Sebring 2019 marks a new milestone as it becomes the largest race event in Michelin North America motorsport history.

The Michelin Workshop, located in the IMSA Paddock, is a massive 24,000-square-foot tent housing nearly 16,000 MICHELIN® Pilot® race tires, including 5,800 wet tires, to support the IMSA WeatherTech Championship, IMSA MICHELIN® Pilot® Challenge, IMSA Prototype Challenge and the WEC 1,000 Miles of Sebring entries.

The workshop is centrally located between the IMSA and WEC paddocks.

“The Michelin tire setup is going to be one of the hugest, or largest, areas I have ever seen set up,” says Mike Simons, senior director of logistics, IMSA. “They have a tent that is 300 feet by 90 feet. It is in the middle, or center, of where the WEC and WeatherTech meet in the paddock themselves.

“So they have this 300 by 90 (foot) tent with all their tires, all the machinery, mounting machines under that tent. Then they have another 100 by 90 (foot) area where they will park their service rigs, office trailers and stuff like that. It takes up a pretty good footprint of the paddock also, but it is in the main paddock, and it’s about in the main center between Turns 16 and 17.”

The tent will house these tires for 137 of the 140 total cars across these four championships. In the FIA WEC, all but three LMP2 class cars have selected Michelin as their tire partner.

This is a significant increase both year-on-year at Sebring, and also compared to the last time the FIA WEC was at Sebring, in 2012.

In 2018, Michelin came to Sebring with only five automotive brands and nine cars entered in the GT Le Mans class. During the week, Michelin used nearly 1,500 tires.

In 2012, which was a combined FIA WEC and American Le Mans Series race, 34 of the 64 cars entered selected Michelin as their tire partner. That broke down to 18 of the 30 cars among FIA WEC entered cars, and 16 of the 34 cars in the ALMS portion of the race.

Here are a couple videos showing the length and inside of the workshop (outside, inside).