vintage-race
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Re: What is vintage racing

To: vintage-race@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: What is vintage racing
From: Tjackson82@aol.com
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 09:38:42 -0500 (EST)
Jim Hayes wrote:

Vintage racing is whatever the race sanctioning body arbitrarily decides it 
should be. SO in the UK and I believe Australia, vintage racing is Prewar, 
in the VSCCA it's pre 1960, except no TR3s, Bugeyes or any more MGAs, in 
SVRA its pre some artibrary cutoff date for the class, in HSR it's anything 
obsolete, and so on. Right?
And I am only slightly sarcastic. There ain't no answer in Webster's for 
this 'un.....and I have no problem with that! Just have fun...


I couldn't agree more, and I'll add one last observation before returning to
the garage:

The complaints about the way vintage rules are drawn seem to center on one
issue -- someone has a race car and can't get any (or enough) track time.
Well, the reality for most people involved in vintage racing is that the
sport is not first and foremost about getting a lot of track time, it's about
the cars. Sure, we race them and we want track time, but we were drawn to the
cars as the No. 1 attraction. If all we wanted was track time, it would have
been far cheaper and less complex to have simply bought a two-year-old Van
Diemen and raced with the mainstream SCCA, where it's the racing, not the
cars, that counts.
For someone who owns an obsolete Formula Atlantic or a new ''continuation
car'' or a 1984 IROC Camaro to complain that the rules for vintage racing
should be redrawn to allow them to run is a little like someone joining a
film club that venerates Bogart movies and then complaining they don't show
''Rambo.''
If you think vintage racing is what you want to do, but your car doesn't fit,
then sell that car and get one that's from the right era. As I have observed
from the ''what I own'' taglines on some of these messages, money to spend on
toys doesn't seem to be an issue.

Terry Jackson
MIami, FL
  

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