I spent last weekend at the SCCA PCRRC which also included two Vintage
grids...One open wheel and one for everyone else...There were about 70 +/-
vintage cars entered....We had 2 sessions on Friday, one on Saturday, and two
scheduled for Sunday......Around 2pm on Sunday during one of the SCCA
championship races a sports racer and a ITC Datsun got together in the esses
and the driver of the Datsun, Derek Israel, was killed. The explaination I
got was that the drivers door of the Datsun impacted the rear of the sports
racer which was up on it's side and nosed into the hill..
Of course noone in the paddock realised at first what had happened other than
it was taking a long time to clean up an incident.Then word started spreading
that something bad had happened. After a while the cars on pre-grid were
told there would be a 1 hour delay....then the chief steward called us all
to re-entry and some very choked up people made the announcement that there
had been a fatality and that the event was over...The mood in the paddock was
very somber. People quietly packed up and went home..
Derek was 28 years old and was from Oakland...
Jerry Burr
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