Tom LaPointe's Exotic Car Lifestyle Notebook

Ramblings on exotic cars, the car market, and things with wheels overall. We especially love Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche, and all the events where you find them.

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Location: Dunedin, Florida, United States

I currently publish iParent Magazine in the Tampa Bay area and work as a freelance writer for Affluent Page Index, in NYC. I grew up in Michigan near the Motor City and finished high school in Fernley NV. After attending the University of Nevada as a music major, I joined the Marine Corps as a combat correspondent. As a writer and editor, I won many publishing awards for photography, writing and editing. What led me to the auto industry is simply this: I love cars. I have raced stock cars and sports cars and competed in Land Rover off-road competitions in Vermont and Colorado. I have been a pit official for the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring, and a pit crewman for Indy and a Hooters Pro Cup races. I've served as a manager of both sales and service for one the largest luxury car groups in the world. I'm still active as an off-road instructor for Land Rover and HUMMER dealers and owners. I enjoy crawling an off-road vehicle through the most severe obstacles as much as heel-toeing sports cars into hairpin turns! I am also a freelance writer for several automotive publications.

March 19, 2006

12 Hours of Sebring


The 2006 12 Hours of Sebring are further proof that Audi/Volkswagen is the greatest automobile engineering company in the world. They put their diesel LMP racecars on the pole and finished with one of the cars in the top podium spot. The only thing that would have made it perfect is that they had the other one in the garage at the checkered flag.

Corvette won its class against a daunting challenge by the Aston Martin DBR9s that bumped the second Vette from the podium in the final minutes of the race.

Porsche has to head back to the endurance drawing board, as the top spot in GT2 was stolen by the Panoz Esperante, which gave Panoz its first win, with the Ferrari 430 Challenge car finishing third. It was an emotional victory for the brand created by Dan Panoz, after years of near misses in the LMP category.

One of the greatest personal experiences for me was meeting both Don Panoz and Dan Panoz at the conclusion of the race. Also fun to hang out with some of the DuPont Registry "Cars and Coffee" crowd, as well.

posted by Tom LaPointe | 8:04 PM

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