The problem with writing up a report on my trip to Mid Ohio is not in knowing
where to begin, but in knowing where to stop. With luck I'll keep this under
a few pages. As you may know, I asked for directions to the track and got
several replies. A few were even useful! Of course, I realized I left the
hard copy on my desk back in Salt Lake as I shuffled through my briefcase once
I arrived in Indiana. No sweat, I remembered enough to get me there. What
an event. I may have to write another message just to thank the folks I
forget in this one - there's no way a single message of less than infinite
length can cover everything.
Forgot about the time change between the track and Indianapolis, but managed
to make it to the thursday dinner before last call. I could tell even then
this was going to be an interesting few days. The array of machinery the
Brits had on display was impressive, but the range of cars, both street and
race, which the Yanks managed to scrounge up over the course of the weekend
was amazing. I've been to a VTR convention or two, and the turnout at Mid
Ohio boggled my feeble mind. A Geranium TR2 that actually looked good, a
La Dawri - what a collection. The brats weren't as good as Road America but
I survived.
Speaking of the La Dawri (Is that the right spelling?) the saturday track
tour had an interesting moment. While wandering along the line of cars
getting ready to head out, I chatted with Bob Lang who offered a seat for
the tour. Who was I to say no? So we are crawling along behind a zillion
other cars and I'm thinking that an aerial photo of the track completely
covered would be way fetchin' neat. But we get to the start of the esses
and the La Dawri is dead, a couple of corner workers struggling to push it
up the hill to a safe turn off. Bob stops, we jump out and assist. After
the car makes it to safe ground, one of the corner workers holds up the
seemingly endless stream of Triumphs so we can get back to the TR6 safely
and get under way. Of course, by the time we are ready to roll, traffic
ahead of us has cleared a bit and we get an unobstructed run through the
next few turns. Life is good.
As one might imagine, life was not good for all the Triumphs bound for the
track. There were a number of incidents, a number of breakdowns of various
sorts. Some were resolved without a trip to the nuclear junkyard, though
a fair number of folks were familiar with the place before the weekend was
over. I really should have taken my camera when Henry Frye and I went to
fetch a steering rack, it was an adventure. A big thanks to Henry for his
hospitality (He gave me Guiness or two in exchange for pretending to know
what I was talking about.)
There were perhaps two, possibly three hundred moments per day when I
regretted not having one of my own cars there. As I found out later on
sunday I could have had a chance to drive the course in Susan's Spitfire.
She and Brad were looking for me to offer a few laps during the practice
session, assuming we could scrounge enough safety gear to get me by the
stewards and onto the track. Alas, I had partaken of a bit too much of
the hospitality saturday night, and slept in too long sunday morning. Oh
well, so it goes. In truth, I probably would have declined the offer as I
would NOT want to be the one who hoarked the Spitfire and kept Susan out
of the all Triumph race. And what a race it was.
The all Triumph race on sunday was the crux of the biscuit, as one
might say. If you've never heard of Frank Zappa, don't worry about it.
So there we are, a good sized contingent of Triumph folks sitting in the
stands around the carousel, the turns before the front straight. I will
admit that it was good thing the skies had cleared and I needed to be
wearing my sunglasses. When that pack of Triumphs came around the turn,
the pace car slipped into the pits and the green flag flew, I damn near
cried.
mjb.
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