Elkhart Lake Vintage Festival 2013

VSCDA’s Elkhart Lake Vintage Festival featured Triumph this year. They were all over the place, on the track, off the track, on the highways.

This Triumph 250K made an impression both on and off the track



Colin's (Comer) Classic Automobiles once again the event sponsor.  Colin is running and winning with  a hot ground pounder.

  

 

While Cana is back in her beautiful Sprite, a car that has always been a race car (Phil Koller photo)

Triumphs were  buzzin’ like bees, but they did not triumph over us this time! It was a great weekend at Road America.

(Phil Koller photo)

Let’s get right to the good stuff by starting at the end. In Sunday’s Feature we placed 1^st in class and 5^th overall. And on the last lap set another personal best time of 2:51.226. I had hoped to break 2:50 this year, but at this point the lap times are coming down in tenths.  We’ll take it.

 It was a truly beautiful weekend at America’s national speed park. We had a minor issue during practice on Friday -- a popped freeze plug again. And just a little rain resulted in some tricky driving for Saturday’s qualifying that put Cana Comer and her ’59 Austin Healey Bugeye Sprite on the pole and Tony Drews’ Triumph TR-4 on the outside row. I was right behind Cana. 

 

Here’s the video of the Group 2 Vintage Production Feature Race taken from our car.

But you might find it even more interesting to watch us from the cockpit of Tony Drews’ TR-4:

 

I must admit I did not heed this request

Lots of cars did not make it through qualifying – there were a fair number of cars off in the grass during the session. Some, including a few fast ones, made it back for Sunday’s racing; some did not.

Ray Freiwald’s transmission started giving him problems so he and Doug Senk changed it in a bit over 2 hours…

… while the Babcock crew celebrated a 50^th Anniversary with a surprise party for friends. (Doug Senk photo)

 

 Welding 101

 

The Swedish Pavilion is not only for Volvos. L to R: Dennis Birkholz, Mark School and Volvo Joe Brabender

 

As always, the cars visiting the paddocks are as interesting, or maybe even more so, than the race cars themselves. Our friend Rick Bunkfeldt showed up with his new own creation, a 1964 Ferrari 500 Superfast. Read that again – Rick designed this car! I am speechless to describe it, but just imagine! Rick showed his car at Pebble Beach, and now here it is in our paddock.

 Rick's the guy on the right. Amazing! (Doug Senk photo)

(Doug Senk photo)

(David Farrington photo)

Each member of the coach building team signed the truck fascia. (Doug Senk photo) 

And then on Saturday night the annual Gathering on the Green at the Osthoff Resort in Elkhart Lake took place. Thanks to organizer Bob Prince there were many more fine examples of exotic cars on the Green this year. What a beautiful evening.

Gathering on the Green. How idyllic is this?

Here was this year’s ELVF team in our new work shirts. Sue Farringon (or is it Fannington? Farmington? :-)  made the trip too. (Derek Brabender photo)

It must be street legal if it has a license plate, right? Travis Phrang's  '69 'Vette.

There was a downside to the weekend. We lost our 14 1/2 year old family member, Shooting Starr's Teasel on Friday. We ran home on Friday to deal with the great sad responsibility of taking care of him. He went to Portland last year with us. Gone, but never forgotten.

In Memoriam, Teasel. February 24, 1999-September 6, 2013

 So now we're off to Road Atlanta for the HSR Historic Races, Sept. 21-23. More after that.