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Indy Report
So if you'd told me a couple years ago that I wuz gonna race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, I would have wondered what you'd been drinking. Or smoking. Or ingesting in capsule, pill or powdered form. But damn if that isn't exactly what happened. And not just for me, but for 700-odd (in fact, some VERY odd) vintage-racer types who got the opportunity to race their cars at the hallowed Brickyard thanks to sophomore SVRA president, CEO and owner/promoter/impresario Tony Parella. You can real my full report in the next issue of VINTAGE MOTORSPORT magazine (click to get to the website and get a damn subscription, which you should definitely have) but suffice to say it was both an incredible, watershed event and one hell of a good time. My old British car buddy (as in both "he's old" and "he likes British cars from back when they actually had an automobile industry in the U.K.") Tucker Madawick summed it up pretty well after taking his Elva Courier out for a few quick laps around the Indy oval. With eyes wide as fried eggs and lit up like Christmas trees (how many authors do you know who not only mix metaphors, but make them hackneyed metaphors in the bargain?) Tucker swallowed hard, gulped once or twice and mumbled: "Is this cool or what??!!"
Indeed.
Of course there were a few negatives (so what else is new?). The road-course layout chosen was rife with tight, claustrophobic, 1st-gear corners (including a truly ridiculous, back-to-back, double-buttonhook set of hairpins and two LONG straightaways that ended in abrupt and acute right-angle turns) and, to be honest, I figured the tow trucks and flat-beds were going to get a lot of exercise. But, although there were some incidents, it wasn't nearly as bad as a lot of us predicted. I credit the drivers' attitudes and oversight from the officials for a lot of that, and I know that the SVRA is already looking at other configuration options for next year that will free things up a bit.
Oh, and besides the occasionally jam-packed race groups on the road course and what amounted to essentially lapping sessions for each group on the storied Indy oval (my longtime Porsche 356 racer-and-preparer buddy Vic Skirmants, who has seen it all and is not easily impressed, thought the oval run was the highlight of his weekend), we also had a fabulous Saturday-nite participants' party with a good feed, no long lines for food or drink, a super live concert by Grand Funk Railroad and then a sky-full of fireworks to top it all off.
Kudos to Tony, his staff and everybody involved. A great event and an organizational and logistical triumph (not to be confused with the car of the same name, which would mean it might very well break down, leak oil and rust).
For the rest of the story, read my full race report in the next issue of the magazine.
Naturally it wouldn't be a proper vintage race if I didn't get my Nomex dirty (in someone else's car, of course!) and good buddy/serial ride-mooch enabler Dave Burton came through with a semi-coerced offer of a co-drive in his familiar #20 Porsche 356 coupe (click HERE) to see a video of one of my past drives in the car and then ask yourself why he would ever let me climb into his car again?).
In any case, I got out for a few laps on a still-damp track during the test day Wednesday morning and didn't do much more than figure out which way the corners went. Interesting side note: although you couldn't really call the road course we used a complicated layout, I noticed that the better drivers kept going faster and faster with every session all weekend. Which indicates that there are cerebral subtleties to the circuit that don't seem apparent at first. Like fr'instance totally ignoring (or should I say "bounding right over") the so-called "apex curbs" that are supposedly there to indicate where the track goes....
Then things went ever-so-slightly to shit. First off we were "wait-listed" for the enduro (like a lot of things at this inaugural Brickyard Invitational, the enduros were seriously over-subscribed) and then Dave came in at the end of his Wednesday afternoon session with old #20 stuck in first gear. What followed was a marathon fixing session (turns out the 1st-2nd shift fork had broken...see below) during which I mostly gave bad advice, handed-over tools and shop rags and stayed the hell out of the way.
In any case, I got out for a few laps on a still-damp track during the test day Wednesday morning and didn't do much more than figure out which way the corners went. Interesting side note: although you couldn't really call the road course we used a complicated layout, I noticed that the better drivers kept going faster and faster with every session all weekend. Which indicates that there are cerebral subtleties to the circuit that don't seem apparent at first. Like fr'instance totally ignoring (or should I say "bounding right over") the so-called "apex curbs" that are supposedly there to indicate where the track goes....
Then things went ever-so-slightly to shit. First off we were "wait-listed" for the enduro (like a lot of things at this inaugural Brickyard Invitational, the enduros were seriously over-subscribed) and then Dave came in at the end of his Wednesday afternoon session with old #20 stuck in first gear. What followed was a marathon fixing session (turns out the 1st-2nd shift fork had broken...see below) during which I mostly gave bad advice, handed-over tools and shop rags and stayed the hell out of the way.
Not that I'm bragging or anything....
There were a lot of cool things to call, too (including some very good racing) but my favorites on the oval had to be Parnelli Jones himself in his famous #98 Watson roadster (a.k.a. "Old Calhoun"), the svelte and
stiletto-like Lotus Indy turbine that should have walked away to win it all in 1968 but broke on a re-start instead (letting Bobby Unser, who was also on hand and on track at the SVRA Brickyard Invitational, slip through to win), my buddy Augie Grasis going like stink on the oval in his hulking 1933 Studebaker Indy car and the one-and-only Corvette SS, just back from a total restoration, blowing up bigtime right in front of the pits during a moderately paced exhibition run.
Saturday night's party was absolutely terrific (and a case study in how you feed and entertain roughly 2500 folks without long, cattle-chute lines or running out of favorite beverages). But I was plumb wore out by the time I was done dancing it up with Grand Funk Railroad and watching the fireworks. You can see me below, early the next morning, trying to focus on the sign and figure out if this, in fact, is where I'm supposed to be signing books:
And now for the icing on the cake. Seems Dave Withers had arranged to run one of Vic Skirmants' "rent-a-racer" Porsche 356s for the weekend, but showers early Sunday morning made for a damp track, and so the scheduled oval-track runs had to be pushed back. Which meant that poor Dave had to hot-foot it to the airport just about the time his race group would be trundling around on its pace lap....
So guess who wound up with the ride?
I asked to start from the back since I'd never driven the car before (although I knew it pretty well since I've driven other 356s and actually served as designated instructor when previous owner Ken Burchard took it through VSCDA Drivers' School back when tubeless tires were the hot new thing). Beleaguered and by then exhausted SVRA Competition Director Ray Snowdon kindly accommodated me. But the grid marshal held me until the very back of Group 4 in the combined, split-start, two-pacecar Group 3-4 feature race. So there's no heroic (if implausible) "Burt charges through the pack to an awesome first-time win at Indy" story here. But I did get to race. That's me in #32 below. And then that's me crossing the fabled row of bricks at the start/finish line. (photos thanks to my good buddy and ace lensman Gary Bihary)
I even passed a couple cars. Including two rumbleguts Corvettes and an XKE. But I also got passed by the lead bunch from Group 3 when they came around, and it was hard to miss how the fast guys (like Vic and Dave, fr'instance) were using the so-called "apex curbings" at Turn 5 as inconvenient, launching-pad obstacles on their preferred (and far faster) interpretation of "the line"....
But who cares?
The bottom line is that I can now look virtually anybody in the eye, give off a carefully choreographed shrug and say with absolute (almost) honesty: "yeah, sure, I raced at Indy." Like a lot of folks who were at The Speedway that weekend, I think that's worth a lot!
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WELL-DESERVED PLUGS!
Like most of you with an e-mail program and an "IN" box, I get a lot of crap mail (like the piece you're reading right now, in fact). To be honest, I don't really need to know if knee-high socks or Nehi sodas or bundled insurance packages or specially reduced, name-brand $99 office printers (for which every set of ink cartridges will set you back another 60 bucks) or secluded vacation getaways in romantic Stinkistan are available--for a limited time only, of course--for a few pennies off. And God help you if you ever donated even a Lincoln penny to any political cause or candidate....
But there are a few e-missives I look forward to, and among them are my friend Peter Bourassa's excellent offerings from his enthusiast- and motorsports-oriented MMR website (click HERE to visit). Peter's quite the car guy and his offerings are invariably intelligent, interesting and eclectic. Plus he features the always-excellent work of one of my very favorite people, Denise McCluggage. I saw Denise drive an electric-blue Ferrari Short-Wheelbase Berlinetta in a stirring dice for the lead (with the two Don Yenko Corvettes) in one of the first road races I ever saw. It was at the daunting and undulating old Meadowdale circuit west of Chicago, and even though the Ferrari was giving away about 2 liters of displacement to the Chevvies, it was handier and the driver was doing a superlative job with it. "Boy, that guy really knows how to drive," I muttered to the fence-hanger next to me. "That's not a guy," he muttered back. And that, in a nutshell, was my introduction to one of my three all-time favorite female racing drivers (the other two are Des Wilson and Simona DiSilvestro, whom I think still has a great career ahead of her if she gets the right breaks). But besides being an ace wheel-man (or wheel-woman, more correctly) Denise is a hell of a great writer and both her selection of topics and clear, beautifully distilled style make her more than worth reading. So give the site a try. You also might want to get on their e-blast list, as they're always good reads, feature excellent production values and don't ramble on and on like some other folks I could mention. Me, fr'instance. Speaking of (or at least remembering) Meadowdale, there's a bunch of ageing but thankfully well-preserved racer-types and groupies in our area that get together from time to time to enjoy each other's company, ogle neat old cars and reminisce about Meadowdale. There's a car-show gathering on the old track grounds (now a very nice park) every September and a bunch of other motorhead-oriented jaw-exercising events as well. Click on MIRPA (for Meadowdale International Raceway Preservation Association) to visit the website & see what they're up to. In the same vein, there's a bunch of [mostly] old geezers up in the Elkhart Lake. Wisconsin area who originally banded together to keep the somewhat misguided Wisconsin Highway Department from unnecessarily widening and leveling County A where it snakes out of town, cutting down some beautiful old trees and thoroughly destroying the look, feel and ambiance of a key part of the old open-road circuit. This caused quite an uproar in the local enthusiast community (some of whom are both of means and well-connected) and so a loose association was formed to fight the disfigurement of the old racetrack. The battle went all the way up to the state house, and I'm proud to say that The Last Open Road was used in some small way to help convince Wisconsin's duly elected political hacks that the old road circuit was indeed worth preserving and moreover deserving of Historical Site status. This ultimately came to pass, thank goodness. But of course what do you do with a bunch of [mostly] old racing geezers who have been getting together and schmoozing and sharing drinks and meals and making phone calls and signing petitions and tilting at state-house windmills for years once the battle has been won? Why, you keep on getting together and schmoozing and sharing drinks and meals, that's what! And you call yourselves something like the HISTORIC RACE CIRCUITS of ELKHART LAKE PRESERVATION SOCIETY (click to visit the website and get the whole story) and you re-dedicate yourself to eating good food in good company and listening to great racing stories.
FADDERS' DAY!
As many of you know, I eschewed traveling up to Canada for the always wonderful VARAC event at Mosport this past weekend and even avoided my home club VSCDA's annual Fathers' Day race meeting at Blackhawk Farms, just 90 minutes away. I did so in order to concentrate on finishing up my blessed race report and this e-blast so I could get back to Part Two of the effing Steamroller book like I've been promising everyone. And I swear on the spirit of old Joe Lucas and the emulsion tube of a Weber DCOE 45 that I will be back pounding that story through my keyboard come five ayem tomorrow morning. Really I will. But all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, eh? So my lovely/long-suffering wife Carol suggested that after our usual 8am bike class Sunday morning, we head out for an early (and tasty) Fathers' Day brunch and then head over to the annual Fathers' Day Car Show at the nearby Oakbrook Shopping Center. We wandered around for about an hour and took it all in, met some friends and acquaintances (a couple people stopped us and said how much they liked the books, and that's always gratifying to somebody with a big head and an over-active ego like yers truly) and it was quite a treat to be at a car-guy (car-person?) event where I wasn't busy setting up my vendor stand, buttonhole-ing passers-by and trying to sell my effing books. We had a really nice time. And the Oakbrook show is kinda special just because it's so damn eclectic, what with everything from stately old Packards and Pierce-Arrows to stylish fifties chrome barges (I think the 1958 Buick got its design cues from a Wurlitzer juke box) to sixties musclecars and even a few of them furrin' sports cars. Pix below. Personal favorites included a very nice '66 Tempest with a single-stick OHC six under the hood, a wonderful, lipstick-red 1932 Chrysler, my friend Bob Joynt's magnificent, dual-cowl Lincoln, a damn near perfect split-window Stingray and a bright red, turbocharged 1963 Corvair Spyder convertible like the one my dad had back when I was 17. That car taught me all about oversteer and opposite lock....
One last thing: people keep sending me pictures of our decals on their cars, motorcycles, trailers, tool boxes, refrigerators, etc., and I can't tell you how much it means to me. Like the trailer below, fr'instance.
I'm thinking we really ought to have some kind of contest about who can put our decals onto the strangest or most fabulous cars or into the most unusual or least likely places. Non-actionable locations only, of course.
In the meantime, until next time, be good.
And be good to each other while you're at it. |
Catch the latest poop & pictures, the Jay Leno interview, Last Open Road swag & highly inappropriate attire from Finzio's Store and the lurid & occasionally embarrassing "ride with Burt" in-car racing videos on the hopefully now fully operational website at: |
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