My first Wheel to Wheel battle!

This past weekend was a tremendous one at Thompson Speedway in Connecticut. The circuit was originally a road course used in SCCA races in the 1950s, but in more recent times a small NASCAR oval was the primary track in use.  The owners of the circuit decided it was time to bring road racing back to Thompson Speedway, so they built an all new track with certain sections of the oval and also of the original road course.  To tie back to the history of the place, they invited the VSCCA and VRG to run at their official grand opening! The track is very challenging with some extremely tight corners and a lot of off camber exits making it very slippery.  There is one long straight with a tight 2nd gear corner at the end. The rest of the corners are quite technical.

At this race, I was able to hang with the other Giuliettas and MGAs and finished a 5th overall in Sunday's main race.  Here is an 8 minute snippet of the race where I had a hammer and tongs battle with two MGA's.  I was fairly sure I could have caught the white car eventually, but my brakes seem to have overheated (we need to still figure out what actually happened) and I didn't have enough stopping power to make the corner, opting for the escape road toward the end of the race. I managed to rejoin, losing 1 position.  Overall, it was disappointing to go off, but I was really happy with the driving I did and all 3 of us got together and had a good laugh afterwards and patted ourselves on the back for such a close, clean race.

Brass Balls

This hillclimb footage is just insane. Hats off to this guy.

Weekend Watching: The First Canadian Grand Prix

Great period footage and editing from 1967 of the very first Player's Grand Prix of Canada, held at Mosport in the rain.

Lancia 037 Heaven at the San Remo Storico

There is something about this video, just seeing these amazing cars with their wide rear ends. The epic backfires, the sound of that high-strung supercharged 4 cylinder. Groupe B was such a mad and amazing era.

Porsche 918 Spyder breaks the lap record at the Ring!

There is a lot of exciting auto news from Frankfurt this week, including the sensational BMW i8 launch. But this video of the new production car record lap at the ring really brings home just how far road cars have come in 30 years. This kind of performance is basically at Formula 1 car levels of the 1980s. And this is a beautiful car (admittedly an expensive one) that anyone can just go out and buy! It really boggles the mind. Kudos to Porsche and also to Mark Lieb, who offers a master class in clean, precise driving here.