1953 12 Hours of Sebring

[1] Amongst the mostly American entrants, the greatest news for the 1953 race was that the famous English Aston Martin team would join the French factory DB’s for the 12 Hour competition.

[2] The race started at noon, and ran until midnight, on a day described as "partly cloudy and mild", in front of an estimated crowd of 12,500 spectators.

They were boosted to the lead when the front running Aston Martin of Geoff Duke and Peter Collins collided with a Jaguar, and was forced to retire with accident damage.

One lap adrift in second place was the Aston Martin DB3 of the Reg Parnell and George Abecassis, despite reportedly being hampered by having one of its headlamps not working due to an earlier collision with a bollard filed with concrete marking the circuit on what was at the time largely an airfield.

[2][3] There was one car fire, the Allard-Cadillac J2X of Paul Ramos was destroyed when a fuel line split, however the driver, Anthony Cumming escaped unharmed.