These podcasts are coming pretty thick and fast at the moment, but we didn’t want to hang on to this one for too long, especially since Allan was on such good form.

On Tuesday March 29 when we recorded it he had spent the past nine hours in a film studio recording a three-minute clip for an Audi advert. When he made it to the Motor Sport offices we couldn’t believe he even wanted to do the podcast and we definitely didn’t think he would be as lively as he was. So thank you Allan!

As always, we hope you enjoy it – we certainly did – and do let us know what you think.

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A new era of sports car racing kicks off in Florida on Saturday. The Sebring 12 Hours marks the return of what should be classified as a World Championship of Makes – even if we’re not allowed to officially call it that.

The tough enduro is much more than just the first round of the American Le Mans Series this year. It also counts for something that calls itself the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup, a seven-round global series for sports cars which includes the Le Mans 24 Hours itself. Last year’s three-race pilot series was a toe-in-the-water exercise. Now it’s for real – and even though a title with an acronym as meaningless as ILMC will mean little to the world outside the paddock, the manufacturers are taking it very seriously.

That’s because they know this is the start of something that should be very big. The series is the brainchild of Le Mans organiser the ACO. The target now is for the FIA to embrace the series and give it the World Championship title it so fully deserves.

Audi Sport boss Dr Wolfgang Ullrich summed up the feelings of everyone in sports car racing this week when he said during a press conference: “The ILMC means nothing outside this room. We need a World Championship and we need it quickly. Not in five years, but in two or three.”

There were nods of agreement from the rest of the panel beside him, which included team bosses representing the interests of Peugeot, BMW, Chevrolet and Ferrari.

It is believed that FIA president Jean Todt – who of course led Peugeot’s Group C campaign in the final days of the old World Sports Car Championship 20 years ago – is open to the idea of bestowing a proper title on the series. Let’s hope he moves on it soon.

At the front of the ILMC, we’re looking forward to another chapter of Audi versus Peugeot, as the two giants renew their intense rivalry on the bumpy concrete runways of the Sebring airfield circuit. Typically, they’re being coy over their chances.

Peugeot comes to this race with its all-new 908 LMP1. Yes, I know, it’s got the same name as the old one that won Le Mans in 2009, and at first glance it looks identical. But trust me, it is a new car. Just wish they’d given it the new name it deserves. A confusing decision.

The 908 conforms to the new 2011 regulations that have been designed to slow Le Mans prototypes, and make them safer. Diesel engine sizes have been slashed from 5.5 to 3.7 litres, while the most significant chassis change is the addition of the ungainly F1-style ‘shark fins’ on the engine cowlings. As featured in Motor Sport last year, these have been added as an attempt to stop the old problem of prototypes flipping during accidents. They look awful, but if it marks the end of cars taking flight, then so be it.

“This is a working session for us,” reckons Peugeot Sport boss Olivier Quesnel, who adds a quite remarkable statement regarding the team’s Sebring aspirations: “We don’t intend to win and I don’t think it will happen.” Well, that’s ambitious…

Of course, Le Mans is the focus for the Pride of France. But Anthony Davidson topped night practice on Thursday, following the team’s time-topping performances in testing earlier in the week. The new car has every chance of scoring a debut victory, whatever the boss might say.

At Audi, the new R18 coupé won’t arrive here until the day after the race, as the team prepares to continue its testing programme on Monday. Instead, the German giant is wheeling out its old R15 ‘spyder’ for one last fling. The car has been dubbed the R15 Plus Plus, to reflect the changes that have been forced upon it to allow the team to race it against new 2011 cars. Internally the team is calling it the R15 Plus Minus, which is more accurate. A power-sapping smaller air restrictor has suffocated the turbodiesel that won Le Mans against the odds last year. “It’s as flat as a fart,” was Allan McNish’s colourful description of the difference it has made, but that did not stop the two cars setting the fastest times in the opening pair of practice sessions.

Where the difference will really tell in the race is how much harder it will be for the prototypes to lap GT cars around the high-downforce circuit. With a field of 56 cars, avoiding trouble in traffic could well decide the outcome of this race between the two giants. There’s little in it for pace. As Dr Ullrich said, “performance is not everything for this race”.

The Sebring 12 Hours is always hard fought, and so it promises to be once again. And its significance, as the kick-off point of a new era, only increases the intensity between the two rival camps. Whatever they might say in press conferences.

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Steve Soper never used to be the friendliest of racing drivers. The first time I met him was at the Sebring 12 Hours in 1999, when he was racing a BMW V12 LM sports prototype for wealthy amateur Thomas Bscher. As first encounters go, it wasn’t the best.

As a child of the 1980s, Soper had always been a bit of a hero to me. Here was a Brit who’d been schooled in the rough-and-tumble world of British saloon car racing, taking on – and beating – the cream of Europe in the exotic DTM. We’re used to it these days, thanks to the likes of Gary Paffett and Paul di Resta, but Soper’s exploits abroad back then marked him out as special. Whenever he returned to the BTCC, as trouble-shooting team-mate to Tim Harvey in 1992 and full-time with the crack Schnitzer squad the following year, he carried an air of authority and intimidating quality. Everyone knew Soper was an A-list draw, the man they all wanted to beat.

He continued to carry some of that power into sports cars, but at Sebring in ’99 things had not gone well. The story goes that team manager Dave Price got on the radio to warn him of a full-course yellow, that someone had gone off. “I know,” said Steve. “It’s me.” He’d smacked the BMW into the concrete wall at the final corner.

Now, as Autosport’s race reporter I had to go and ask him what had happened, cursing that I hadn’t introduced myself before the race. I approached him with plenty of trepidation, only too aware of his prickly reputation – plus it’s never a good time to talk to a driver when they’ve just stuffed it.

“Steve,-I’m-Damien-Smith-from-Autosport,-glad-to-see-you’re-OK,-can-you-tell-me-what-happened-please?” I blurted. He didn’t even look at me. “I crashed,” he replied flatly, then turned on his heel and stalked away. Oh dear. So much for bringing the reader that exclusive one-on-one insight.

I told him about our unfortunate encounter recently when we met at a BMW dinner where the marque launched its new UK ‘Classic’ arm. “I’m sorry about that,” he said with a wry smile. “I wasn’t always the easiest of racing drivers to deal with.”

He’s different now. Today, he sells cars for BMW as a respected dealer, and he has definitely mellowed. You can still sense the old intensity below the surface, but he is engaging, friendly and clearly very relaxed with his legacy as one of the great touring car legends. He said he’d be happy to help if we had any feature ideas for the magazine – so we took him up on it!

At a cold and windy Brands Hatch in November, BMW helped us gather three classic racers from three very different eras: the modern 320Si which races in the World Touring Car Championship, a Bigazzi M3 from the heart of Soper-era DTM and a fabulously botoxed CSL ‘Batmobile’ from the 1970s. We then teamed Steve with Britain’s modern-day BMW tin-top hero, triple World Champion Andy Priaulx – who came straight off a plane from Macau – to join him for our test and compare notes.

As you can read in Gordon Cruickshank’s excellent story in the March issue, Soper and Priaulx have a bit of shared history and get on well. They thoroughly enjoyed swapping mounts for the day – and trying something completely different in the form of the Batmobile. So two genuine stars of the touring car world who together span over 30 years of frontline action, three of the finest Munich ‘road rockets’ and Britain’s best-loved race track: it’s a heady mix.

Elsewhere in the March issue, Adam Cooper pays tribute to another touring car ace, Tom Walkinshaw – who of course went on to greater acclaim as the man who made Jaguar a force once again at Le Mans, and helped Michael Schumacher to his first F1 world title at Benetton. Tom died of cancer in December and Adam’s profile of this complex man frames his career in perfect perspective.

Ed Foster meets Dany Bahar and Claudio Berro, the men behind the revolution currently taking place at Lotus; Simon Taylor has lunch with two-time Le Mans winner and, er, BMX World Champion Alex Wurz; Rob Widdows interviews veteran team boss Mike Earle; and I get to meet the charismatic – and eccentric – Italian hero of the 1970s, Arturo Merzario. Reuniting motor racing’s very own ‘Marlboro Man’ with the car he raced for Frank Williams in 1974 and ’75 was a real treat, if a little nerve-wracking…

Finally, if you usually skip over my Matters of Moment editorial (and I don’t blame you if you do!) you might miss the chance to enter a special competition. So allow me to tell you about it here. We’re offering five tickets (plus a guest each) to our exclusive Motor Sport Hall of Fame event, to be held at the Roundhouse in London on February 15. The evening is sure to be one to remember, so click here to answer a simple question and give yourself a chance of being there on the night. Hopefully, I’ll see you there!

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From your responses to last week’s blog about Jim HalI at the Nürburgring, it’s clear that many of you were taken by the Chaparral 2F long-distance sports/racer from 1967. Phil Hill and Mike Spence drove the winged 2F in that year’s International Championship for Makes and it was often the car to beat. Spence turned the fastest lap at Sebring, and Hill was on pole and set fastest lap in the Nürburgring 1000Kms.

But time and again the main drive-bearing in the 2F’s automatic transmission failed to go the distance, until the Brands Hatch (above) season-closer where Hill and Spence came through to beat Jackie Stewart/Chris Amon’s Ferrari 330P4 and Jo Siffert/Bruce McLaren’s Porsche 910. The CSI rewrote the rules for sports car racing that winter, mandating a 5-litre engine limit and effectively driving away the Ford and Chaparral teams. Hall and his partner Hap Sharp were ready to go in 1968 but the new rules brought an abrupt end to the Chaparral team’s European foray.

Nor did Hill race again after his Brands Hatch win with Spence. The 1961 World Champion’s Formula 1 career effectively came to an end in 1964 after a year with Cooper. He didn’t run any F1 races in ‘65 and started three GPs, each for different teams, in ‘66. Phil’s primary effort that year went into driving the Chaparral 2D in long-distance sports car racing and the 2E in Can-Am. He and Jim Hall were Can-Am team-mates in ‘66 when Phil (below) scored the Chaparral team’s only victory at Laguna Seca, heading a one-two sweep.

“Phil was a great guy with a lot of talent and really fun to work with because he understood a lot of what was going on,” says Hall. “I think he was probably as good as anybody at making the car finish. He’d put many cars together himself and knew how everything was made and how to take care of it. He was a great endurance driver for other reasons, but for that reason too.

“When we got near the Can-Am season in 1966 we decided we’d offer Phil a drive. He was a great guy to have on your team – he pulled for you and worked for you. And in the endurance races he was our man. I think Phil enjoyed driving for us, we just had a good relationship.”

Hall also had great respect for Spence (above with Jim Clark and Colin Chapman), who was killed at Indianapolis in May 1968. “I really thought a lot of Mike,” he says. “He was an awfully talented driver, very quick and a smart guy who worked hard. He was a good fit for Chaparral too. It takes the right kind of person to be on your team who fits in with your people and how they work, and Mike fitted us well and was a joy to work with.”

As epic a period as the ’60s was technically and aesthetically it was also, as we all know, a deadly time.

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The pair of factory Peugeots ran away with Saturday’s 58th Sebring 12 Hours, completing a 1-2 sweep three laps ahead of the lone Gulf/Aston Martin. The winning Peugeot 908HDI was driven by Alex Wurz/Marc Gené/Anthony Davidson, who beat team-mates Sébastien Bourdais/Nicolas Minassian/Pedro Lamy across the line by 13.8 seconds. It was Peugeot’s first win at Sebring and its second in America following the team’s victory in last September’s Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta.

Without any competition from Audi this year the Peugeots set the pace all week. The two 908HDIs were the fastest cars in every practice session and were challenged in the race only by Lord Paul Drayson’s Lola-Judd, driven by Emanuele Pirro. But Drayson’s car ran into various problems and finally finished 12th, more than 30 laps behind. “It was a very tough race because we were fighting all the way to the line,” said Wurz, who drove the final three hours in the winning car. “But it was an awesome race with a good team and good preparation.”

Gené congratulated Wurz on his final stint. “Alex did a mega job at the end,” he said. “He drove for three hours and there were no team strategies. So he was racing with Bourdais, and Bourdais is really fast here. He really knows this place but Alex was spot-on. So I think he’s the hero in our car.”

Davidson was delighted to win on his debut with Peugeot: “It’s fantastic to be with the Peugeot team. Until a couple of weeks ago I didn’t even have any contact with these guys. It was quite a late call for the season. I’ve always wanted to come here and win at Sebring. I was second in 2003, and to join the likes of Alex and Marc – Le Mans winners – there was big pressure today. I knew I had big shoes to fill after [David] Brabham but I think we did a good job. We got the car into the lead when I was driving and just stuck it out, and like Marc said Alex did a great job at the end.”

The Gulf/Lola-Aston Martin driven by Adrian Fernández/Stefan Mücke/Harold Primat enjoyed a flawless race, running the entire distance without trouble to finish third. “It was fantastic,” Fernández enthused. “I’m happy for Aston Martin and my team-mates. They’re fantastic drivers and great friends, and we managed to do a great job.”

Fourth overall and winner of the P2 class was Greg Pickett’s Porsche RS Spyder driven by Pickett/Klaus Graf/Sascha Maassen. The car ran perfectly and beat the Highcroft HPD ARX-01c driven by Simon Pagenaud/Marino Franchitti/David Brabham by four laps. The Highcroft car led the P2 class for most of the race, building a six-lap lead at one stage, before an electrical fault lost the team 24 minutes in the pits.

The Audi team will join the Peugeots and Highcroft’s P2 car in more testing at Sebring today (Monday) and tomorrow. All three plan to run 12 hours each day in further preparation for Le Mans. Audi also tested at Homestead last week with its latest R15+ and racing boss Dr Wolfgang Ulrich spent last weekend at Sebring observing his competitors.

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Just as we were getting prepared to have Mario Andretti as our next podcast guest a call came through saying that Brian Redman also wanted to join us.

There’s no point in going over Redman’s career here as I am sure you’re all perfectly familiar with it. However, the 12 Hours of Sebring and Targa Florio winner is well known for telling a good story so you can imagine the delights that await both you and us here in the office.

So Andretti and Redman in a room together with Rob steering the chat and Nigel getting stuck in too. As you can imagine Damien and myself may be taking a step back from this one as our past exploits and stories will look relatively lame next to these two.

We’re recording the podcast on February 11 so get your questions in now by clicking here. This really is a great opportunity to question two of motor sport’s greats.

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Like a bird on the back of a buffalo, I am watching my little world move around me.

Life can be like baseball, or perhaps that should be cricket where I come from. You take what is thrown at you. And just when you think you’re on a home run…

It’s been a funny old week, both in real life and in motor racing. There I was, packing my bags for Sebring, when the family chief mechanic tells me he doesn’t like the look of something and packs me off to the workshop, where a very nice man takes it away and tells me to take it easy. I’m not very good at that.

Not a big deal, but no Sebring. So of course I tried to follow the race on the TV teletext service. Nothing, not a word, and ditto in the Sunday newspapers. But – having removed a sleeping cat from atop the laptop – the excellent Audi website brought news of a great victory for the new R15. That made my weekend, even though I missed a terrific race. Roll on Le Mans. Could be a cracker.

On top of all this both our cars failed the MOT test. My little Renault needs a new rear seat belt “receptor” and her bigger sister needs new brakes. New brakes? Have you ever heard of a modern car needing new brakes after 30,000 miles? No, nor have I. From here on in, Team Widdows is taking its Renaults to the local garage up the road. There we will find friendly mechanics and a lot less creative accounting.

On top of all this a Williams driven by Nakajima goes fastest on the last day of testing at Jerez. Can the car really be this good? Or are the others holding back? Tune in on Saturday to find out. And, just in case you can’t keep up with all the shenanigans, the World Champion this year will be the driver with the most points. And I think that’s a good decision. Meanwhile, how many teams will protest the new Brawn GP car once they get to Melbourne? All of them, probably.

Some things never change.

Hanging on the telephone earlier this week, listening interminably to that dreadful phrase “your call is important to us”, I realised that nearly a quarter of this year has gone by. Before we know it, we’ll have results instead of predictions. We will know what’s what and who, if anyone, has got the jump.

Win or lose, I wager that Fernando Alonso won’t need new discs, pads, hubs and heaven knows what else after a few laps. Oh yes, and they charge for washer fluid these days too. The coffee, taken in a deserted showroom, is free.

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Saturday’s 57th Sebring 12 Hours kicks off this year’s American Le Mans Series, and an interesting race it will be with Audi and Peugeot staging a full dress rehearsal for Le Mans. Two of Audi’s new R15s will take on a pair of Peugeot’s 908s, and the race winner should come from one of these two teams. But Acura’s highly-touted new ARX-02a LMP1 car will also make its race debut at Sebring. The rough old Florida airfield circuit is the worst conceivable place to debut a new car, but the ARX-02a’s designer, Nick Wirth, reckons the Acura P1 teams are up to the task.

Two of the new Acuras will race at Sebring and campaign the entire ALMS season. At this stage there are no plans to race the car outside North America. Gil de Ferran’s new De Ferran Motorsports team will run one of the ARX-02as for the Brazilian and Simon Pagenaud, with Scott Dixon joining them at Sebring. Duncan Dayton’s Patron/Highcroft team will run the other Acura, with David Brabham and Scott Sharp as the regular drivers and Dario Franchitti helping their cause at Sebring.

“I love Sebring,” says Wirth. “I love the history, the people… I love walking round Sebring and finding a hole that you would put traffic lights around and get a road crew out to fix because you might kill somebody. I love the corner worker walking up to me, smiling and saying, ‘Do you love our pothole? Somebody asked us to fill it in but we said we’d rather die. It’s getting bigger and bigger, and don’t you just love it?’

“You ask, ‘How can you have a hole like that on a corner on a racing track which is so fast, and with our new car is extremely fast?’ The answer is it’s fantastic and wonderful and dangerous and scary, and part of what I love about coming to Sebring. I love the challenge of making a car be fast and reliable under the most amazing circumstances.

“You’ve got to be a car designer or an engineer to truly appreciate what a challenge Sebring is,” adds Wirth. “I love taking my engineers out there and telling them to go and stand down by the inside of turn 17 and watch those guys drive that car in there at 190mph. They come past the point where you think they should be braking and they’re still on the gas, and you then see the car do the most amazing bouncing and thrashing over the bumps through that corner. And you don’t want anything to break through there because there’s no run-off and the driver is going to get hurt.”

Wirth says getting the car balanced to operate well through the track’s wide selection of corners is as difficult as dealing with the exceedingly rough surface.

“Sebring has got everything that makes a car designer go mad and that a race engineer can’t get, which is a balance between high-speed and low-speed corners, and that’s what makes it so wonderful,” he says. “It’s one of the greatest racing circuits in the world and it’s at an airfield in the middle of Florida where you’d never imagine it to be. People talk about Spa, but it’s nothing compared to Sebring. Sebring is a destroyer of cars.”

And, of course, there’s the rare ambience of the place, with the infield reverberating to a night-long party. “There’s the race and the fireworks and the cookouts and the smells,” says Wirth. “The drivers know where they are round the circuit by the smells. They can close their eyes and tell you where they are by who’s cooking steak and who’s cooking curry.”

Like Le Mans, Sebring is as much a party as a race. It’s a motor sport experience any fan worth his salt should take in at least once.

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Ah Sebring! A famously old WWII airfield in the middle of central Florida is the home of America’s most enduring road race. First run in 1952, the Sebring 12 Hours is one of the roughest, toughest races of the modern age. There’s nothing contemporary about the track or its facilities and its mid-March date has long made the twelve hours one of Florida’s many big ‘Spring Break’ parties. The crowd is there to have a good time in the growing late winter heat with the sights and sounds of a classic motor race as a convenient backdrop.

This year’s 56th running of the Sebring 12 hours was billed as a Le Mans preview centered on the duelling turbo diesels from Audi and Peugeot. The race was supposed to be all about a titanic struggle between the two factory teams from Germany and France, but both Audi R10s and the lone Peugeot 908 ran into unexpected troubles as the Penske-Porsche team came through to score Penske Racing’s first win in the endurance classic and the first outright Sebring win for Porsche in twenty years. It also meant Penske becomes the first team owner to win both the Daytona 500 and Sebring 12 hours in the same year and the first team owner able to boast of wins at Indianapolis, Daytona and Sebring. And it brought an end to Audi’s eight-year Sebring winning streak.

Before the race, Audi ace Alan McNish reckoned the lighter LMP2 Penske Porsche Spyders were serious dark horses to win the 12 hours. “We saw Penske and Porsche step up last year and raise the bar,” McNish remarked. “Porshe improved their downforce from last year and between that and their fuel advantage, they will be very hard to beat.

“The Porsches are good in every situation,” McNish added. “They are a little slower than us in qualifying but their race pace is very similar to ours. Also, the LMP2 cars’ fuel capacity mean they can run longer than us on a tank of fuel which can add up to three pitstops less over the course of a twelve-hour race. So that’s a lot of advantage in their pocket.”

As Audi focuses its factory racing efforts with its R10 on Europe this year, it will be interesting to see if the Penske Porsche RS Spyders will continue their winning ways in the American Le Mans Series. After winning eight races last year and Sebring for the first time in twenty years, has Porsche replaced Audi as the new standard-setter for the ALMS?

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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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(1971 Le Mans 24 Hours, Pedro Rodriguez & Jackie Oliver (Porsche 917 LH) leads Gerard Larrousse & Vic Elford (Porsche 917 LH), Mark Donohue & David Hobbs (Ferrari 512M), and Jo Siffert & Derek Bell (Porsche 917 LH))

Do you remember the great days of Les Vingt-Quatre Heures du Mans? When an annual pilgrimage to the little town in the Loire was something not to be missed? If you couldn’t be there, you’d tune in to BBC radio for those brief news reports, the late night bulletins always the most atmospheric, romantic even, with the sound of the cars wailing past the pits. If you were lucky, you’d get to see some pictures on BBC television, usually the start on Saturday afternoon and the finish on Sunday with the cameras lingering on that famous clock as the hands ticked round to 4pm. Remember when Ford took on Ferrari, when Porsche came with the long-tail 917, the arrival of the glorious-sounding Matras, the big yellow Renaults and the ceaseless scream of the Mazda? That’s all fairly recent of course. We could go back further, to the triumph of Jaguar and the heroics of Duncan Hamilton, the almost military presence of Mercedes-Benz and the night Phil Hill danced his Ferrari through driving rain to a last-gasp victory.

(Left-to-right in the Jaguar paddock at Le Mans in ’54: Peter Walker, Peter Whitehead and Duncan Hamilton (with a bunch of bananas). Behind include Mrs Lois Rolt (seated), Tim Seccombe and Mary Walker (behind Hamilton))

These were the days when the 24 hours of Le Mans was truly the most famous motor race in the world, when people bought cars because the manufacturer had won at La Sarthe, thinking they must be both rapid and reliable. Us Brits travelled in our tens of thousands to France that weekend in June, pitching our tents, watching in awe at the speed on the Mulsanne and tramping through the woods to see the cars flash through Indianapolis corner. The food was good, and the wine, for this was France and those catering vans at Brands seemed a planet away. OK, you were so tired – and sometimes soaked – by the end of Sunday that you swore you’d never go again. But you did. It was fun, romantic, exciting and knackering.

Things are different now. The race still runs for 24 hours, and the wine still tastes good though the exchange rate has done for the price. But the long blast down Mulsanne has been broken up with chicanes, and wire fences force us to watch the cars at a distance. Health and safety. For us, and them. And then there’s the Audis, the diesel-powered Audis. Much to the chagrin of legendary Le Mans heroes like Henri Pescarolo, the silver cars have come, conquered – and stayed.

I mention all this because next weekend sees the running of another famous endurance race. We’re off across the Atlantic to see the Audis at Sebring, where the mighty German cars have won every time this century. Extraordinary. A mirror of Le Mans in many ways. Sebring has a fine history, it’s one of the classic long-distance events, and the old airfield circuit remains pretty much as bumpy and basic as ever it was according to Allan McNish, who aims to win yet another one for Audi at the weekend. But this year could just be different. Peugeot is entering a single car, in preparation for Le Mans, and in the hope of getting one over the Audis in this duel of the diesels.

We know the beautiful Peugeot is quick. We saw that at La Sarthe last summer. If it was as fast as it looks, it would win by miles. This is surely one of the best-looking racing cars of the modern era. But can Peugeot get on terms with the sensationally reliable Audis over a 12-hour period, let alone double that distance in June? We don’t know, but it will be worth watching, and it will be some kind of guide to what’s in store at Le Mans. Peugeot is desperate to win in France, of course, while Audi is in no mood to give up its hard-earned reputation as the fastest diesel in the world (we’re not counting the JCB Dieselmax world land speed record machine).

(March 16 – 18, 2006, Sebring 12 Hours – Allan McNish in the Audi R10 leads the pack)

To Sebring then, and memories of reading about Stirling Moss’s great feats around the wide-open runways, remembering pictures of headlamps lighting up those warm Florida nights, with drivers in shirtsleeves and sneakers and shades. All very Steve McQueen. Like Le Mans though, it will be different now, if only because of the new world order in long-distance sports car racing. Audi dominates, Peugeot challenges, the fans long for a battle. Which TDi will they want to buy on the Monday morning, believing that racing can only improve the breed? Well, I have owned both marques, and both were damn good in their different ways. I will be there as an impartial observer but I have a gut feeling that Peugeot will have to wait until June before it gets a proper crack at making a dent in Audi’s armour.

(2007 Le Mans 24 Hours, Pedro Lamy/Stephane Sarrazin/Sebastien Bourdais (no 8 Peugeot 908 Hdi FAP) leads Lucas Luhr/Alexandre Premat/Mike Rockenfeller (no 3 Audi R10))

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In Champ Car testing at Sebring last weekend, 23-year old Frenchman Franck Perera showed he will be a man to watch this year. Driving one of Eric Bachelart’s Conquest Racing cars, Champ Car rookie Perera set the pace and yesterday Bachelart announced that Perera will lead his team this year.

Can a rookie in a small team win races and challenge the likes of Newman/Haas/Lanigan for this year’s Champ Car title? Bachelart says the strength of Champ Car’s Panoz-Cosworth rules package means a small team with good engineers and a fast, young driver can compete against teams like Newman/Haas/Lanigan. With Perera in one of his cars and another competitive young driver in Conquest’s second car, Bachelart hopes to be a serious contender this year.

And Perera? He was a member of Toyota’s young driver program in Europe from 2001-2004 and tested a Toyota F1 car in ‘04. He won the Formula Renault Italian championship in ‘03 and raced in GP2 in ‘06, finishing second in the Monaco GP2 round. Perera came to the USA last year to race in the revived Mazda/Atlantic championship with Carlos Bobeda’s Condor team. He wound up finishing a strong second to Raphael Matos in the Atlantic series, scoring his first win at mid-season on the challenging Mt Tremblant road course. He won again in Toronto the next weekend and also won the year’s final Atlantic race at Elkhart Lake.

At Sebring last week Perera proved he can pedal a Champ Car as quickly as anyone and it will be interesting to see what he can do when the beleaguered Champ Car series kicks-off at Long Beach in April.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine