After attending many vintage race events over the years as a spectator I was
finally a participant this past weekend and boy did I ever have a good time.
This weekend was my first venture into vintage racing and I attended the
VSCCA drivers school on Friday and the racing on Saturday. The weather held
and was exactly what I had ordered. The school was great and the instructors
and classmates were all very helpful and friendly. Unfortunately we didn't
get as much track time as expected on Friday due to some delays with the
other group sharing the track. However the instructors made up for it with
more classroom time which I found to be very informative and interesting.
Another student, John Romano, didn't have his vintage Porsche 550 for the
class so they allowed him to drive his 911. It was very exciting seeing him
whiz by the old cars with this modern piece of iron. He was delighted when
his car did arrive on Saturday and he was able to drive it in the Saturday
student race and the rest of the races that day.
My car, a 1953 Lotus Mk VI, performed very well aside from my one
knucklehead move of allowing it to overheat in the false grid area. The car
doesn't have a fan and I started it up a little too soon for the 9AM student
race on Saturday morning. The next thing I knew it was spewing water out
like a hose was broken. After taking off the hood and the nose section I
could see that it looked OK. However when I restarted it just prior to the
cars moving onto the track my temp gage was rapidly climbing and hitting
260F when I again shut it off. Luckily the folks from Vintage Racing
Services were there and they advised me to just get it on the track and it
would be OK. My thanks to Paul Lane and Brad Capshaw. So I entered the grid
in last position for the pace lap and it turned out to be a very enjoyable
race. The steam stopped by the end of pit lane and the temp was back to
normal by half the pace lap. I was able to pass about half dozen cars by the
end of the 5 lap race and it was great fun. I spent some time after I
returned home installing an electric fan. My heart gets going fast enough in
the race without these last minute problems. The only other problem I
experienced was a wheel vibration coming down the straight at max speed.
Charlie Gibson helped out by balancing my wheels even though two of them had
too much runout. I have a set of new wires on the way to hopefully take care
of this problem completely.
Later that morning I was in the first practice session with the experienced
racers. This was quite a different experience from running in the student
race with much more aggressive driving. The car performed well for the
remainder of races that day and I feel absolutely great with one race
weekend now under my belt. I am now anticipating and preparing my car for
the June 2nd and 3rd event at Lime Rock. I hope to see everyone there.
Phil Roettjer
53 Lotus VI
67 Morgan +4
67 MGB
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