Speed:Sport:Life

The team at Drive has published their first video of the 2012 IMSA GT3 Cup Challenge season from Sebring International Raceway.  This episode of Drive introduces all the teams, cars and drivers for the seventh season of the series.  Be sure to keep an eye out for Speed:Sport:Life’s own Michael Mills in the video.  Drive will be covering the entire season of the IMSA GT3 Cup and we’ll post them as they are published!

Photo: Andrew Trahan/Andrew Trahan Photography/Speed:Sport:Life

Our resident test driver, Michael Mills, drove the #41 Effort Racing 911 GT3 Cup to victory in the 2nd round of the 2012 IMSA GT3 Challenge today at Sebring International Raceway.  Mills finished 3rd in the first round of the series yesterday, but claimed the overall fastest lap in that race putting him on pole for the start of today’s round 2 race.  While Mills was in P2 for most of the round 2 race behind Fernando Pena, Mills executed a beautiful pass in the closing minutes and managed to claim the overall victory by a margin of 1.480 seconds.

For those keeping track, Mills’ first IMSA GT3 Challenge races at Petit Le Mans in his old car netted him a 1st and 2nd place finish in his old Gold class 911 GT3 Cup car, and a 3rd and 1st place finish this week at Sebring in the first two races in the new Platinum class 911 GT3 Cup car.

We’re proud to call Michael a member of the Speed:Sport:Life family and can’t wait to see what he and the rest of the Effort Racing team can do with the car with even more time to test and tweak. Congratulations Michael on your well deserved win!

Frequent readers of Speed:Sport:Life know Michael Mills as our resident wheel man when it comes to putting down fast lap times on a track.  What you might not know though is that Mills will be racing a full season with Effort Racing in the 2012 IMSA GT3 Challenge with a brand new 2012 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car.    This past weekend we hung out with Mills who took us along for a ride in the 2010 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup cup car that he piloted to victory in the Gold class during  round 15 of the 2011 IMSA GT3 Challenge at Petit Le Mans.  Incidentally, Petit Le Mans was Michael’s first entry in a IMSA GT3 Challenge race.

The 2012 IMSA GT3 Challenge season looks promising for Mills and the entire Effort Racing team as he consistently finished towards the top during the Winter Test sessions at Sebring International Raceway this past month.  The team has been relentlessly testing and tweaking to perfect the car for rounds 1 and 2 of the 2012 IMSA GT3 Challenge to be held at Sebring International Raceway on March 15th and 16th.  We’ll be covering the race on Twitter as well as doing a recap after each race.   Until then, sit back and enjoy the ride along with Michael Mills.

Michael Mills in the #41 car at the 2011 Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta

S:S:L test driver extrordinaire, Michael Mills, took delivery of his new 2012 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car yesterday in Atlanta.  The car as shown here is literally as fresh off the boat from Germany as they come with all the tags in tact and rear wing still in the box.  The car has to undergo some modifications from its current form to meet the IMSA GT3 Challenge specifications and be setup in time to make the winter tire test at Sebring in a few weeks.  Lots of work to be done but we’ll be covering the transformation as much as we can.  For those of you who don’t remember, Michael won his first IMSA GT3 Challenge race in the Gold class on his first attempt at Petit Le Mans last year and placed 2nd by a very close margin during the second race.  This year Michael will be competing in the Platinum class with this brand new car and S:S:L be along for the ride for the entire season.    We can’t wait to see this thing on the track!

Michael Mills at the 2011 Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta

Photos by Zerin Dube & Ford Motor Company

When Ford resurrected legendary 5.0 engine with the 2011 Mustang GT, muscle car enthusiasts everywhere waited with bated breath for the seemingly inevitable return of the iconic Boss 302 nameplate.  With Dodge heating up the muscle car wars with the Challenger 392 and the Chevy Camaro SS flying off the showroom floors, it only made sense for Ford to slot a higher-performance model in between the already competent Mustang GT and range-topping GT500 models.  Enthusiasts didn’t have to wait long, as Ford proudly announced the return of the Boss 302 for the 2012 Mustang model year.

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I headed out to MSR Houston last weekend to visit friend of S:S:L, Michael Mills, and was pleasantly surprised to see John Hennessey and John Heinricy testing out their latest creations. The ZR700 is a tweaked version of the already potent ZR1. Hennessey claims 705 horsepower with the upgrades. The top video is one I shot from the end of pit wall as the ZR700 entered turn 1 at MSR Houston. The in-car video below is by Hennessey Performance and shows John Heinricy in action. Enjoy!

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Story by Jack Baruth, photos by Sydney Davis Photography/MSR Houston

Three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of damage. Imagine owning a car so valuable, so difficult to fix, so chock-full of unobtanium parts that it’s possible to cause three hundred G’s worth of damage simply by running it at low speed into a Jersey barrier. Hard to believe – and yet that’s exactly what happened to movie producer Daniel Sadek when comedian Eddie Griffin borrowed his Ferrari Enzo and understeered straight into the concrete during a promotional event.

With Enzo values hovering in the million-and-a-half-dollar range, a $300K hit wasn’t enough to total the car, but it was enough to raise doubts as to whether the car could ever be repaired well enough to satisfy a potential buyer. What happened next has quickly become an Internet legend: Exotic-car dealer Matt Groner bought Sadek’s Enzo, purchased over $91,000 of authentic Ferrari parts, and invested an undisclosed but presumably massive amount of labor to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. It’s now up for sale on Ebay with a starting bid of $1,200,000. The winner of the auction is unlikely to be disappointed; Groner was painstaking in his efforts, modestly allowing that the paintjob just might be better than Ferrari’s notoriously sloppy original work.

Still, consider the fact that this is one of fewer than four hundred Enzos in the world. It’s a car that can be six-figure damaged by having an autocross accident. A crunch that wouldn’t cost ten grand to fix on a Mustang. A “crash” that, at the very worst, probably happened at thirty miles per hour.

Did you hear that?

That’s the sound of Michael Mills blowing by at one fifty.

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