Gee Mike, sorry you got out of the wrong side of bed this morning! <grin>
I found the 180-odd entrants at VIR this past weekend to be quite
satisfactory. That and the presence of several rare and unusual Lola T-70
Spiders (3, at last count), thirty-five million dollars worth of Ferraris
RACING (including one of 36 250 GTO's, a sight rarely seen outside of
Monterey) and the close racing of a dozen cars in more than one race group
covered by less than a second in lap times to be pretty much what I want to
see when I go to the races... <very big grin> Yes, the heat was a pain, but
the lap times were pretty quick and people seemed to be smiling anyway.
Sure, Historic stock cars are not everyone's cup of tea, just as thirty year
old Sports 2000 cars may not be either, but at least in the S2 race, the top
three were covered by less than three tenths of a second and the second
group of FOUR cars had a margin of victory of less than twenty-THOUSANDTHS
of a second! Hah! A good class of twelve of those cars alone, would have
been great to have Jim F. there with us!
There were three race groups with at least twenty-eight entries and the
Formula Vee and Bugeye Sprite races were not to be missed. The Ve race was
won on the last turn of the last lap. Margin of victory less than a tenth.
I'm sure BeaveRun will at least meet it's turnout of the ten to twelve dozen
cars over the last two years, thanks to the diligent efforts of race chair
Ralph Steinberg and the Mid-Ohio SVRA event will be fine, too.
I find it interesting that in spite of gas prices, people still race just as
avidly. SVRA Savannah was up 10%, VDCA VIR was up 33% and VSCCA VIR was up
50% over last year. Gold Cup was down, but that is to be expected after the
huge 50th anniversary promotion last year. Only two out of nine years of
Gold Cup entry numbers have been higher than this year.
I heard this past weekend that Steve Earle is likely passing on renewing his
contract for Labor Day at Lime Rock (probably a good thing since his
"vision" does not embrace "the great unwashed" culture of the East <grin>)
and that VRG and Brian Redman are definitely on for May of next year at
Summit Point.
The future sounds pretty good to me, Mike.
-Peter
--
Peter Krause
www.peterkrause.net
(919) 740-1871
"The Driver is the Greatest Performance Variable in the Racing Equation."
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