Friday evening, June 23rd, finds me heading west on Interstate 80 through the
salt flats. I'm driving the old van, a 1985 Ford 1 ton, big block cargo model,
with a pile of random stuff loaded into the back for the Intermountain Vintage
Racing weekend at Wendover. It is a zillion degrees outside, and of course
the air conditioning in the van doesn't work. And no big surprise, I did not
get a decent sound system installed before leaving Salt Lake. So nothing but
occasional bits of country music coming through the static of the AM band.
I do pick out that Waylon may have a new album out, or recently out, or was
famous a decade ago, or ???
But that isn't the blues. I'm seriously thinking about just ditching the
trailer at the Wendover airport and heading on to San Francisco. It could be
a very good weekend to be hanging at Boom Boom. Of course, the money I'd spend
on getting the van there would leave nothing in my pocket, so if I did manage
to get there I would not be able to send his table one bourbon, one scotch and
one beer. Oh well, serves me right to suffer.
All right, those of you who are not blues fans can relax now, I'll talk about
Triumphs and racing. Intermountain Vintage had the 4th event of the year this
weekend. And it was a long, hot weekend. The good news is that we had a 40%
increase in entries for the race group. The bad news is this really means we
went from 5 cars on the grid last month to 7 cars this month. Yep, a 40%
increase! Sigh. In truth, I think we brought in almost enough to cover the
expenses. Maybe I should give up organizing racing and just get a comfy sofa
and a new TV.
But it was fun for the most part. We could have had a major incident, had the
timing changed by a second or so. In the first race on sunday, a lone Triumph
was doing what little could be done against the onslaught of the RX-7s. Going
into Conair Corner, [tightest turn on the course] I had one of the Mazdas
about 30 feet off my tail. Conair is a very tight, decreasing radius, 150
degree right hander when running clockwise, and exits onto a LONG straight.
Well, as long as one can get on a 0.80 mile course. Anyway, I was going to
walk Killer in tight around the turn, and wave the Mazda by on the outside,
no point in even pretending I could accelerate with him onto the main straight.
And all of a sudden there's an odd noise and Killer's tail jumps about 10 feet
out directly into the path of the Mazda! I steer with it, shoot across the
track and Dave in the Mazda sneaks by with maybe three feet to spare. Good
thing Nomex undies are washable.
I think what happened is that going through the back chicane on that lap I
took a, uh, adventurous path and the driver's side rear wheel took a *solid*
hit on a somewhat off course pothole. The rim of the wheel bent, and by the
time I got to Conair Corner I had 0.03 psi in the outside rear tire. As I
cranked into the turn, the rear tire just flopped off the rim - instant and
unexpected oversteer. What fun.
Next IVR event is August 18/19 in case any of you happen to be in the area
on your way to VTR 2001. And there is a chance that I will NOT be driving
a Triumph that weekend. A local collector and racing enthusiast, running
his wife's BMW sedan in Touring, mentioned how a Lotus 23 would probably fit
nicely on my little trailer....
mjb.
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