Sport: Family Affair

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Never in its noisy, car-killing history had Florida's International Twelve-Hour Grand Prix of Endurance killed off so many major entries so fast. Britain's class-conscious Jaguars died early. The green Aston-Martins took a little longer to come apart, but when Britain's Stirling Moss brought his to the pits with its gear box shot, the Aston-Martins were out of the running. The race was only half over when it belonged to the black stallions rearing from the emblem on the red, low-slung noses of Italy's Ferraris. Ferrari Driver Peter Collins, 27, took time out for a mid-race rest and chirped happily: "Mission accomplished. We went like hell for a while to make them burn up if they were going to, and it worked."

No one knew better than Britain's blue-eyed Pete Collins himself how much help he had in the strategy of attrition. And most of it came from the course itself-the wicked 5.2-mile grind over the taxiways and runways of Sebring's seldom used airport. One circuit on the unbanked hairpin turns and short straightaways calls for 21 gear shifts; the driver who finishes the twelve-hour test pumps his clutch at least 4,300 times. Tires get cooked on the baking concrete. Brakes take the worst beating of all.

Traffic Problem. The terrifying traffic problem alone would have sent a big-city Sunday driver screaming for the nearest parking lot. Snarling little (747 cc.) Abarth-Fiats fought for the right of way with the chesty Class "D" (up to three liters) giants-the Ferraris, Jags and Aston-Martins. In the swirling confusion, a Ferrari rode right up the rear end of a Jaguar, and both cars spun off the track. A little Stanguellini somersaulted off course and somehow landed right side up. The only serious accident saw General Motors Executive Chester Flynn spin his Ferrari out of an Sturn, tear through a barbed-wire fence and flip over twice. He was taken to a St. Petersburg hospital with a concussion, badly lacerated eye and assorted broken bones.

A veteran of eleven years of racing, Collins and his Ferrari-driving teammates had much more to worry about than wearing out Stirling Moss and the Aston-Martins. The big trick was to keep the Ferraris percolating. Last year the cars' drum brakes wore out early. Now they were back with the same type, and many an expert expected that they could not last as long as the quick-change disk brakes on the Aston-Martins and the Jags. Lead-footed Peter Collins usually figures to "go like hell and the car be damned," but this time he followed orders to be careful.