Ricky Bobby Memorial Vintage GT

Awful race. Standing start has spoiled all - setup has been prepared for rolling start (long first gear which on a track is not used anywhere) :(

Great race guys..

That was prob the best Vintage race i've had to date. That little Elite would carrie good speed in the corners, just to be out done by the more powerful cars on track. :-)

This group of drivers are some of the cleanest and most respectful out there, such a joy to be a part of. :-)

I didn't expect to get 3rd, i need more rental points..LOL But it is what it is.. hehe.

V8's next.. Shake ~n~ Bake!

my best race thus far, I was kind of surprised with my qualifying lap and started 3rd. finally I was able to get off and not lose any positions on the start and I was running in 3rd for about 50% of the race with heat from mark and Jason pretty much the whole first half of the race. I was able to grab 2nd on a mistake from Bryce thank you very much :) and thanks to some luck finally on my side Jason and Bryce ended up dropping off after some contact. But it was Mark Peeler who was my biggest problem the whole race. I knew he was faster then me through the whole infield turns and I just had to not make any mistakes and stay on the line. I knew the elite was only fast on the race line and if it went off the whole momentum was ruined so thanks to some defensive driving on the first 2-4 turns of every lap I was able to maintain the 2nd place all the way to the finish. Great racing Mark you had me sweating up a storm on that one and I'm pretty happy to take 2nd with a battle right down to the finish line!

Congratulations to the podium: Barrett, Sheldon and Mark.

Had a good race with with John in the Mini as I made the mistake of going with softs in the front and John was pretty good in the Mini there also.... I was sliding all over the place by mid-race. BTW, John, you are a gentleman, but some of that contact was just racing - just go man. and if you feel guilty, wait till I catch up and then resume again.

Made a mistake a few laps from the finish and drove like hell to catch up and - - John made a mistake coming off the last turn and I floored it trying to get the position and went into the guard rail and Mike E. snuck by me near the the S/F line.

I just brushed the wall and the engine blew?? Can't believe it went that easy? o weelll . thats racing.

BG

I saw a fair amount of jostling in lap one this time out. 45 mins is not an enduro, but neither is it a sprint, and there's generally plenty of time to get where you belong in the field. So let's remember to keep that in mind on lap one.

Miguel, sorry for springing the standing start on you, I should have posted in the pre-race. For future reference, we only do rolling start on tracks that have problems with the start lights. Great qualifying laps in the Elite, by the way.

Congrats to Barrett and the rest of the podium. Barrett absolutely checked out in his Alfa Jr, very impressive run!

As for me, I was happy to pick up a bunch of spots on lap one, then worried about how long it would take the faster cars I got in front of to catch back up. Only two of them did, and I gamely gave chase to Mike Miller and Jim Spychalla for several laps when they want by, but both eventually faded out of sight ahead. I spent the 2nd half of the race alone, watching some close gaps and position changes up ahead of me, looked like a close race for a lot of people.

Thanks again to Sheldon for sponsoring!

:)

I was planning on driving the lotus Cortina works..was about 1-2 secs off the pace in this car. If I had time to practice, I would of found that time. 2 hr before race time, I climbed in the alfa Jr and immediately got laps in 2:09's. I parked it and went and watched the start of survivor. I came back up stairs and put together a setup and was clicking off laps in the 7's-8's range. Not bad. I qual'd fourth only to be distracted by constant chatter on TS during qual. I was waiting for someone to say something...nothing was said, so I took it upon myself to say something. Sorry, but it is really annoying to hear someone talking about lap times and where they found that speed... when you are trying like hell to turn a good lap yourself...nuff said.
Start of race, I passed Miguel and Jason? and was chasing Barrett. Barrett was about .4 secs a lap faster than I, so when the gap reached 8 secs, I put it in cruise mode hoping for a Barrett spin. As usual, the only spin I would get was from my own brain fade. I just get comfy and settle down and wham, miss an apex, lock brakes up and watch the 8 sec lead dwindle to nothing. I found myself right in the battle of JAson, Sheldon and Mark I think. For a few laps, we had 3 wide and nose to tail racing. Someone make a video of those laps!!!! JAson and I swapped position due to bumps, no harm no foul. A few secs back was Mr. Miller in a TR4. A little bobble by yours truly and Mr. M was all over me like white on rice. We battled for a few laps till I "brushed"(big sry) his bumper and Mr. M went for a very lazy/slow spin of death. So Sry again. Finished 5th, with 2 brain fades. I need to figure out a way to rid myself of them. They are costing me dearly in season points.

Qualifying totally sucked -- after dipping into the 2:09 range earlier in the week, I just couldn't get it together on race night. I wasn't overly wound-up, but I just couldn't seem to find my way around. I turned a 2:10 lap in practice, then couldn't do any better than a 2:12 in qualifying.

Starting from the rear was probably a blessing, though, because the start was ugly! My qual time put me at the back of the field for the start, one spot ahead of Bill Guillame, and things in front of me were just plain crazy -- and not in a good way. With a view from the rear, things seemed to go well going through Tarzan (T1) and Gerlach (T2), but as I came up on Hugenholtz (the T3 hairpin), things got really messy. Several cars had gone wide and apparently tangled at the entrance, and other cars ahead of me were bumping and jostling each other for position going through the uphill portion of the hairpin.

I got on the binders to try to avoid everyone ahead of me but still managed to duck around a few people who had gotten caught in various mix-ups, then I had to duck way inside to avoid a couple of faster cars that came together ahead of me -- I got on the binders hard, coming to a complete stop, but still ended up tapping a car (an Alfa, I think?). The car I touched continued on with no problems, but the rest of the field sailed ahead, leaving me literaly standing still in last place.

I found first gear and got going again with the tail-end of the field still in sight, so I decided to just drive to see if I could pick anybody off.

By lap 2 I had started to close-in on a blue TR4 that I thought belonged to Bill Guillame (who was also in a TR4); we diced for a lap or two with some fairly clean side-by-side racing, then on Lap 4 I managed to get around him near the Renault/Vodaphone section when I took a slower inside line that let me duck ahead with a faster exit. I haven't watched the replay yet but I think I recall the TR4 driver drifted wide into the sand trap as I cruised on. Not long after Andrew Peeler exited the game, and looking at our lap times, I believe it was Andrew I was dicing with, because the laptimes show me closing in on Andrew on Lap 3, with Bill still about 16 seconds ahead of us when Andrew exited (and according to the timing, Bill was still about 16 seconds ahead of me when his engine blew, so I had nothing to do with that one!).

The rest of my race consisted of chasing down Bill Kaiser in his Alfa. After Andrew exited, Bill Kaiser had about a 10 second lead on me, and he stretched that out to a 13 second lead by lap 6. I finally started to find my way around the track and started closing the gap -- as in previous weeks in the Mini, I was able to get through the slow turns faster than the Alfa in front of me, but I couldn't equal the Alfa's speed on the fast straights -- in fact, at one point I got past on the last turn, but watched as Bill K's Alfa sailed past me on the start/finish straight. We ran a series of about 5 laps more or less nose-to-tail, then I was finally able to duck past on lap 17, where I remained until the end of the race.

I did have some contact early on with one of the Elite drivers (I thought at the time that it was Ray Nelson, but based on our times I don't believe it was, so I'm not sure who was involved); we came together as I ducked inside coming out of Renault and the Elite did a half-spin as a result of the contact . . . I waited and let the Elite regain its position ahead of me, so I don't think that will prompt any dispute. My apologies to whoever was in the Elite, though!

My inability to find my groove would have made Zandvoort a total grind had it not been for the terrific battle for position I had with Bill Kaiser (thanks, Bill!). Hopefully we'll be able to pull off a cleaner start next week!

I simply never found an answer to the speed question this week. It's weeks like this that make me say "Why am I doing this?" I could run one semi decent lap and then no matter what I tried I could never get any speed. I have never experienced a week like this where no matter what car and what lines I drove I could get nothing from the car. The only excitement came during lap one and when I came up on the mess mid way thorugh I had nowhere to go and got tapped and spun which, in the end, made absolutely no diffrence to where I finished.