We pulled into Elkhart Lake for the 2009 Kohler International Challenge with Brian Redman last Friday night hoping to catch the parade of vintage cars from the track into downtown Elkhart Lake for a small concours d’elegance on the streets of my favorite small town. Parked in front of Siebkens, the crowds and the rain kept us from taking in too much of the rows of gorgeous machines lining both sides of the street. So, as is traditional, we disappeared into the Siebkens bar for a few Spotted Cows. When we finally made our way back into the streets, we caught this procession of the cars making their way back to Road America.
I’ve identified as many of the machines as I could in this video. It really says something when there’s just too many GT40s and Cobras to accurately identify which one belongs with which driver. Ah, Elkhart.
Paul wrote in to tell us of his first outing in his recently acquired McNamara Sebring Formula Vee. The car finished the race, he passed a few fellow racers. All in all a successful first outing.
But I’ll let Paul tell you the story:
I finally finished my vee a few weeks ago and took it up to BIR for my first vintage race weekend. Considering all that we had done to the car, things went pretty well. Since I am 6’1″, we moved the pedals and heelstop 1.5 inches forward. We fit new 6pt belts and mountings into the car. I added vintage legal oil cooler and charging system and all new brakes and brake lines in addition to giving the whole car a good cleaning. I fit in the car really well and had no troubles with driving the car. Previous to arriving at the track, I hadn’t actually driven the car since completing all of the work on it.
I was dinged for a few things in tech, but nothing the would prohibit me from running – a few rod ends holding the z-bar that are possibly worn, the steering wheel pin was deemed a bit outdated (go figure) and my car also lacks a working integrated fire system which the VSCR doesn’t require. The car was however deemed safe enough to run the weekend.
We ran two practices and a race on Saturday and a practice and race on Sunday. The VSCR is relatively small, so everyone runs in one run group. That means that I was out there with one other monoposto, lots of MGs, an Austin Healey, a TVR, a bmw powered elva, a Jabro, a 356, a few old vw gtis, a 914 and 3 or so big block Corvettes – which were really the only things from this weekend that I found to be frightening.The track was wet for the first two practices and I actually turned faster lap times than 4 or 5 cars. This was particularly noteworthy because of a big problem that became apparent on my first practice lap – The car wouldn’t shift into third gear at speed. Apparently in my thorough cleaning of the car I had cleaned away the gunk that was keeping the shifter linkages tight. As a result, I ran all of my laps in fourth. At BIR you really want to run about a third of the track in 4th and the rest in 3rd. It was probably all right in the rain laps since the lack of power was an added advantage coming out of corners.
For the first race they started me at the back of the pack since they didn’t want me causing any problems with my errant shifter in the middle of the field during the start. I was able to pass the 4 or 5 cars that I outpaced during practice despite my shifting problems.Sunday was more of the same except that they started me in the middle of the pack for the race. The start was quite an experience, since it’s on the fastest, scariest part of the track (through two and into three). I’ve never gone through two side by side with another car before.
Overall, it was a successful first weekend, we made it to the track and back home, the car ran well and we didn’t have any incidents. Now I just have to take care of my next car to-do list before going to Road America in September. So much for ‘finishing’ the car.
As part of the lead-up to the 60th anniversary of Formula 1, Martin Brundle has taken a few of the sports more iconic racing machines for a spin. This segment features a favorite of mine, The Lotus 49.
As you’ve no doubt heard by now, we’ve lost “the most trusted man in America”. It wasn’t until today that I found out having spent the weekend at the Kohler International/Brian Redman Challenge at Road America (more on that to come as I sort out my photos and video from the weekend).
Cronkite was also once a promising young racing driver in the 1950s, campaigning his Volvo PV444 at endurance events on the East Coast, as well as piloting a Lancia at the ’59 Sebring endurance race. There’s a lot more wonderful information about Cronkite’s racing and race-reporting at this New York Times article.
Now this is exactly the position you probably don’t want to be in. Then again, by nearly any measure, sitting on the track watching your BRM tumble through the air, throwing wheels, exhaust, and everything else, is probably a damn fortunate position to end up in. Considering.
This is Hans Herrmann, watching his BRM barrel roll through the air at the South end of the 1959 German Grand Prix. This race was run on the steeply banked AVUS track in West Berlin. The track might have been more economical to run in place of the Nurburgring, but is it ever boring. Looking much more like a modern Speedway than a proper Formula 1 track, it’s simply two very long straights with two banked hairpins at either end. It was at the south end that it all went wrong for our friend Hans here; dropping from 4th to 3rd to slow for the turn. Looks like he got a bit too close to the hay bales, and it was all over. This might be one of only a few examples of being safer without the driver’s safety belts. Whew.
I’ve heard it said that Formula 1 is what Europe has instead of a space program. That’s only partially true of course, but it does pretty accurately communicate the level of engineering prowess on the world’s Grand Prix circuits. On today’s 40th anniversary of NASA’s Apollo program, I can think of no better visual tribute on The Chicane than this Lotus trying to achieve escape velocity at (probably) the Nurburgring.
How could I have missed this? Road America is only a few hours drive away and somehow I completely missed the chance to see some marvelous vintage Ferraris at a racing pace in the Shell Ferrari Historic Challenge. The series is open to pre-1980 machines, and divided into disc and drum brake classes.
The drum brake class featured two—two!—Maserati 250Fs on the starting row. Ultimately the pole-sitter, Peter Giddings, won the drum brake race by more than 30 seconds. No surprise there, Giddings has won most of the events since the series started in 2000. So chalk another one up for Giddings. No matter though; whatever the official site lists in standings for the event, the folks hanging out at the Turn 5 fence and the Hurry Downs benches were the real winners. It’s a bit of a rarity to see vintage machines from Maranello racing hard here in the Midwest and I’m really kicking myself for missing the opportunity.
If you’re in Quebec, don’t make the same mistake I did. The next Shell Ferrari Historics will be hitting Le Circuit at Mont-Tremblant from July 24 to 26.
In 1952 Chuck Hassan imported a Bandini Motto Crosley to compete in the newly formed 750cc Hmod class in the American SCCA. His first race was a total success as he won his class and the index of performance at the 6 hour Vero Beach race. He competed in many more events including Sebring and ended up 24th overall in the 1952 national standings. He then sold the car to James Riley who raced a couple of times in 1953.
Bandini With A New Devin Body For 1958
In 1954 the car was purchased by the great Sandy McArthur (the 1950’s Hmod King) who raced it to 6th in the national Hmod class that year. McArthur also raced it in 1955 and for the Sebring 12 hour event had a Mercury outboard motor installed by the factory. He was leading the index of performance after 6 hours when the fiat 500 gearbox let go. He competed in a few more races that year and in 1956 sold the car to Clair “Sonny” Reuter of Naperville Ill. Reuter raced the car a few times and then installed a new Bill Devin Monza body for the 1958 season. This great car was in his possesion till his death in 2006.
My father Jack Reuter purchased it from his estate to compliment his other Bandini racer, 1955 Bandini #358 DOHC. We are now restoring the car with its Devin body.
The upcoming online auction at l’Arte et l’Automobile offers some fantastic opportunities to do some armchair racing at 33rpm. The auto racing album is a bit of an anomaly, at once so antiquated and of-the-moment. These audio recordings put us right in the racing seat while at the same time putting in the head of a 12 year old racing fan appreciating these recordings again and again. They’re a simple reminder of the days before HD television put races live in our living rooms and we could only absorb the international sportscar scene by reading the race reports, attending a Grand Prix when it happened to be near enough, and staying up late into the night in a darkened bedroom flipping this record over again and again to imagine yourself behind the wheel. Bidding starts on June 17, with the gavel falling on July 15.
