Sebring Classic 12 Hour 2026: America's Oldest Race

THE RACE THAT STARTED IT ALL RETURNS THIS DECEMBER

Ninety minutes up the turnpike from Palm Beach sits the birthplace of American sports car racing — and this December, Sebring International Raceway turns the clock back seventy-plus years for one of the most storied weekends on the calendar: the HSR Classic 12 Hour.

AMERICA'S OLDEST RACE

Before it was a racetrack, Sebring was Hendricks Field, an Army Air Force training base activated in 1942. When the war ended and the base was deactivated, the runways sat mostly quiet until aviation entrepreneur and racing promoter Alec Ulmann saw something else in that flat expanse of tarmac. On December 31, 1950, Ulmann staged the Sam Collier Memorial Sebring Grand Prix of Endurance — the first sports car endurance race ever held in the United States. Two years later, on March 15, 1952, that idea became the 12 Hours of Sebring, and by 1953 it was the opening round of the brand-new FIA World Sportscar Championship. Sebring has been on the international calendar ever since — hosting Formula 1 in 1959, Trans-Am since 1966, and today's World Endurance Championship — and it still carries the title of America's oldest continuously operating road racing circuit, with a prestige most enthusiasts rank second only to Le Mans.

THE CLASSIC 12 HOUR

That history is exactly what makes this December's event worth circling on the calendar. The HSR Classic 12 Hour — run by Historic Sportscar Racing, separate from the modern spring endurance race — turns Sebring into a rolling museum for four days. Run groups spanning more than six decades of sports racers rotate through practice, qualifying, and non-stop endurance races that carry on into the night, the same way the originals did. It's the closest thing most of us will get to watching a Fangio-era Sebring unfold in real time, except the cars in the field might be the very ones that ran there the first time around.

OUR HOME TURF

For us, this one's personal. BIDR is based right here in South Florida, and a track with this kind of pedigree just up the road is about as close to home turf as a collector-car company gets. Our team plans to be trackside for the Classic 12 Hour weekend — walking the paddock, talking to owners, and doing what we do everywhere: making it easier for the next generation of collectors to find the right car, and the story behind it. If you're making the drive up for the weekend, come find us.