While things are a bit slow, here's some miscellaneous bits
of trivia extracted by crunching the lap time numbers from the
BRIC at Road America (courtesy of the VSCDA website):
1) Austin Healeys are faster than Triumphs (average fast lap
speed of 79.02mph for all Healeys and 78.49 for TRs).
MG's came in third (of the "Big Three") with an average fast
lap of 77.69mph.
2) Phil Coombs of Santa Fe NM has one fast BN4 Healey,
with a lap time of 2:48.668. Almost 7 seconds faster that the
next Big Healey (although less than 4 seconds faster than
the quickest Sprite).
3) Fellow Madisonian Chris Beebe rather outdistanced the nearest
of the three other Lotus 7s entered. By some 17 seconds.
4) The fastest Spitfire (John Reed) was five seconds a lap quicker
than the fastest Big TR - Young Dr. Snook's TR3A. Snook, in turn,
was slightly faster than the best TR4 lap (Mordy Dunst), Mordy
was a second and a half faster than the quickest TR6 (Dick Jensen)
and, of course, the sole TR8 was another 15 seconds in arrears.
This is what the British would call progress.
5) The average fast lap for all entrants was 2 minutes 46 seconds.
6) Although the "historic" cars entered included some 43 cars
built in this decade (among them an absolutely lovely 1996 McLaren
Formula 1 car) we vintage racers have a ways to go to get up to
current speeds. While the fastest car at the BRIC turned a 115.78 mph
lap (2:04.377, by an '89 Lola Indy car), this last week the pole sitter
at the
Road America CART race was 30mph faster (1:38.80, or 145.745mph).
Is it 5:00 o'clock and time to go home yet?
Jim Hill
Madison WI
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