Sound engineer turned Ferrari restorer Tom Yang visited Monticello Motor Club with his friends Jim and Sandy. Tom says, “Jim and Sandy prepared to do some exploratory laps in their cars. We were surrounded by modern GT3 Porsches, and some newer street cars taking their laps around the track, but when the GTO and Cobra were unloaded from the transporter, people stopped to watch!”
I should hope so. Shall we take a lap in the GTO? Probably.
More photos (in heartbreakingly small sizes) at Tom Yang’s Ferrari Restoration (careful or you’ll lose a few hours digging through his archives).
Ed Foster from MotorSport took part in August’s Citroen 2CV 24 Hour race at Snetterton. MotorsTV just posted the footage and it looks like a whole lotta fun.
This was the year of The Flying Finn’s 33 minute 36 second lap. There’s something equally magical and heartbreaking about a record that cannot be broken—Leo Kinnunen’s 79.89 mph average lap of the Targa will never be beaten.
Some beautifully shot footage from Vita Brevis Films. Hey Top Gear USA, put these guys on your call list. This Mopar looks like she’ll break the sound barrier.
I’m a huge fan of projected 8mm home movies shot to video and uploaded to YouTube. I’m an even bigger fan when the film is from Oscar Koveleski collection and he narrates a lap, describing the obscured driving line, elevation changes, and corners of one of America’s great tracks. So let’s take a spin around Road Atlanta with Oscar in his Auto World McLaren M8B. I’d take his advice, this was probably filmed the weekend he took 4th in the Can-Am Road Atlanta race in September 1970.
Reconstructing lost tracks as playable environments for video games should be considered a charitable donation.
Jesse Laakso’s build of Meadowdale for play in a variety of racing simulators is just that; a race-fan community service. While the track is still under construction, it will ultimately be available for play in a variety of games, including popular titles such as RFactor and GT Legends. I can hardly wait to boot this up in GTL and take a spin around her in a Alfa GTA or 911 RSR. Jesse’s level of commitment to the details is what is really selling this for me. He has scoured the web, and reached out to the community at The Nostalgia Forum for assistance in ensuring the accuracy of everything from the iconic “PRAY” graffiti at the top of the hill, to the textures of the signage that separated the pit lane from the straight, to the construction methods of the pit garages.
Pray at Meadowdale
For a work in progress, Jesse’s track looks remarkable complete. In the hands of a lesser developer, this would be considered finished and pushed out to the racing sim community. That Jesse is reserving release until it is as accurate as possible is fantastic—if nerve racking. Keep up the great work!
Check out the Nostalgia Forum thread for an indication of the level of effort and research that Jesse has been putting in to the project; as well as how eager the vintage racing community has been in helping him along.
It wasn’t looking good for the first few weeks of fundraising, but the production team behind GT Racer has achieved its $6,000 goal to complete post-production on the footage they’ve filmed of last month’s Algarve Historics in Portimão, Portugal. Congratulations to the team! While the funding goal is complete, for the next 3 days you can still contribute $15 towards the project on kickstarter.com and receive a DVD of the completed film. That’s 25% off retail.
There was some discussion in our last post about GT Racer about the apparent irony of donating money to continue production of a show about millionaires and their very expensive toys, and while the point is well made, I for one am very pleased that the auto racing community has decided that GT Racer is worthwhile.
It’s short. It’s hard to make out. But it’s precious.
The first race at Meadowdale was both a triumph and a disaster. The track was completed within only a few short months. So there was much to celebrate for this inaugural running in September of 1958. It was a difficult day for the participants (and the viewers of this video), however, because the earth moving to construct the track left huge swaths of open land; open land that was left as bare dirt. The resulting dust storm was an unhappy occurrence for opening day.
Ok. I like old track maps as much as the next guy—ok, probably much more than the next guy—but they only do so much to tell the story of a race. Here’s another look at the ’52 Targa.
