Vintage Sedan Racers Group
July 2008
 

Of couse the news is all about the Southern California Historics and the incredibly hot weather.  200 plus drivers braved daytime highs of 112 degrees and $4.50 gallon fuel and made the event.  Here is the race report....

California Speedway Report
(  Les Cannaday )

With our first big race back as an organized group and getting a very good response we were anticipating between 24-28 cars racing at Fontana and then came the weather report, over 100 degree temps, and the high gas prices.  Would anyone show up?

Upon our arrival we found that at least 18 of the cars had actually made it to the track but as always practice can take a toll.  We went down 1 Alfa in the Friday testing sessions and 1 BMW fell by the way during he Saturday practice session but we still had 16 cars take the green flag on Sunday. While our group was not large enough to sustain a separate run group we were treated to a split start by HSR-West so that the VSRG group started the final race about 30 seconds ahead of the rest of the small-bore group.   While not a good as a separate group it was, as all agreed, a great compromise!

The start had Steve Link (510) and CJ Bonura (Lotus Cortina) sharing the front row with Rick Clemente and Alex Gould, both in Alfas. Almost immediately they began to pull a lead but were closely followed by the 510s of Eric Williams, Bill Johnston as well as the BMW of Rich Gehring. By lap 3 the front 7 cars were evenly separated by about 300 yds. The next pack of cars (positions 8-13) included Omar Chuzzi (Alfa), Bob Wass (Alfa) and Jim McAdory (510) followed by John Peterson (510), Dan Haney(510), a new member/driver in a brand new car, Bill Pritchard in a Datsun 510 and Gary Barnett in the Mini Cooper. We also had a very special driver join us for this event as well, Duane Norman driving his hand controlled automatic transmission Datsun 510 proudly sponsored by the Paralyzed Veterans Association. Duane is a great guy and an inspiration to be around and we hope he will race with us again.

With some really hard charging to catch other competitors some of the car stated to have issues and Steve Dragus in the Bill Johnston 510 left on lap 5 with rocker arm problems. Not long after Steve Link dropped out on lap 6 with unknown problems. The rest of the cars continued around with a good race developing between Bob Wass, Omar Chuzzi and Jim McAdory. There was a bit of back & forth passing before McAdory got in front and held the position for a lap or two but just past the halfway point Jim's oil temps began to approach 300 degrees and he had to back off the power. It didn't take long for Chuzzi and Wass to retake the position and then went on for a close two car battle to the finish. Newcomer Bill Pritchard, testing his brand new car, felt a little racy after only 3 short sessions in the car and worked on Dan Haney until he caught him on lap 7 and started after John Peterson but spun and could not get his car restarted immediately

The finish of the race was as Steve link and CJ Bonura joked later: "was an early Christmas from Steve" who said he had wrapped it all up and just handed to win to CJ! Second place went to Rick Clemente and third to Alex Gould. All-in-all it was a very good weekend and there was great enthusiasm for the return of the series. Congrats to all. The rest of the field finished as follows:

With track temps at 150 degrees the 2 retirements were not all that bad and fast lap times ranged from 1:59's to 2:16.

We were able to hand out some nice gifts thanks to Peter and Gayle Brock of BRE2 one of our sponsors and t-shirts thanks to VSRG.  We also unveiled the really cool new rollbar tags and they seemed to be a hit as well.

We want to Thank Peter Brock and Gayle for all they have done to help us and we hope to get a link up for their new BRE2  website and we hope you will visit their site as well as the VSRG site and help support small sedan racing at its best. Spread the word we are back.

NOTE:  We will post the points in early August.  We still need to sort out some the classes for drivers and there are a few entrants that have not registered as members (only members receive points).

Website Orders In July will not ship until the first of August. 

We will not be monitoring the website orders (or e-mails) during most of July.  If you order we will process the order as soon as possible but expect August delivery.

Next Event; Miller Motorsports Park, UT and Then Willow Springs

We are only showing two drivers that have indicated they plan to attend this event.  Personally I would love to make this event but other travel plans have negated such.  For us in Southern California it is about the same drive as Thunderhill, a long way but what a track.

Turnout for the October Willow Springs event is looking good.  We already have 10 drivers that have indicated their intention to attending this event using the "MySchedule" option on the website.  As we saw with Fontana, many more will show up and there is a high probability that our turnout will be greater the Fontana event.