Great weekend at Blackhawk, probably my favorite race
weekend yet.
The weekend started out with us arriving in time to
see Group 2 Sprites lining up at the grid. We pulled
into Thicko Village, me in the Sprite, my brother in
the BGT, to find Flounder's (Barb?) crew working on
Redrum, the spiritual successor to his Red Rat
Bastard. Beautiful car, and there was one strategic
strip of duct tape on it so we'd all recognize it as
his. Flounder started it up, and it sounded a bit
rough, like maybe a timing problem, but WST got it out
there and shook it down. Damned if he still isn't the
fastest 948 there is. The rear end was a little loose
(well...it WAS a homo club meeting...), but he was
still tossing it around beautifully. Again, my "Gotta
go racing" juices were in full flow.
So...in the hopes of getting a cash infusion for a
race car, I had printed out a 4 Sale sign for the BGT,
and decided to hang it in the window. Went off to
register for noon touring, and while waiting to cross
the track, I catch this familiar looking guy's eye
who's working on beautiful Lotus JPS. The guy calls
out - "Nice Sprite! Is it as clean as it looks?". I
said I hoped so, and the guy says "yeah, I've had 6 of
these. Great little cars." It was none other than
Peter Egan of Road and Track. So I pulled over and
chatted for a while. Helluva good guy, and his friend
Pat Donnelly's John Player Special Lotus was stunning.
So I do touring with my son, having a blast. None of
the Corvette's on the track seemed to know I was
"racing", but what they don't know won't hurt 'em.
Didn't drive a wheel off it this year, but exiting
turn 3 I was on it good screeching the155/80 tires
when the car hopped, and I lost an A-H hubcap (as
Peter C. said, you could read "AH HA AH HA AH HA" as
it rolled into the woods). When I get back to the pit
area and there's a herd of people looking at the BGT.
I go over, and Egan is there getting "the look". We
chatted about the car's history, and I thought he
might actually be interested. Then another fellow
started getting serious. Real serious. 10 minutes
later the car was sold. Yes, I should have asked
more. So I got back to the Thicko pits and ask "who's
got a racecar for sale?", and every hand went up
(LOL). I went home for the paperwork that I'd
forgotten, and when I got back I was sitting in the
car leaning it out and Egan popped his head in again -
we touched on the hassles of owning LBC's and Miata's
at the same time and other common ground. In my
experience, he's a real nice guy.
So the small bore Gran Prix was next, incredibly good
stuff. A looonng race, and a lot of passing by
attrition. Unfortunately, Flounder lost oil pressure
and was done. He'll probably have back on the road by
Mosport, I bet.
Then it was time for the Thicko Feast and Party, and
it was great. My brother sat in with the Thicktones,
and they were pretty damn good. My brother, who
hadn't sung in public before, did a passable Muddy
Waters vocal (for a white guy) on "Hoochie Coochie
Man", and did a great job soloing on "Before You
Accuse Me." The band was great, and my brother
commented 10 times on what a great bunch of people the
Thickos are.
Today was great as well, another perfect day, and just
got a brief hello in with Dave Woerpel before we left
to celebrate Father's Day.
A great weekend with great people. Getcher butts to a
vintage race soon!!! And Frank - we'll talk about the
Green Slime. He's gonna do it! And my Race Car fund
got a nice jumpstart with the BGT sale - let the hunt
begin!
=====
Ron Soave
The optimist says the glass is half full.
The pessimist says the glass is half empty.
The engineer says the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
The British car owner says it's leaking.
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