Obviously, all the vintage racing listers were waiting for our Monday or
Tuesday headlines about the weekends past activities when some of us were
"thrown for a loop" by the stories of the unfortunate incidents at LRP,
which took a shine off our collective reverie... Thankfully for the list,
the reporting was complete and the outcome reassuring...
In relating the only significant incident at SVRA's Summit Point event, I
referred to Mark Gobble's accident as being precipitated by an incident
between the leader of the race and a lapped car engaged in a battle with
Mark.
I received a private mail from a left coaster which asked the question:
..... what is this stuff you guys are doing on the right coast..... vintage
racing or bumper cars?
I responded:
While I was alarmed by reading all of the message headers from the last
digest about the events at IRP, I actually thought the weekend with SVRA at
Summit was pretty good for a 140-150 car turnout, safety wise. Most
"smaller"
events here (between 90-140 cars) have at least one single car or light
multi car incident. I remember a couple of years ago, it was an average of
three or four (IRP's experience notwithstanding) At the "larger events"
(220-420 cars) it was not uncommon four or five years ago to have 4-5%
involved in mostly single car incidents, usually mechanical failure of some
kind, but still more than optimum. Now, the figure looks to be around 2-3%,
so we're improving.
The problem is that most "for-profit" organizations (SVRA/HSR) have scrapped
the 13/13 rule for a "points" system that doesn't park someone for the
weekend or the next event until they pass a threshold that is too high, in
my opinion. Oh well... most of the incidents are instigated by the more
experienced people, not the novices... They're just not "getting the
message" from the organizing body that that behavior is NOT acceptable. The
Morgan driver has been racing in vintage for more than a dozen years and has
had no history of contact or over aggressive driving.
What are folks thoughts about this? I'm not sure it is a "left coast/right
coast" phenomena. I DO think the "right coasters" tend to be more
aggressive, more competitive, more advanced with car development (even in
VSCCA!) and leave less of a margin than the average of the "left coasters"
(myself, unfortunately, included occasionally), but that observation is
based purely my opinion, not supported by any data. I know folks who would
characterize their experience at the Monterey Historics as "bumper cars,"
regardless of the punitive outcome, but I would certainly not refer to the
recent events at IRP or Summit Point as anything that signifies an unhealthy
trend.
Watching Mark Gobble's Sprite jump up and over the gravel trap on the
outside of the quickest corner at Summit and impact the tire wall hard with
such sudden deceleration and feeling the agonizing helplessness and waiting
until we saw movement in the cockpit was sobering to me. Knowing that I was
to share the front row of the Feature Race later that afternoon with the
instigator (I found out later...) of this incident didn't make me feel very
good and caused me to reevaluate some of my own "questionable" moves
previously made during the weekend trying to get up on that front row...
I think most folks, including the HSR/SVRA and Monterey organizers, do the
best they can to instill the "Safe, Fair and Fun" into the fabric of any
weekend. The question is what can be done to instill the proper philosophy
better and more "cottoned to" than it may be currently. I've seen Larry
Dent's posts about the Steward that admonishes in the drivers meetings to
"take care of each other out there..." but that doesn't always work. Much of
the "Vintage Racing Etiquette" article I wrote for Grassroots Motorsports
magazine in September/October 1998 (
http://www.bmwccaclubracing.com/Primer/primer.htm and formerly at
www.historiconline) seems dated... is it?
Have at it...
-Peter Krause
SVRA #1832
HSR #46
VDCA #5
VSCCA #930
SCCA # 139029
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