Category - Speed:Sport:Life Racing

Michael Mills Wins Round 2 of the 2012 IMSA GT3 Challenge

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!

Live Coverage – 2012 12 Hours of Sebring

It’s race day from Sebring International Raceway for the 60th Annual Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring and we’re excited to kick off the ALMS/WEC season with our live coverage from the track.

If you are in the U.S., you’ll be able to watch on the big screen with the ESPN3 app on your Xbox360, or online with your computer starting at 10:30am EDT.  The same stream with a lower quality will also be available on Americanlemans.com (apparently ONLY if you are not in the U.S.) and FIAWEC.com.   Audi.tv will be providing live feeds and telemetry from the 3 Audi R18 TDIs during the race.  Radio LeMans will also be providing flag to flag coverage with their fantastic streaming audio commentary.  Live timing for the race is available at scoring.alms.com.

For those of you who wish to complement your TV/Radio coverage with some additional information, we’ve put together some of the key twitter feeds covering the race, including several of the race teams and media outlets who will be doing flag to flag coverage.  Of course, the Speed:Sport:Life team of Nick Salvatore and Zerin Dube will also be tweeting the entire 12 Hours of Sebring as well as some photography from the track throughout the day from Andrew Trahan.  Follow us on twitter at @speedsportlife.

To help you get started for the race, the full grid and their qualifying times can be found here, and make sure you’ve downloaded the Sebring Spotters Guides from Andy Blackmore here.

There will be 64 cars starting the race, so find your favorites and follow along with us.  The Cover It Live application below allows for an interactive experience, so feel free to drop us any questions or comments in the text box provided.  Enjoy!

Ride Along with IMSA GT3 Challenge Driver Michael Mills in a 911 GT3 Cup Car

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

 

Speed:Sport:Life Second Place at ChumpCar!

KriderRacing38s 2010 Acura CL
The Krider Racing Nissan Sentra SE-R takes second place at the world famous Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in the ChumpCar 7.5 hour enduro.

After lunching an engine at the ChumpCar Laguna Seca event in November 2011, the team throws a new engine in the car and heads back to “The Corkscrew” to take second place just weeks later. After some countless hours nerding out in front of a laptop the post-race compilation video is up and viewable here.
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One Man, One Motor

KriderRacing38s 2010 Acura CL
Rob Krider hosts the Club Racer show on GoRacingTV.com which shows racers the how-to for car prep.

Every racer has an off-season to do list. It is usually those few items that did not get taken care of during the year because other matters were more pressing (like an engine throwing the piston out of the side of the block). In the winter, you can finally get around to maybe throwing in some S Gear gauges or updating your old racing harnesses with new ones from I/O Port Racing Supplies. Or, if you are not in the mood to hang around the garage and stress out about how hard your unused Hoosier tires are getting in the off-season, you can always numb your mind with some Mexican beers and think about summer. Of course, in California, winter is summer, so we skip all of our off-season to do lists, go to the beach and procrastinate. It is a good time to kick back, turn on the iPad and flip through the National Auto Sport Association (NASA) new e-magazine called SpeedNews. Yes, I am glad you asked, you will see coverage from Speed:Sport:Life in future issues.
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Michael Mills’ New Chariot Hath Arrived

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