I wrote:
>>As cut-off dates slide
>>forward, the older cars seem to be getting scared into hiding by the
>>influx of later cars.
Patrick Ryan wrote:
>Rookie vintage racers tend to be in their 40's (average 46 a few years =
>ago). They want to race the cars of their youth. As they age they tend =
>to drift away. The older cars leave with them. Hence dates slide =
>forward to attract more rookies.
Well, I fit part of that description (44 this year), but when my current
race car was built I was only 5 years old! I don't think it's true that
people always race the cars they saw when they first got interested in
cars. There are a lot more of the newer cars available. As vintage
racing expands, the newer cars are in sufficient supply to keep the new
racers coming in. As Don pointed out, it IS the economy of it. Not
everybody can afford a pre-war Alfa or Bugatti to go vintage racing in.
Not all clubs can afford to run a weekend off of 50 cars. Before I got
started in vintage racing, I used to wonder about how CSRG could run
events with so few cars compared to the other events I attended. I used
to think there must be some real deep pockets in CSRG. ;=) It turns out
there ARE, but that wasn't the reason. They were losing money on some
events, and had to bring in some slightly newer cars to keep things
going. They didn't set up a rolling cutoff date, they just bumped the
"permanent" cutoff forward, and added a few exceptions (Formula Fords).
I think part of what's happening is that people want to go racing, clubs
want to keep the track gates open, and letting in newer cars kills 2
birds with one stone. I have nothing against the newer cars, within
limits. I think some clubs go too far, but it's up to each club and
their members to decide for themselves. I think CSRG did the right
thing, and it seems to be working.
Where I was going with my original remark was that it appears to me that
as the cutoff date moved forward, some people "traded up" or parked
their older car to go faster in a newer car. Some of the older Formula
cars stopped showing up, and some of the drivers seem to have switched
to Formula Fords. I would prefer to see the older cars keep showing up.
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