Last weekend, CSRG was racing at Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma, CA. The
weather cooperated nicely. This was in contrast to their previous event
held at Laguna Seca in February. The usual descriptions of that event
were either "Swim meet" or "Submarine races", but I digress. ;=) This
is the only time of year the hills around Sears Point look a vibrant
green. It was a bit nippy Sunday morning, and a little wind came up, but
otherwise the setting was perfect. The track was clean, smooth and fast.
The only descriptive phrase I could come up with for this event was "Full
moon follies". In truth, much of the foolishness came out of my run group.
Either CSRG needs to break up the open wheel group along performance
lines, or they need to get a lot tougher on the sanctions imposed for
being foolish. We had 47 open wheel cars registered for the event. We had
4 or 5 brutally fast Formula B cars, a large contingent of FFords, another
large contingent of FVees, and a smattering of Juniors. The drivers of the
faster cars were getting way too competitive to share the track with the
FVees and slower Juniors (like mine). There were times I checked my mirrors
to see them coming at me 3 abreast with a speed differential of 20-30 MPH!
There were incidents in just about every session. There was such a large
number of people who don't know how to watch the flag stations they couldn't
get all the car numbers to assess penalties. In one session, the starter
decided not to throw the green flag after one pace lap. That is his
prerogative. That's what "under starter's orders" means. Half the field
started racing even though all the corner worker stations were still
displaying standing yellow flags. Sheesh! In the feature race, one of the
Vees spun in the carousel and managed to deposit his nose section smack in
the middle of the track. Out comes the pace car, a whale of a Cadillac (55?)
to lead us around at a snail's pace. Somebody else in the group had oiled
the track in several places, so we finished our feature race on Sunday
under the yellow. Grrr.
CSRG has 6 run groups now. If they break up the open wheel group, they lose
the ability to have invitational groups like the vintage NASCAR folks, etc.
This time, we had a group of 2 liter sports racers, some of them from HSR.
We even had a celebrity in our midst. Bobby Rahal showed up with a black
'78 Lola T-298 in the invitational sports racer group. Possibly the most
exciting moment all weekend was seeing one of the competitors in a yellow
Lola manage to hang on to Rahal's tail for several laps in qualifying on
Saturday. He tried to go deep in 11 to pass Rahal, went a little too deep,
and by the time he got the car pointed the right direction again, Rahal was
half a lap ahead. Unfortunately, Rahal retired a few laps later with
something terminal. The car didn't come out of the trailer at all on Sunday.
It turns out that the 2 liter sports racers could easily have run with the
bigger FIA and Can-Am cars, both of which were small groups, but then it
wouldn't have been a separate invitational group. I don't have a good idea
to suggest. 7 groups doesn't work, and some of the other groups are also
around 45 cars. We had close to 200 cars for the event. They need around 150
just to break even at Sears Point.
In other news, it wasn't a good weekend for the Alfa contingent either. Most
of the Alfa drivers I talked to were having mechanical problems. Tom Sahines'
car limped in making some awful noises. Tom's son Mike was at the wheel. Give
him credit for bringing it in at the first sign of trouble. Tom found out the
flywheel had come loose! We had two TZ's at the event. One retired with
throttle problems, and I'm not sure about the other. Another Alfa had a blown
head gasket, or something worse allowing water into one cylinder. I kind of
felt guilty not having to really work on my car at all. I did need to take
extra time for my charging ritual, as my battery seems to be going flat, but
that was about it. Most everybody else had a good time, tho. CSRG's next
event will be at Thunder Hill in April. Hopefully, they'll get the attitude
problems under control by then.
Simon Favre
'58 Bourgeault Formula Jr
(the oldest car trying to run in CSRG's open wheel group)
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