The RA event was big and it was a success, but not an artistic success.
Very cold and very rainy all weekend. I spent most of the time huddled in
the car with my sweetie -- outside temps in the 40's and 50's. It rained
for the first practice session and I went out anyway. It was the first time
in several years, and I found it lots of fun.
There were over 250 cars there, including a passel of Aussies. Im not sure
how many there were. They were all in Big Healeys except for one in an A-H
Sprite. Mostly they were pretty darned fast, they were good, clean drivers,
and learned the track quickly. Their cars were all beautifully prepared and
were all licensed for the street. I envied them this experience - a two
month vacation in the USA, hitting five of the most significant tracks on
the continent. Wow.
Another delightful surprise was the presence of Janet Guthrie. She's
written an autobigraphy and was promoting her book. If she didn't get
writers' cramp with the book, then she did with autographs. I highly
recommend her book, "A Life at Full Throttle". She's been a hero of mine
since I read a newspaper article in the 70's, I think, where a reporter
asked the sexist question "As a woman, what, do you find to be the most
difficult thing about competing in a man's sport?" Her answer was "Fitting
a pelvis designed for bearing children into an Indy Car seat". I asked her
if I remembered that correctly, and she said that although she didn't
remember that interview, it would have been in character, for after the
first couple of practices they got out the port-a-power and spread the
chassis tubes to help eliminate the bruising. Janet Guthrie is the real
article, and I'm glad to say her hero status in my mind has been justified.
Oh, yeah, there were races too. In our group, 46 cars ran the prelim and 31
ran the main feature. The feature was delayed for over an hour and a half
due to a couple of incidents in prior sessions. First an Indy Car had stuck
a throttle and hit the wall at the carousel, resulting in airlifting the
driver away. The second was when a ground pounder dumped oil on the main
straight and another Mustang upshifted as he hit the oil, sending him
spinning down the straight at well over 100 mph. He hit the concrete wall
and they had to cut him out of the car, condition unknown. I came in 11th,
about where I deserved, behind a gaggle of AH's, Minis, Porsches, and
Janet Guthrie's original Toyota SCCA racer, driven by Lisa Weinberger, the
wife of the owner of the Chicago area Ferrari dealer. The only other TR's
there were John Frederici who went home early with clutch problem, Don
Brick with his TR4 and Bill Damdinger with the ever-beautiful Tornado. My
car ran like a freight train, and with me having to learn how to drive all
over again after last year's disastrous season, I was really pretty happy.
I had some great nose-to-tail and fender-to-fender racing, with very clean
drivers, and that's what it's all about (besides, those guys were 30 year
old kids).
uncle jack
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