For those of you not members of SVRA, I thought I'd post the comments
of Peter Sachs (who probably doesn't need an intro ..) regarding car
originality. The letter is addressed to SVRA Pres. Frank Rupp.
Dcar Frank,
I fully recognize that I do not do as much racing with SVRA as I
once did, and the reason why is the reason for this letter. When
I participated at Moroso and Sebring this year I became even
more disillusioned than I had been in past years about the
direction of vintage racing today. I used to enjoy racing with the
SVRA: there were lots of interesting and unusual cars,
everyone was rather informal and the focus was less on going
faster than on preserving and using these cars the way they
were meant to be used. Perhaps I am old fashioned and out-of
step, but I feel that you folks have gone and are going the
wrong way. At the heart of all this is the de facto
encouragement of car preparation with what I strongly believe
to be an "originality be damned" point of view. This is leading to
cars that are going faster and faster with way too much stress
upon basic components that were never designed for such
loadings. It also results in virtual replicas so that the car can
stand what is being asked of it.
Examples abound: Ford and Chevrolet V8's that are not period
spec motors, but modern replacements which are totally beyond
any spirit of originality with almost double the horsepower that
the same car had 30 ycars ago; ever stickier tires on rims that
are wider and far stronger than original; replacement chassis to
strengthen sports racers so they can handle their much more
powerful motors; Porsche Speedsters with disc brakes; etc.,
etc.
My most discouraging experience was with a nameless fellow
competitor who drives an exceedingly fast GT car very well .
The only problem is that his car's relationship to its original
specification is thin at best, including an engine that is some
20% oversize. This carnest gentleman suggested at great
length that I should update" my Ferrari 250GTO/64 so that it
would be more competitive. Among the suggestions were:
1. Going to a four liter motor (because three GTOs were built
with them), and of course giving it the full treatment so that it
might produce some 400+ hp at 9000 rpm, a power increase of
over 33%; and. ..
2. Fitting mag wheels (wider of course) on which I could then
use Goodyear Blue Streaks (the Goodycars are worth 2-3 sees
./ lap over the Dunlops, but would tear my Borranis apart in no
time flat).
I somehow did not think that his advice, although technically
"legal," was in the spirit of vintage racing, was cost effective,
was the way to treat a fabulous old race car of great historic
significance or made any damn sense at all. Unfortunately,
most of your entrants are doing the functional equivalent. The
results destroy original cars overstress components with the
possibility of dire consequences and discourages the very
people you should wish to attract: those with the best, most
unusual and most famous cars.
Perhaps I am being unfair, but I somehow feel that this
increasingly "run what ya brung" trend in the SVRA is driven
more by economies than by any real concern for the
preservation and use of original historic racing cars. I readily
grant that the SVRA is not the worst offender among vintage
racing groups, but that is a self-serving justification for allowing
the situation that exists today. Another justification for all this
updating is that "the original motors are not available anymore."
Nonsense. There are not a lot of Ferrari 250 blocks around
either, so you take good care of what you've got and don't ask
what was designed to turn 7500 to give you 9500. The same is
true of Sprites, Mustangs and Chevrons, among many others.
Your rules for car preparation appcar on the surface to be
reasonable, but there are doorways through which lots of 1995
components can find their way into a 60's car, even assuming
that the entrant chooses to abide by the letter of what you
publish. As a direct result, I honestly believe that you will see
many more serious on-track incidents in the future with the way
you are headed. Also, I believe that your fields, although
sizable, will tend to move ever more toward what is easily
replaceable carwise; and the rare and unusual (and original!)
will be seen even less than today. There is an alternative. It will
annoy a lot of people who have a stake, financial or emotional,
in going as fast as the nameplate on the front of whatever they
are driving can be made to go. That is, quite simply, to go back
to original specification cars, using original components. In
raising this subject, I realize that racing is racing and we cannot
live in a perfect world. I just believe that the world of vintage
racing can be far closer to what those words really mean as
opposed to the oxymoron that they have become. With best
wishes,
Peter G. Sachs
Jim Hayes jeh@fotec.com tel:1-800-537-8254 fax:1-617-241-8616
Vintage racing '59 & '62 Alfa Spiders.
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