There just aren’t too many things that can top the spectical of historic road racing. The cars are icons of speed and to see them on the track being driven in anger, making all the right noise and racing hard with other monsters of the past, well it is just hard to beat.
The only thing that could be better is getting to run your classic hot rod on the same track on the same weekend.
A few weeks ago we had just such an opportunity at the 2010 Classic Motorsports Walter Mitty Challenge. We were invited to the event by the folks from Classic Motorsports / Grassroots Motorsports magazines to share the weekend with the HSR sanctioning body and a couple 10,000 or so racing friends. Naturally we couldn’t pass up the chance.
There were a few items on the agenda (in addition to the obvious of gawking at all the amazing racing). First, we were ask to provide an example of “pro-touring” machinery for the writers and editors of Classic & Grassroots Motorsports to spend some time with. Both of these books have their roots in hard core road racing and autocross which has traditionally been dominated by “sports cars” and “sports sedans” wearing badges from places where english isn’t the primary language.
Now, at RideTech, we’re not the kind of folks to have prejudice towards “Hot Rodders” regardless of their chosen 4 wheel project, and apparently neither is the gang from Grassroots and Classic Motorsports. As the musclecar scene continue to develop serious road handling machines, these books have chosen to increase their scope to cover more and more of our core breed of corner carvers.
The lunch time break in racing action provided the opportunity for the writers and editors to parade around the track in several of the cars to record driving impressions for upcoming article. It was a great time, and you should seek out and take a close look at these publications (if you haven’t already) because they really pack some great hard core tech and detailed editorial content that we’re certain many of you will find is more aligned to your style of car building than you might think (even if there is a Mini Cooper on the cover!).
There was another, more long reaching, and potentially greater reward for investing in a weekend at the races. Through connections with the Grassroots and Classic Motorsports publications we were given the opportunity to discuss the possibility of incorporating a “pro-touring” cars at future HSR events. This would most likely take the form of “time trial class” where car owners would be given the chance to participate, on track, during the racing weekend in some capacity. The folks at the HSR were very receptive to the idea, and were very positive to nearly all the concepts being discussed.
It was fairly obvious, however, that our group was not the first to petition for inclusion among the HSR lineup of events, and the bottom line for success in these classes has always been participation numbers. So, what do you think? Has our niche of Pro-Touring reached a level where we are ready to warrant the support of a national road racing sanctioning body?
We will be looking forward to finding out… it sure looks like it could be fun!
Tags: musclecar
