Sebring Track Map Poster

Before Sebring was a racetrack, it was a wartime airfield. Part of every lap still runs on its original concrete, laid in slabs with seams so rough that sparks fly from under the cars as they cross them. Sebring International Raceway’s 6.019 km (3.74 miles) and seventeen turns run clockwise across south-central Florida, on ground it still shares with a working airport.

Hendricks Field, built in 1941, trained bomber crews throughout the Second World War. When it was over, an aeronautical engineer came looking for places to convert military planes for civilian use, and in its runways and service roads he saw an endurance race. The first ran on New Year’s Eve 1950, for six hours, and was won, on a handicap formula, by a tiny doorless roadster that had been driven to the track. In 1952 the race grew to twelve hours, and it still starts in daylight and ends in the dark.

Bumps, concrete seams and Florida heat make it a brutal test of reliability: the race is considered even harder on cars than Le Mans, and teams come here to prepare for it. Late in the day, drivers on the long straight back toward the pits head west into the setting sun, toward Sunset Bend, Turn 17, a long, bumpy right wide enough for three cars side by side. After dark, the sparks are easy to see.

On the poster, all that roughness becomes a clean drawing: a dense, angular knot of corners above the long straight that runs along the bottom of the sheet, every turn numbered and eleven names lettered in, from Big Bend to Sunset Bend. Heritage, the vintage clubhouse edition, suits a circuit that still races on wartime concrete. It may be the only lap of Sebring without a single bump.