Why you need to thank Cadillac for one of the most iconic races in the world

Mid-March can only mean one thing: The annual running of the 12 Hours of Sebring is about to kick off down in Sebring, Florida. The event has its roots in an endurance race all the way back in 1950 — but did you know one incoming Formula 1 team played a huge role in its founding?

That’s right: Cadillac provided the inspiration for founder Alec Ulmann to design his own race course in America, with the event continuing for over 75 years.

How Sebring was inspired by Cadillac and Briggs Cunningham

Sebring International Raceway isn’t the most awe-inspiring track in the world, let alone in the United States. Today, the bump-strewn 3.741-mile track carving through a defunct airstrip has seen better days, but the 12 Hour race at the track remains one of the key elements of the IMSA endurance racing calendar.

While Sebring wasn’t the first race track to be constructed on an airfield that was no longer being utilized after World War II, it became critical for American motorsport in that era.

Not long after the first Sebring event was held on New Year’s Eve in 1950, sports car racing was banned on open roads all across the country after a seven-year-old boy was killed during the Watkins Glen Grand Prix.

Most of the big Grand Prix-style racing events in America were hosted on similar circuits composed of open roads — Watkins Glen, Elkhart Lake, Pebble Beach, and more — and the sudden banning of those events forced race organizers to scramble to gather money to construct purpose-built tracks in place of their open-road track layouts.

That was no easy feat, and in the meantime, airfield circuits like Sebring effectively saved sports car racing in America by providing motorsport enthusiasts with a safe place to compete on private property.

The early track layouts were flat, defined only by hay bales or other imposed markers, but Sebring soon embedded itself in the consciousness of the American automotive enthusiast, to the point that it was the first road course in the United States to host a Formula 1 Grand Prix.

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Fascinatingly, the germ of this American endurance race idea popped into the mind of race promoter Alec Ulmann after accompanying Briggs Cunningham to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where Cunningham’s Cadillacs made waves.

I’ll let Ulmann explain this himself, as published in 1969’s The Sebring Story:

It took the experience of my trip to Le Mans in 1950 as manager for the Briggs Cunningham team, to re-awaken in me the interest in long distance endurance racing, which I had not witnessed since the great days of the Bentley victories in the thirties, when I was a frequent visitor at the Sarthe Circuit.

In my aviation activity, it became necessary for me to look for a venue for surplus war-time aircraft, which I was converting to civilian use or overhauling for the military of numerous small nations. The search for hangar space and apron facilities for the building and storage of the aircraft led me to the inspection of Hendrick Field located near Sebring, Florida, where a business friend, Col. C. D. Richardson, was already maintaining an aircraft parts stock. […]

The World War II B-17 bomber base, from which our crews flew the Atlantic after preliminary shake-down and training routine, was blessed with extremely long runways, and a whole small town of service buildings, among them mess halls, barracks, a church, and even a theatre next to which was a swimming pool. A quick survey of the whole area from the late Sam Collier’s Beach Bonanza […] disclosed an infinite possibility for road course layouts, with two glorious one-mile straightaways, so necessary for top speed competition. This was the type of geography that could simulate Le Mans’ right-angle turns of Mulsane [sic] and Arnage, and the 200-mph straight passes at the Hinaudieres [sic].

It was then and there that the idea germinated in my mind of duplicating, on a smaller scale, the Le Mans 24 hour endurance race. […]

Obsessed with the idea of reviving all this, plus the prompt experience at Le Mans with Cunningham’s Cadillacs prompted me, with the assistance of Col. Richardson, who had influence in the politics of Sebring, to embark on plans to organize a little Le Mans as soon as competitors and car owners could be persuaded to join up and a skeleton organization of officials could be set up.

Alec Ulmann was a longtime racing enthusiast who studied aeronautical engineering and who, after moving to the United States from Russia, fell in love with sports car racing. He was one of the few men who had witnessed the fabulous nature of sports car racing in Europe, and he, too, wanted to emulate that experience in the United States.

In America, Ulmann had become a key member of the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) and used his position to urge entrepreneur-turned-racer Briggs Cunningham to take his modified Cadillac race cars over to Le Mans. And it was that Cadillac excursion that convinced Ulmann to introduce his own endurance race in America.

Read more: How Watkins Glen truly defined F1’s place in the United States