Fan of the Year Wayne Jones
Wayne Jones of Sarasota, Florida, has been named the 2020
Sebring Fan of the Year. As usual, there were many fans nominated
who deserved the recognition, but Wayne’s 50+ years
of Sebring experience certainly puts him at the top of the list.
Here’s some excerpts of emails from fans endorsing Wayne as
the FOY:
“As a relative newcomer to the annual ritual of motorsports – Sebring
– and a recent adoptee of the combined La Bomba Racing
and Sarasota Racing & Drinking Enthusiasts, I’d like to add a
strong endorsement to the nomination of Wayne Jones as the
2020 Fan of the Year.
“Unfortunately, I did not heed the encouragement of my high
school classmates in the 1960s to come down to Sebring from
Orlando. It wasn’t until the late 90s that I woke up to what I had
been missing. After several years of camping with Space Coast
friends, I found my way to Turn 11 and was adopted into the
combined groups.
“The folks in SRDE, especially Wayne, made it a point to share
the 30 years of experiences that I had missed. Wayne is the epitome
of the Sebring experience. He’s been there over 50 years,
from his teenage years well into retirement. He doesn’t just show
up – he and the SRDE have assembled a collection of equipment
and memorabilia that are reconstructed and expanded
each year and shared
with anyone who walks
by or stumbles in for a
little rest and relaxation
in the SRDE trackside
living room. He has established
long-lived traditions and shared them with so many
others resulting in them being there to carry on these traditions
while establishing their own new ones. What could be more the
Spirit of the Sebring Experience than that?”
Another supporter of Wayne’s wrote: “We would like to send in
our FOTY nomination for Wayne Jones from Sarasota, Florida.
Wayne is one of the founding members of the Sarasota Racing
& Drinking Enthusiasts, “A Drinking Team with a Racing Problem,
established 1961.” I think the story goes something like this:
Wayne’s late brother Gary started going to 12 hours classic in
1961 and Wayne followed him over in 1969. The group camped
all over the track back then, the fl agpole was a spot for a while,
then by the old MG bridge. The group settled down for the long
hall on the outside of big bend for over 20 years, then to the Red-
Car corral some years ago with La Bomba … Stop by our camp
say hi and check out the SRDE collection of Sebring oddities
from years gone by.”
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