By Sam Tickell
The 2008 Sebring 12 Hours has all the ingredients to be a classic!
IMSA has released the entry list for the 2008 Mobil 1 Sebring 12 Hours, which contains a surprise or two.
The biggest of those surprises is a LMP1 Radical. Known as the R10, the car will be biopowered and entered under the ECO Racing guise.
Even a bigger surprise is the driver lineup for the car. Lining up beside Simon Wright and Ben Collins, Finn Harri Toivonen brings experience and the name to the team.
Brother of the late rally legend, Henri Toivonen, Harri is an accomplished racer in his own right finished ninth at Le Mans in 1991. He had retired in 2002 from racing but it appears that he has come to the cockpit.
The rest of the LMP1 grid is as expected. Two Audi's and one Peugeot are the headline acts and should provide the fight for victory. Autocon and Intersport complete the class. The rumoured Creation entry, apparently has not happened.
LMP2 will also be a tight fight with the Porsche verses Acura battle. The regulars are back with Penske aiming to win, after embarrassing mechanical failures in the past. Dyson and Horag complete the Porsche entry - the latter making their debut with the RS Spyker.
Defending class winners Andretti-Green will lead the Acura charge with Highcroft and Fernandez also racing. BK Motorsports is back as the only Mazda entry and will, again struggle to keep up with the factory competitors. The class has one other entry with Barazi-Epsilon making the trip over - and could be a dark horse.
GT1 offered up no surprises with two Corvettes and one Aston Martin. But that fact still offers an exciting prospect as the ALMS gets its first look at the Bell Motorsports DBR9.
As per usual in the ALMS, the GT2 class offers up a great deal of variety and with 14 entrants, the largest car count.
Ferrari have the largest entrant list with five entries. Risi are back to defend their title with Tafel, Corsa and Krohn (run by Risi) running the 430 GT2 cars.
Porsche are back with a strong lineup but with a car that is arguably weaker than their Italian opponents. After losing out in the tight fight last year, Flying Lizard and Autoracing Club Bratislava will hope for success.
Ford, Chevrolet, Panoz, Dodge and Aston Martin all have one entry. Of these cars, the Panoz is old news and is not expected to be in contention for victory.
The Dodge Viper made its first appearance in 2007 but all the other cars are new to the ALMS. It could be expected that the Ford and Corvette will take some time to get up to speed. The Aston Martin, however will be well off the pace as the Drayson-Barwell team run a GT3 spec car while they wait for the GT2 car.
The full entry list can be found >here
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