Indianapolis 500 and on other selected events, as well as associate sponsors of Roger’s entire IndyCar team. On December 1 Roger announced that Meijer (a thriving Midwestern grocery and superstore chain) would be another associate sponsor of his three Indycars. And this week Penske announced IZOD (a clothing brand which is the IndyCar Series’ title sponsor) as an associate sponsor of his Indycars and the primary sponsor of Ryan Briscoe’s car.

From 1990-09 Penske’s IndyCar team was sponsored primarily by Marlboro, but in recent years restrictions on tobacco advertising progressively reduced the company’s involvement with the team. Although Penske Indycars continued to appear in Marlboro’s familiar red and white colours, the cars were not allowed to carry the cigarette manufacturer’s brand. Last year, after the arrangement finally came to an end, Roger’s cars were painted black and white with Team Penske logos, while Verizon came on board as the primary sponsor of Will Power’s car.

Now the team’s post-Marlboro age has arrived. In recent years Shell and Pennzoil have backed Richard Childress’s NASCAR car driven by Kevin Harvick (above), while IZOD became the IndyCar Series sponsor last year and also backed Ryan Hunter-Reay’s Andretti Autosports car for the most of the season. Grocery chain Meijer has been active for many years as an associate sponsor of a variety of Indycars, and with Verizon continuing as the primary backer of Power’s Indycar, Team Penske will enjoy a full slate of sponsorship in 2011. There’s also a chance that Sam Hornish will return to Indy racing to drive a fourth Penske entry in the Indy 500.

It was revealed last month that a new Ilmor/Chevrolet Indycar engine will appear in 2012 and of course Penske is the driving force behind the latest Ilmor/Chevy partnership. RP started his race team in 1966 and has established himself as one of American racing’s most successful and influential figures. Over the years his teams have won 332 major races – including 15 Indy 500s – and 23 national championships in numerous categories. Then there’s the Penske Corporation, described as a diversified transportation services company, which operates in more than 1800 locations worldwide with more than 36,000 employees and annual revenues exceeding US$16 billion.

Roger will celebrate his 74th birthday in February and his role in the sport remains as pervasive as ever. Other US team owners like Rick Hendrick and Chip Ganassi have achieved their share of success, but in the big picture Penske stands in a class of his own.

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Denny Hamlin established himself as the top seed in NASCAR’s Chase for Cup by scoring his sixth win of the year in last Saturday night’s race at the 0.75-mile Richmond oval. Hamlin dominated the 400-mile race’s final stages in his Joe Gibbs Toyota, narrowly defeating team-mate Kyle Busch and defending NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson. Joey Logano showed the strength of Gibbs’s Toyotas by taking fourth place in Virginia.

Richmond was the 26th and last race of NASCAR’s regular season before the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup, which kicks off this weekend on the one-mile New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Twelve drivers qualify each year for the championship play-off and they are seeded based on victories, so Hamlin goes to New Hampshire as the championship leader with 5060 points. Hamlin, 29, has been racing in NASCAR’s premier Sprint Cup series since ’05 driving for famed NFL coach Joe Gibbs’s team. He finished third in the ’06 championship and came fifth last year. This season has been his most successful to date.

Defending champion Johnson is seeded second in the Chase for the Cup with 5050 points, courtesy of five wins. He has won the last four Sprint Cup championships with Rick Hendrick’s four-car Chevrolet team and is going after a record fifth straight title. Johnson was very competitive at Richmond, leading a good deal of the race, and is the favourite going into the championship play-off.

Kevin Harvick led the championship for most of the year and has won three races but could finish no better than ninth at Richmond. Harvick is seeded third in the Chase for the Cup with 5030 points. He drives for Richard Childress’s three-car Chevrolet team and has been racing in NASCAR’s premier series for 10 years. His best season came in 2006 and ‘08 when he finished fourth in the championship, and he won NASCAR’s second division Nationwide championship in 2001 and ‘06.

Seeded fourth, also with 5030 points, is Kyle Busch who’s won three races so far this year. Busch, 25, is known as ‘Rowdy’ and has been touted as a future champion since his arrival in the Cup series in 2004. But he’s yet to find the consistency to challenge for the championship. His best year thus far came in ’07 when he finished fifth in the points in his last season with Rick Hendrick’s Chevrolet team before moving to Gibbs’s Toyota operation.

Kyle’s older brother Kurt has won two races this year driving one of Roger Penske’s trio of Dodges, so he’s seeded fifth. Kurt won the championship in 2004 with Jack Roush’s Ford team. Completing the list of this year’s 12 championship chasers are 2002 and ‘05 champion Tony Stewart (Stewart-Haas Chevrolet), Roush Ford driver Greg Biffle, four-time champion (1996, ‘97, ‘98 and ‘01) Jeff Gordon in one of Hendrick’s Chevrolets, Carl Edwards (Roush Ford), Jeff Burton (Childress Chevrolet), 2003 champion Matt Kenseth (Roush Ford) and Clint Bowyer (Childress Chevrolet).

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IndyCar boss Randy Bernard announced last weekend that he has hired Tony Cotman (below) to serve as project manager and develop the 2012 rules for the series’ new Dallara-Honda formula. I’ve known Cotman for almost 20 years and he’s a good man who’ll serve Bernard and IndyCar well.

Cotman is a Kiwi who worked as a race mechanic for many years before becoming Team Green’s team manager and then Andretti-Green’s vice-president of operations. He joined Champ Car in 2005 as vice-president of operations and race director. He worked for the series for three years, overseeing the introduction of the Panoz DP-01 spec car for 2007, its final season. During his time at Champ Car, Cotman joined the FIA’s circuits and safety commission.

After Champ Car’s failure and absorption by the IRL, Cotman (below with Paul Tracy) became that series’ vice-president of competition before leaving in 2009 to form his own consulting company, focusing on race track design and safety. This year he was appointed by Bernard to be a member of the ‘Iconic’ committee that determined the 2012 IndyCar formula. He is also race director for the Indy Lights series.

So again, I have no doubt Cotman will do a great job in writing the 2012 rules. But IndyCar still needs an experienced racing engineer who’s designed many different and successful cars, somebody like John Barnard, Gordon Murray or former Eagle designer John Ward. To attract ‘aero kit’ builders and other engine manufacturers to compete against Honda and help develop the new formula over time to produce the leading edge IndyCar deserves, the organisation needs a man like Barnard, Murray or Ward.

Bernard has a near-revolt on his hands from some team owners who financed and supported the spurned Delta Wing concept. They believe the Delta Wing was a lost opportunity that could have provided IndyCar with a unique identity.

None have made any public comment, but behind the scenes they are not happy campers. They respect Cotman and can work with him but would feel more encouraged with the additional hiring of an experienced engineer with big-picture thinking, capable of fully understanding and embracing energy recovery systems, alternative fuels and the wave of new technology that’s beginning to move through the global automobile industry.

But IndyCar’s biggest issue remains its dwindling TV ratings and race day crowds, and an extremely weak footprint in the USA’s national media as a whole. TV ratings have been in decline for many years and have reached the point of being barely measurable for most races. Nor do many of the races draw much of a crowd, and the oval races are merely one-day events with no crowds at all for practice and qualifying.

These are not new problems. They’ve been there for years and have resulted in it being darn near impossible to sell sponsorship. Most teams are struggling to stay afloat and even Roger Penske is feeling the pinch. Despite dominating this year’s IndyCar Series Penske has been having a tough time selling sponsorship and his team faces the prospect of cutting back from three to two cars next year.

So most people expect Tony Cotman to do a great job for IndyCar. But everyone acknowledges that American open-wheel racing faces much bigger challenges.

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Fifty-six cars started Thursday’s pair of 150-mile qualifying races for Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup season-opening Daytona 500. The crowd at Daytona this week is down substantially this year and many cars and teams are without major sponsors, but to the uneducated observer NASCAR still looks like a pretty healthy animal. Reality will strike at the California Speedway next week at the second of thirty-six races where ticket sales are shockingly weak and fewer cars will attempt to qualify, but at Daytona this week you could squint a little and believe the old days are still with us.

Thursday’s first qualifying race saw four-time champion Jeff Gordon score his first win in sixteen months. Gordon ran among the first three all the way and was able to leap to the front on the final restart and out-duel Tony Stewart, defending champion Jimmie Johnson and highly-touted rookie Joey Logano. Kyle Busch looked equally strong in the second sprint race defeating Mark Martin (below), Brian Vickers and Juan-Pablo Montoya.

Race favourites? It’s hard to say, but Gordon, Busch and Martin looked particularly strong and if the race is clean, these three will be major contenders. As we all know however, anything can and has happened in Daytona’s infamous horsepower-choked ‘restrictor plate’ races. Tortuous, multi-car accidents are a fact of life in this environment and eleventh-hour yellows and gambles on pitstop strategies often mix up the field for the final dash to the chequered flag. The fastest car rarely seems to win at Daytona. “This race really is all about luck,” Montoya remarked yesterday morning. “It’s just a big crapshoot.”

Still, the cars and drivers to beat on Sunday include all four Hendrick Chevrolets driven by Gordon, current champion Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr. (who was seventh in Thursday’s second 150) and Martin. The latter, now 50 years old, has replaced Casey Mears in Hendrick’s fourth car and will start the 500 from the outside of the front row. The Hendrick Chevrolets are always quick at Daytona and this year all four cars look very strong.

On the pole will be Martin Truex’s Ganassi/Earnhardt Racing Chevrolet. Truex led half of Thursday’s first qualifying race only to spin and fall to 21st, but Truex is guaranteed the pole from last Sunday’s qualifying runs which also guaranteed the outside of the front row to the veteran Martin. Other top contenders include Truex’s new team-mate Montoya and Ganassi/Earnhardt’s third Chevy driven by Aric Almirola who finished in fifth place in Thursday’s first qualifying race.

Also looking good on Thursday were Tony Stewart and last year’s Daytona 500 winner Ryan Newman. Two-time NASCAR champion Stewart has left Joe Gibbs Racing after ten years to start his own team with his buddy Newman joining him in the new venture after eight years with Roger Penske’s NASCAR team. Stewart and Newman are racing Chevrolet cars with engines built by Hendrick and the new team has hit the ground at speed, running right on the pace at Daytona. Stewart will start from the third row while Newman will start at the back after he was knocked out of his qualifying race in an accident with David Reutimann.

Most likely to beat the many quick Chevrolets is Kyle Busch, winner of Thursday’s second sprint race aboard one of Joe Gibbs’s trio of Toyotas. Busch is the guy most NASCAR fans love to hate, but he’s also shown he’s one of the fastest stock car drivers and looks entirely capable of winning on Sunday. Team-mates Denny Hamlin who finished fifth in the second 150 and rookie Joey Logano who impressed everyone with a great drive to fourth place in the first 150 should also feature among the leaders on Sunday.

For the rest of the field, it’s all about staying out of trouble, avoiding accidents and hoping the big crapshoot comes your way.

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At the end of last week Roger Penske officially announced what we’ve already reported in the latest issue of Motor Sport. After three successful years racing a pair of Porsche RS Spyders in the American Le Mans Series’ LMP2 category, the Penske-Porsche combination moves into the Grand-Am’s Daytona Prototype category in 2009 with a Porsche-powered Riley Mk XX. The new combination makes its debut at the Rolex 24 at Daytona at the end of January.

Porsche factory drivers Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas will be Penske’s primary drivers as they have been over the past three years in the ALMS. In that time, Bernhard and Dumas shared fourteen wins and took two LMP2 drivers’ championships with Penske. Both have raced multiple times at Daytona aboard factory Porsches with Bernhard scoring an overall win in 2003.

“We are proud to continue our long-standing relationship with Porsche,” Penske said. “We look forward to continue our considerable sports car success and our team is working hard to prepare for the first event at Daytona.”

Indeed, the team has been testing the 4-litre, flat-six-powered Riley with more testing planned over the next month and a half. The Penske team raced a rented Grand-Am car in last year’s Rolex 24 as a prelude to this latest Penske-Porsche combination.

Ryan Briscoe, now established as one of Penske’s two IRL drivers, is expected to join Bernhard and Dumas at Daytona. The fourth driver for the Rolex 24 will probably come from either Patrick Long, Helio Castroneves, or the latter’s replacement if Penske takes a decision to dump the Brazilian who’s in serious trouble with the USA’s federal tax authorities.

Penske and Porsche’s departure from the ALMS comes after three very successful years. The contract called for a three-year program and the combination won both the P2 drivers and engine manufacturers championships the last two years despite strong competition from Acura. Mission accomplished, Penske and Porsche now take on the rival Grand-Am series amid rumours of a return to the ALMS in two or three years with a hybrid-powered car.

Another factor in the conclusion of the ALMS program was the departure from the American market of sponsor DHL. The German-based international freight company was the primary sponsor of Penske’s Porsche Spyders for the last three years but amid the global financial crisis DHL ceased all operations in the United States last month and closed its headquarters in Ohio.

As Alex Gurney said in this space last week the Daytona Prototype category is looking a little healthier than it appeared earlier in the autumn following the early days of the market meltdown. Penske’s formal announcement of his new partnership with Porsche is a shot in the arm for the Grand-Am series while the ALMS will surely feel the loss of Penske and Porsche. The ALMS folks in Braselton, Georgia, where the ALMS is headquartered, will be hoping there’s substance to the rumours about a future Penske/Porsche hybrid ALMS car.

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The men from Ingolstadt were in sombre mood at the end of the 2008 Sebring 12 Hours. For the first time this century they failed to win. Worse still, it was the men from Stuttgart who were first to reach the chequered flag. It could have been worse, it could have been the men from France.

Yes, there were chinks in the Audi armour at Sebring. But it could have been worse, it could have been Le Mans.

There is much to be done before June. And it will be done. Words were not minced in the debrief on Saturday night, nor in those that followed on Sunday. On Monday morning they were back at the circuit, gearing up for a 12-hour test. There will be no rest.

“There were technical problems, ones we had never had before,” said Dr Wolfgang Ullrich, “and there were some driver errors. We had to change the front discs on one car – that’s never happened before. We had to change a turbo on the other car, and there were issues with the front suspension. All these problems came our way this weekend and there is already a full investigation into why this happened.”

When a car has a major problem at Sebring, it passes through the pits and “goes behind the wall” as they say down Florida way. When Marco Werner’s Audi went behind the wall, and into its paddock garage, I went to watch the mechanics go to work on changing the turbo on the engine’s right bank. After a few minutes I was aware of a person standing very close behind me. Looking over my shoulder, I came face to face with a man dressed in Peugeot fireproof overalls. This man proceeded to take a video camera from his pocket and record the surgery to the back of the R10, pausing only to jot some notes onto a small pad. The atmosphere was somewhat tense but he remained expressionless as he filmed over my shoulder. As soon as the work was done, and a swarm of mechanics began to re-fit the bodywork, the Frenchman sidled away. Espionage is alive and well. “It happens,” an engineer told me afterwards. “It is very open house in the paddock here and you can waste a lot of time and effort in trying to stop this kind of thing.” There were a lot of people working on that car, all highly focused on not losing too many laps. Maybe one extra person, looking at the onlookers, might just be a worthwhile idea.

Both Audi and Peugeot went to Sebring to try and break the cars ahead of Le Mans. And both teams succeeded. “If something is going to fail, it will fail at Sebring,” said Dr Ullrich. “It is the toughest race we do. So, we go away, we learn, and we get it right.”

And then, of course, there is Peugeot to worry about. The new car was very quick all week in Florida, not reliable, but very fast. The duel of the diesels – Audi TDI versus Peugeot HDI – is well and truly on. We are on the cusp of a classic battle in sports car racing. If both teams have reliability at La Sarthe in June, the race will be sensational.

On Friday, in the heat of the Sunshine State, the Peugeot was fastest in qualifying but was not awarded pole. What? How so? Well, the session was red-flagged after a huge shunt that damaged the concrete barriers that surround much of this airfield circuit. Nothing unusual so far. But then IMSA decided not to re-start, and instead of giving pole to the quickest car so far (Peugeot) they averaged out all the times from Thursday and Friday and it was the Audi of Allan McNish that came out on top. Had the qualifying run its course, the story may have been different, but probably not.

“There’s no question the Peugeot has outright speed over one lap,” said McNish, “and really they should have had pole. But we are confident of our race pace and our strategy. The battle is on, though, you’d better believe it, and we have work still to do.” He was right about the race pace. Despite losing time in the pits, McNish, Rinaldo Capello and Tom Kristensen climbed back through the field in the evening and into the night, taking second place behind the Penske Porsche, which ran like clockwork. The Peugeot led from the start but was soon in the garage, finishing this gruelling test of endurance many laps down on the leaders.

Sebring is a four-day party for the 100,000 fans who travel from all over the USA to make this event a most extraordinary happening. Camped out in tents and motorhomes, they make the Sebring infield their own for the best part of a week. It is surely the rowdiest and most bizarre motor racing party on the planet, smoke from the hundreds of barbecues drifting across the circuit, a cacophony of rock and country music sometimes drowning out the cars, and a lot of whooping and hollering from the rooftops of trucks, campers and enormous jeeps. This is down-home America. Forget Boston or Manhattan, this is party time down South. Creedence Clearwater Revival blasts out into the night, very scantily clad girls get them well revved up for the annual bikini contest, and there is beer, a very great deal of beer. “Helps ugly people have sex,” one fan told me. “There’s 24 cans in a pack, one for each hour of the day, man.” And in among this mayhem is a motor race. Down in the ‘zoo’ – otherwise known as Turn 10 – there is some serious frolicking, not all of it fully clothed. They have fun, these people, and they love their racing, especially the throaty roar of the Corvettes. They’re not so sure about the whooshing, whispering diesels and Peugeot fans seemed to be thin on the ground. “We hate the French, you know,” one group of ZZ Top lookalikes told me. Right, I see, I said.

Team Audi does not hate the French. But they do respect them right now. We are in for a very exciting Le Mans. The R10 will take a lot of beating – it is a supremely good racing car – but Peugeot is coming.

Sebring 2008, the 56th running of this classic contest, resulted in Hans Stuck, Derek Bell and Roger Penske being inducted into the Hall of Fame. Everybody was very happy about that. And Roger Penske was the happiest of them all on Saturday night.

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The start of a new Grand Prix season is always a time for optimism. One tends to look forward to what lies ahead, not back on what has passed – which is just as well considering the events of 2007 in Formula 1.

But for all the sad controversy of the spy scandal, there was a lot to excite and inspire on track last season, and there’s the potential for more of the same this time around – hopefully without the off-track distractions.

In this month’s issue we focus on the F1 season with a bumper preview that includes profiles of all the teams and drivers. Meanwhile, Nigel Roebuck talks to Sir Jackie Stewart about what to expect, and as ever JYS is thought provoking and frank in his opinions. Stewart’s a signed-up fan of Lewis Hamilton, but that doesn’t mean he’s certain that the bright young star of last year is going to have everything his own way this time…

Aside from modern F1, there is plenty in this month’s issue to keep you entertained for the next month. Gordon Kirby’s exclusive Roger Penske interview on The Captain’s early career as a promising driver is not to be missed, and neither is Simon Taylor’s latest Lunch with… His guest this time? Alan Jones. Entertainment guaranteed, then.

Putting together Motor Sport every month is a joy, but sometimes there are tough decisions to make. Here’s an example.

When we heard Derek Bell planned to race in the Daytona 24 Hours one last time in what would be his final appearance in international motor sport we thought it was a ripe topic for a feature. So I commissioned Rob Widdows to speak to Derek after the race to talk through how it went and reminisce about his good times and bad times at ‘the other’ great 24-hour enduro.

Rob duly carried out the interview and filed an entertaining story in typically double-quick time. Unfortunately, the article had lost its relevance. Poor Derek had missed out on racing because the Riley-Pontiac he was supposed to drive retired early on. Deeply disappointing for the three-time Daytona winner – and a little bit frustrating for us. Without the ‘hook’ of the story, I couldn’t justify running it in the magazine.

But we’ve pieced it together from the cutting room floor for you to read online instead. It was too good to waste, after all.

I hope you enjoy Rob’s article – and this month’s magazine, too.

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