were six Bugatti Bolide (boh-LEED) track cars<\/a>, nearly 40 percent of the total number on this continent. Five of these 1578-hp, slick-tired specials were accompanied by their owners. Bugatti had shipped the cars to the circuit and hired the crew required to tend them on this mother of all track days. Each Bolide buyer (of which there are 40 worldwide) gets a fully supported track day with the purchase of their roughly $5 million car. This scene can best be described as \u201cheavy Bruce Wayne vibes.\u201d <\/p>\n![\"bugatti](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/96792d35-8504-429d-b1d1-5fe53ea2cff9.jpg\" "\\"Bugatti")
Courtesy of Bugatti<\/p>\n
The life of a billionaire is not always a relaxed one. But on the whole, it\u2019s nice work if you can get it.<\/p>\n
The sixth Bolide on pit lane was Bugatti\u2019s factory prototype car, and I would get to drive it once the paying customers had finished. Owners satisfied and sundown imminent, I suited up for my turn, and it started raining, because Florida. The team swapped on the rain tires, fiddled with the car, crammed me into the driver\u2019s seat, and fired up the quad-turbo W-16. Good luck out there and keep it away from the concrete walls. Brief and sweaty, my time behind the yoke was spent mostly learning this version of the track and trying not to crash. I did hit 174 mph on the shortened back straight. So that was a lot. <\/p>\n
![\"tent](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/ec49957d-51db-45f5-bd00-e06b576aafca.jpeg\" "\\"tent")
<\/p>\n
Daniel Pund<\/p>\n
For my next Florida adventure, I traded the Four Seasons for somebody\u2019s grandma\u2019s house in Sebring, as the few hotel rooms in town are booked years out for the week of the 12-hour race. I spent my time there catching up with old friends, perspiring, reporting a story for this issue about a giant lobster, and, for a shamefully large part of Saturday, hanging out in the reliably insane Sebring infield. A friend and I walked by a huge blue-and-white-striped tent near Turn 10 that\u2014oh!\u2014had a tidy bar set up on one end. It was Hank & Sheila\u2019s Big Freak\u2019n Tent (\u201cBeers & Cheers for 32 Years\u201d). There would be live bands playing in the tent later, but at midday it was tame, friendly, and shady, a fine spot for a few Yuenglings. We kept a sensible pace, communing with infield campers, until the Lambor\u00adghini public-\u00adrelations team showed up in matching black polos and with a fat wad of cash. That accelerated the drinking considerably. Hank & Sheila don\u2019t take credit cards; payment is by way of cash donations into a large wooden box on the bar. It was perfect. It would get rowdy later. And elsewhere in the infield, at the end of the race, came the traditional bonfire of couches. Quite unlike the Bugatti Bolide event. But I adored both. <\/p>\n
Weirdness is spice. Weirdness is the cure for boredom. Please enjoy this issue full of the stuff. <\/p>\n
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A car-lover\u2019s community for ultimate access & unrivaled experiences.JOIN NOW<\/a> ![\"Headshot](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/491df07c-eefd-494c-a806-ba96e0a84dbb_1687897301.file.png\" "\\"Headshot")
<\/p>\nDaniel Pund was named Road & Track’s editor-in-chief in 2024 after helping to re-invent the venerable magazine brand as executive editor. For around 30 years, Pund has toiled away as a feature writer, car reviewer, editor, and columnist for every car magazine that matters (including Car and Driver and Autoweek) and a few that didn\u2019t. He\u2019s also contributed to Esquire and GQ and other general-interest publications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida, that thing dangling off North America, is a land of bizarre contradictions. It\u2019s grandmas and gators. It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[119302,119303,73064,119301,40799,28,30,29,109645,26305,119300],"class_list":["post-279598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-collection-from-the-magazine","tag-collection-rt-exclusives","tag-content-type-default","tag-contentid-67276e72-dc5f-4419-8edf-04b1d4cb4342","tag-displaytype-long-form-article","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-issyndicated-false","tag-locale-us","tag-shorttitle-florida-man-a-month-on-americas-sweaty-peninsula"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"magazine](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/844d16f6-95af-4d01-8e66-3d13542eb40e.jpeg\" "\\"Road")
<\/p>\n