I have been coming to the Vintage Fall festival at LRP for the past 10 years
as a spectator and selling some junk parts from my basement in the flea
market. This year was my first participating as a racer with the VSCCA. I
have to say that overall I had a great time and certainly the best of the
last 10 years. That was because I was participating rather than just
watching.
I also enjoyed the auction on Sunday and I think was a good enhancement to
the Sunday venue. Quite honestly I usually find the Sunday show on the track
sort of boring.
On the down side I thought that limiting VSCCA to only three groups was very
restrictive and resulted in an unusual mix of cars (at least in group 2
where I ran). I also thought that track time was very limited and I came
away both Friday and Saturday feeling like I hardly got a chance to get the
tires warm. However I came away very happy on Sunday since I really enjoyed
the afternoon feature race and had a very good battle with a couple of cars
that were running in my lap time range.
I want to really give credit to Don Mei for doing this best to fill up each
of the three groups. I personally didn't even bother registering until a
week before the event since I had assumed that the under 2 liter class was
not going to be included. I was thrilled when I found out there was still
room in group 2 and I would be allowed to participate. I think it is
unfortunate that VSCCA was only given three groups and that this caused so
much confusion in the ranks that most people didn't even bother to sign up.
As far as the HSR side of this I personally am not interested in watching
the newer cars in this event. About the 70s is my cutoff since that is where
I need to go back to recapture my youth. However that is entirely a personal
preference and I am sure lots of people enjoyed the later cars. I do think
the HSR cars got more track time, especially with the enduros on Sunday.
I also noticed that some of the vendors who had been showing up for years
were not there this year. The flea market vendor fees used to be very
attractive and they were trying to get both the big vendors and the small
guys who want to sell some stuff from their basements. This years it looked
like they were trying to eliminate the latter.
So overall from my perspective I had a great time, but I hope the venue
between the VSCCA and HSR is better sorted out next year.
Phil Roettjer
53 Lotus VI #953
|