Category: Event

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Classic Cycle Event Grand Prix

Southsiders Visits the Vintage Revival Montlhéry

1932 Graham 8 Lucenti Indy car at the Montlhery Revival

Last month Southsiders MC‘s Vincent Prat made the short trip up the road to Europe’s second best known banked track for the Vintage Revival Montlhéry. Ok, maybe third best known. Fourth? Whatever. Lucky for us, The Southsiders crew has a fantastic photographic eye for capturing the atmosphere of the event. I’m so glad to see that the vintage spirit that surrounds the Goodwood Revival is spreading to other vintage events with period dress and accessories sharing the stage with the vintage machinery. The shots of the 1932 Graham 8 Lucenti Indy car wouldn’t have half the appeal were the pilot clad in just another contemporary race suit.

Entry to the banking at Montlhéry

It looks like a remarkable assemblage of machines were on-hand for the weekend, including machines that traveled from the Brooklands and Hockenheim museums—some returning to Montlhéry for the first time since they were actively racing pre-1940. Wonderful! You aren’t likely to see a better collection of Bugattis on any grid in the world. Looks like another to add to the ever-expanding list of events to attend in the future.

1932 Indy car at the Vintage Revival Montlhéry 2013

Click on through for Vincent’s recap and the rest of his fantastic photos from the event.

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Event

Reader Photos: Peter's Mitty Paddock

Peter Hoag took some time out from his duties with Regogo Racing to walk the paddock at the Mitty a few weeks ago and sent in these wonderful images of some of the competitors in various stages of preparation for their run. We tend to focus on the action on the track, but often the most fun at a vintage event can be had just wandering around the paddock spotting the cars, chatting with drivers, or listening in as two competitors hop out of their machines and rush to congratulate one another and recount their on-track battles.

The cars are what lured me in to vintage racing but the community is what keeps me going back every summer. Thanks for sending these in Peter!

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Event Lost Track

Greenwood Revival

The grass is poking through most of what remains of the pavement; the curbs are crumbled; the entry gates are hanging on by a powder of rust. None of that is stopping an impromptu celebration of the Greenwood Roadway’s anniversary.

June 8, 2013 marks 50 years since the inaugural event at Greenwood, and some dedicated sports car fans are going to head on over to the track to pay their respects. Cars, Motorcycles, and Karts that raced on the track—and their drivers—will be in attendance.

The track only really operated for 3 years starting in 1963, but in that short time the track played host to local races and SCCA events. Despite it’s short history, the track’s mystique lives on. There were precious few tracks in the midwest, so the memory and the legend of them remains so vitally important in this part of the country. Of course, Mid-Ohio and Road America (and a few other wonderful examples) live on, but those that left, left an impression.

The good news is that the bones of the track are there. There’s enough driveable surface that parade lapping is on the schedule for the weekend. I wouldn’t recommend putting much oomph into the go pedal, but it will give some sense of what it must have been like fifty years ago to charge down one of Greenwood’s sweeping turns at speed.

Greenwood Roadway Today

Whenever I happen upon one of these tracks my heart starts to long for its resurgence. Usually it’s just the musings of a romantic spirit but just take a look at this satellite view of the track as she sits today. There’s a damn lot of it still there. I hope that the revivalists that take in the show and festivities of the Greenwood Revival show up the next weekend with an asphalt truck. This is more than just the barely visible foundations of a track that once was… it’s a dare. She wants to come back. She’s just sitting there, waiting for us. Look at that map and tell me that some part of you doesn’t want her back too.

More information at the Greenwood Revival site and at this wonderful Greenwood Roadway remembrance.

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Event Video

Born of a Blue Sky: GT40s and More at Amelia

After the success of last year’s look at the GTOs of Amelia Island, it’s little wonder that Justin Lapriore was invited back to Amelia to document this year’s concours. Often in the videos I share, there’s some questionable decisions being made: Uninteresting edits, holding waaaayyy too long on a shot of an empty track, or—perhaps most noticeably—bizarre music selections like contemporary pop music over 1950s race footage. Justin clearly demonstrates that it is possible to make the right decisions. Of course, when the GT40 is a featured marque, there’s little need for more of a soundtrack than that. When the music does kick in several minutes into the piece, it somehow meshes wonderfully with the animalistic power of the cars and the decidedly more refined nature of the event itself.

50 years of GT40. 50 years of Lamborghini. 50 Years of Corvette Stingray. A special tribute to Ducati. I’m glad that Justin was there to let those of us who were foolish enough not to attend tag along.

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Event Video

Historic Grand Prix at Zandvoort

The increasing availability of high quality cameras on the cheap has sure bumped up the amount of excellent shoots and edits on video sharing platforms. It’s becoming a full-time job to dig through all of the marvelous historic and new footage of vintage racing—and I do try. Despite my best efforts I managed to miss this wonderful cut that Motorsport Media NL shot at the 2012 Historic Grand Prix of Zandvoort. Beautifully put together.

Thanks for sending this in, Rudy.


Categories
Classic Sportscar Event

NoBraking.com Visits the CSRG Season Opener

CSRG 2013 Season Opener by NoBraking.com

I’m still buried under a foot of snow and I’ve been able to keep the cabin fever from setting in too hard… until No Braking posted their snapshots from the Classic Sports Racing Group’s event opening their 46th(!) season.

The April 5 race weekend drew 150 vintage cars to Sonoma Raceway which looks like it offers some excellent views. Some of these grids look a bit odd, but may have been an enduro or other cross-racing group sessions. Plus I like a mixed racing group—It’s always fun to see a smaller bore Alfa on the track with a Mustang. Fantastic stuff.
More photos on NoBraking.com, and check the Vintage Racing Calendar for their next event.

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Automotive Art Event

Stefan Marjoram’s Goodwood: Silver Arrows Edition

It’s become a bit of a tradition here to feature some of Stefan Marjoram’s sketches in the days following the Goodwood Revival. I just popped over to his sketch blog to see if he made the rounds this year.

Did he ever.

The volume of amazing racers at Goodwood might prove overwhelming for anyone; particularly for someone trying to take it all in. The temptation to take a few quick snapshots and run to the next GTO or GT40 or insert-amazingly-iconic-racecar-name-here, must be strong indeed. That’s why I so appreciate Stefan’s patience to sit down for 10 or 15 or 30 minutes and focus on a single machine from a single view and pull out a sketchbook.

Click on through for more of Stefan Marjoram’s Silver Arrows studies.

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Event

A Weekend in the North Woods

Jeff Johnk's Austin Healey 100/6

I spent part of Labor Day weekend at Minnesota’s Brainerd International Raceway for their Jack Pines Sprints racing weekend. Fans of CanAm racing will better recognize the Donnybrooke Speedway name as host to several events in 1970-72 where Denny Hulme, Peter Revson, and Francois Cevert took home victories.

The weekend also featured the Muscle Car Shootout on the drag strip that forms part of the main straight in the track’s 3.1 mile configuration. Thankfully, 2009’s addition of a 2.5 mile configuration of the track means that road racing and drag racing can happen at the same time.

Muscle Car Shootout drag racing weekend at BIR

Wandering back and forth between these two very different motorsport events is a great way to gain a greater appreciation for the variety within out sport. Seeing that there were many spectators trying to follow both the drags and the several road racing events of the weekend makes me realize that there’s less division between race fans than many motorsports outlets would have you believe.

Jim Gaffney's Formula Vee

This event was also a major personal milestone in that it was my 2-year-old son’s first vintage race weekend. Having him perched on my shoulders for much of the day didn’t make photography any easier, but here are some of the snapshots that I was able to grab in my now standard one-handed-phone-cam-while-steadying-a-squirmy-toddler photographic method.

This Mustang was very, very fast all day.

Vintage sportscars on the twisty bits. Vintage Detroit iron on the drags. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday, eh?

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Event Ferrari Historic Racing Photos

Instagramming Car Week

I’ve given up on trying to cover the on-track events at the Monterey Historics, er… I mean… Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion, from several time zones away, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t follow along on Instagram. Here’s a few favorites that attendees snapped this weekend.

Instagram’s desktop experience leaves much to be desired, but you can lose yourself by searching through the Instagram API for #carweek, #pebblebeach, #montereyhistorics, and #thequail. Beware, productivity loss ahead!

Categories
Event Grand Prix

Silver Arrows to Race Goodwood

Holy crap.

Goodwood has announced that the 2012 Revival’s Grand Prix grid will include a comprehensive field of Silver Arrows. They have confirmed that in appearance and on track will be the Mercedes-Benz W25, W125, W154 and W165, and examples of the Auto Union Type C and Type D racing alongside other period GP cars. Seeing any one of these at speed would be an absolute thrill. That list right there is six of them. SIX! And there’s likely to be more than one of the Auto Unions.

Just stop and let that sink in for a moment. If you’re like me and keep saying, “maybe next year” each time the Revival rolls around. This might be the year to stop procrastinating.