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Strategies & Market Trends : A.I.M Users Group Bulletin Board -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jack Jagernauth who wrote (12144)	7/25/2000 8:22:37 AM
From: OldAIMGuy	Respond to of 18928

Hi Jack, The vintage race weekends are always fun. With so many cars there for competition, there's always SOMETHING going on on the track with some cars that are sentimental favorites. Listening to those V-12 Ferrari's scream up the hills is a joy. This weekend there were 8 race groups. Group 1 is for very exotic and usually recent machinery. It had lots of ex-IMSA cars, prototype racers, Winston Cup cars, some newer sports racers and one 1949 Cadillac! This Caddy was run last year in the Pan Americana race through Mexico. I've done this race twice, '91 and '94 and can tell you that there's nothing like it on the planet. When you see a late '40s or early '50s Caddy or Lincoln in your mirrors closing on you going 40 MPH faster than you are - and you're already at 135MPH, you have to wonder if the missile is going to be able to slow for the next turn!! To get a good feel for what the La Carrera Panamericana is all about order the video that was produced by Pink Floyd in '91. That was the first year we raced there. Pink Floyd brought three C-type Jaguar racers there and their own film crew to record the event. Seven days later one car was left un-crashed! Out of a field of 120 cars starting, there were 80 finishers and Team Veale was about 40th overall and 10th in class. I'll see if I can find a link to where to order the Pink Floyd tape and post it here later. If you care for their music and like racing, this is a great video. Our next two times to Mexico brought us up to the low 20s overall and 4th in class. This is a ONCE IN A LIFETIME event that I was silly enough to do twice!! Again to my embarrassment, that old Caddy ran the 4 miles of Elkhart Lake in the 2:40s or nearly 30 seconds a lap faster than my car! Top speed for it is around 170 MPH! Not bad for a 51 year old car! My favorite groups to watch are the Can-Am cars and the '60s muscle cars. This year there were Cobras, Mustangs, Porsches, Corvettes, XKE's, Cameros, even a Ford Falcon and a Chevelle in that group. About 60 cars took the field for the green flag. After Lap One, there was never a time that something was going on in front of the spectators. These cars literally create a sound that can't easily be described. The V-8s are loud enough that you actually FEEL the sound reverberate in your chest! Some of the best driving of the weekend was in this group, IMO. To understand this one has to realize that most of those cars started life with way too much power, crummy brakes and were ill handling beasts (except the Porsches, which had good brakes right from the factory). Watching these cars Power-Slide turn five and race up the hill was a blast. A big block Corvette won overall in this race. Amazing was that a 6 cylinder Jag (driven by Trent Terry, Benton, IL) came 4th overall and first in his class. I think the nearest race track to you is Mosport Park. There's a vintage race weekend sponsored by VARAC the weekend of the 16th and 17th of Sept. Take a look at Victory Lane victorylane.com for the best information on vintage racing. Their publication has all the latest goings on. Best regards, Tom