Sebring

Race fans, start your engines! An Audi won this year's race at Sebring, known officially as the Tequila Patron 60th Anniversary Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh from Florida.

But the real award for endurance goes to the fans, who since 1952 have conducted their own marathon of racy behavior. Unlike the cars, they don't blow a tire and limp into the pits. More than 100,000 of them converge on the raceway (a former B-17 Flying Fortress training base, you should know) each year to celebrate the fact that there is still a place where a woman can pole dance off the back of her husband's truck at night, and two generations of a Floridian family can enjoy a frosty beer on the hairpin in the glaring light of day.

The Sebring fans don't quit. It is a point of pride among them that in 1974, the year that the race didn't happen because of the fuel crisis, several thousand fans showed up to party anyway.

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