Gee, sounds like, uh, lots of fun. My experience is rather limited
when it comes to running events with various organisations. I'm involved
with a group called 'Intermountain Vintge Racing' here in Utah. Too bad
your father doesn't live closer to Utah, we'd love to see such a car at
our events. IVR is a fairly young group, in terms of how long it has been
around running races - 'fairly young' doesn't refer to the members for the
most part.
And 'vintage' doesn't really describe the cars. What it does describe is the
way the events are run, and the prevailing attitude. Basically IVR is a
group of folks that like to go out and drive their cars quickly. Not being
blessed with a real racetrack yet out here in the Salt Lake area, we run our
races like they used to do before there were dedicated road racing circuits.
Our 1 mile course on the Wendover airport concrete is laid out using cones
as the course markers. We have a handful of guys with the cars and the
credentials to run wheel to wheel, and another handful or two of folks that
come out to run in our Touring class, which is basically you and two or three
other drivers, limited passing, out on course for 10 minutes. Some pretty
interesting machinery can show up for this. And a few Salt Lake autocrossers
find out that running a road course for multiple laps is WAY different than
a quick 40 or 50 second blast around the parking lot.
IVR can cut a lot of slack, as a "race group" may be only half a dozen cars.
A common quip is that you can't cheat in IVR, because we have no rules.
As long as we're convinced the car is safe to flog about at full chat, we
don't care what sort of hardware you roll off the trailer.
Crack of noon starts are the rule, rather than the exception. And with
the small number of entrants we get, most folks have gotten their fill of
track time by late afternoon and are ready to put down the helmet, break open
the cooler and fire up the grill.
Sure, I wish that we could have events like the SVRA races at Mid Ohio last
summer featuring Triumphs. Lots of neat cars, lots of drivers, a bustling,
action packed day. But then again, I really do enjoy sitting back in a
lawn chair on the concrete slab by the Enola Gay hangar, cold brew in my
hand, a belly full of ribs or brisket or whatever, watching the moon come up
over the Salt Flats to the east, the stream of traffic to and from the casinos
on Interstate 80 twinkling in the distance, and thinking back to just how much
fun one can have dicing with only one or two cars of similar capabilities.
HSR we're not.
mjb.
http://intermountainvintage.org
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