Covid has played havoc with my vintage racing hobby in more ways than one. Yes, we’ve seen mass cancellations of our events. But worse, covid and our new normal policies seem to have elevated the in- track danger.
This weekend we had a vintage race event which included a group of 20 Alfa’s from the 1930’s thru the 1960’s. Although this was a small gathering of under 100 cars, it was a nice turnout for a private fall event. what I saw, unfortunately, was an unprecedented number of crashes.
We we had a 30% attrition rate due to crashes!
What I observed was
(1) people trying to cram a years worth of excitement into less than half as many events. For many this was their first or second event of 2020, where as in a normal year they’d have done 5-6 already.
(2) rusty brains, lack of seat time.
BTW that 87 year old Alfa beat all but two of the 1950/60’s Alfa’s, all of the 356’s, and a good number of vintage front engines sports racers. It was a testament to the amazing engineering by Vittorio Jano’ team and great driving by Peter Greenfield, who is almost as old at the car!
The silver lining, no racing meant time to recommission my E9 for the road.
(Photo by Sean Smith, and is a low res screen shot. If he objects I’ll delete it.)
This weekend we had a vintage race event which included a group of 20 Alfa’s from the 1930’s thru the 1960’s. Although this was a small gathering of under 100 cars, it was a nice turnout for a private fall event. what I saw, unfortunately, was an unprecedented number of crashes.
We we had a 30% attrition rate due to crashes!
What I observed was
(1) people trying to cram a years worth of excitement into less than half as many events. For many this was their first or second event of 2020, where as in a normal year they’d have done 5-6 already.
(2) rusty brains, lack of seat time.
BTW that 87 year old Alfa beat all but two of the 1950/60’s Alfa’s, all of the 356’s, and a good number of vintage front engines sports racers. It was a testament to the amazing engineering by Vittorio Jano’ team and great driving by Peter Greenfield, who is almost as old at the car!
The silver lining, no racing meant time to recommission my E9 for the road.
(Photo by Sean Smith, and is a low res screen shot. If he objects I’ll delete it.)
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