Vintage racing
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Vintage racing
No, not "vintage" s2ki members, vintage car racing. Interesting article from ESPN:
Lap of Luxury
By Don Barone
Special to Page 2
HALIFAX COUNTY, Va. -- It's a $30 million starting grid.
The least expensive race car is valued around $200,000.
The most expensive: a million, easy.
When the green flag drops, the first six cars speed toward Turn 1 with groans of sheet metal as they race for a turn made for two.
The crowd stands, snapping digital pictures, many witnessing their first $3 million traffic jam.
And there's not a NASCAR hat or T-shirt to be found.
It's the weekend of the Pepsi 400 in Daytona, Fla. -- NASCAR under the lights, 140,000 fans in the stands, $6 million in purse money up for grabs.
But the real money this weekend is just up the road from Milton, N.C., a small town (population: 132) adjacent to Virginia International Raceway.
One of the cars on the track this day (although not in the race) is a Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe, a car that won Le Mans in 1964, the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1964 and 1965, and even conquered Daytona, winning the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1965.
The car is valued at around $12 million -- nearly double the entire Pepsi 400 purse and roughly the equivalent of 25 NASCAR stock cars.
Welcome to vintage car racing, where it's not about racing for money but about having money.
Rich man's sport
Standing under the hot Virginia sun are 40 men in their 40s, 50s and 60s, some with crew cuts, some with ponytails, most wearing $200 designer sunglasses and $300 Simpson racing sneaker things, all changed from their Armani and Brooks Brothers weekday work suits into $1,800 flame-resistant weekend racing suits.
They're listening to a little guy in a blue-striped seersucker sport coat, in Virginia southernly twang, telling them to "make sure your pee is clear by afternoon."
The gentlemanly way to say drink lots of water.
A guy with a little-too-perfect blond hair walks by in a green racing suit, matching scarf tied around his wrist, holding the matching helmet.
He walks down the pit to a $300,000 Shelby GT350 and strikes a pose, teeth perfect. As if on cue, you hear the camera sounds of the digital age
Rick Kopec, one of the four founding members of the Shelby American Automobile Club (www.SAAC.com) 31 years ago, has seen it all before. "Most people want to be part of the show. There's 4,000 people here this weekend, 40 cars, 40 guys in the race, 40 guys who prove they have big [expletive]. They're in the race and everyone is a spectator, and for a brief period of time you walk around in your driver's suit, and everybody is looking at you, and you're a real somebody."
At dinner that night, April the waitress says I "eat like a woman" when I order a salad -- all the racers, she points out, eat beef. Over the A1 sauce, we hear tales of the track. Scotty Hackenson, one of the drivers, is here with his dad, Clint, who tells of his days racing and how he "used to fold up my wife's panties and put them under my helmet for luck." Scotty refuses to say whether the family tradition continues.
Kim, a Toronto lawyer, says this is his 5-year-old daughter Tiffany's sixth event. "First one was when she was still in the womb." He describes his Cobra as a Bitza: "Bits of pieces of this, bits of pieces of that."
Not your daddy's Ford
Ever been to the supermarket and seen an ad pinned up on the bulletin board advertising some guy's old Ford? If you're interested, you pull off a tag with his phone number on it.
They have those here, too. The Ford for sale here is a "Ford Cobra CSX 4211 with a 540 horsepower engine, one owner, 985 original miles, leather interior. Price $159,000. Call for details."
And half the phone number tags are gone.
"The costs are astronomical," for this hobby, Kopec says. "You've got to have high disposable income. This is not a hobby for a guy making $50,000 a year."
Curt Vogt of Cobra Automotive, one of the premier builders of vintage race cars in the world, gets a little bit more specific: "A weekend of racing these cars probably costs the guy from between $2,000 to $5,000
Lap of Luxury
By Don Barone
Special to Page 2
HALIFAX COUNTY, Va. -- It's a $30 million starting grid.
The least expensive race car is valued around $200,000.
The most expensive: a million, easy.
When the green flag drops, the first six cars speed toward Turn 1 with groans of sheet metal as they race for a turn made for two.
The crowd stands, snapping digital pictures, many witnessing their first $3 million traffic jam.
And there's not a NASCAR hat or T-shirt to be found.
It's the weekend of the Pepsi 400 in Daytona, Fla. -- NASCAR under the lights, 140,000 fans in the stands, $6 million in purse money up for grabs.
But the real money this weekend is just up the road from Milton, N.C., a small town (population: 132) adjacent to Virginia International Raceway.
One of the cars on the track this day (although not in the race) is a Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe, a car that won Le Mans in 1964, the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1964 and 1965, and even conquered Daytona, winning the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1965.
The car is valued at around $12 million -- nearly double the entire Pepsi 400 purse and roughly the equivalent of 25 NASCAR stock cars.
Welcome to vintage car racing, where it's not about racing for money but about having money.
Rich man's sport
Standing under the hot Virginia sun are 40 men in their 40s, 50s and 60s, some with crew cuts, some with ponytails, most wearing $200 designer sunglasses and $300 Simpson racing sneaker things, all changed from their Armani and Brooks Brothers weekday work suits into $1,800 flame-resistant weekend racing suits.
They're listening to a little guy in a blue-striped seersucker sport coat, in Virginia southernly twang, telling them to "make sure your pee is clear by afternoon."
The gentlemanly way to say drink lots of water.
A guy with a little-too-perfect blond hair walks by in a green racing suit, matching scarf tied around his wrist, holding the matching helmet.
He walks down the pit to a $300,000 Shelby GT350 and strikes a pose, teeth perfect. As if on cue, you hear the camera sounds of the digital age
Rick Kopec, one of the four founding members of the Shelby American Automobile Club (www.SAAC.com) 31 years ago, has seen it all before. "Most people want to be part of the show. There's 4,000 people here this weekend, 40 cars, 40 guys in the race, 40 guys who prove they have big [expletive]. They're in the race and everyone is a spectator, and for a brief period of time you walk around in your driver's suit, and everybody is looking at you, and you're a real somebody."
At dinner that night, April the waitress says I "eat like a woman" when I order a salad -- all the racers, she points out, eat beef. Over the A1 sauce, we hear tales of the track. Scotty Hackenson, one of the drivers, is here with his dad, Clint, who tells of his days racing and how he "used to fold up my wife's panties and put them under my helmet for luck." Scotty refuses to say whether the family tradition continues.
Kim, a Toronto lawyer, says this is his 5-year-old daughter Tiffany's sixth event. "First one was when she was still in the womb." He describes his Cobra as a Bitza: "Bits of pieces of this, bits of pieces of that."
Not your daddy's Ford
Ever been to the supermarket and seen an ad pinned up on the bulletin board advertising some guy's old Ford? If you're interested, you pull off a tag with his phone number on it.
They have those here, too. The Ford for sale here is a "Ford Cobra CSX 4211 with a 540 horsepower engine, one owner, 985 original miles, leather interior. Price $159,000. Call for details."
And half the phone number tags are gone.
"The costs are astronomical," for this hobby, Kopec says. "You've got to have high disposable income. This is not a hobby for a guy making $50,000 a year."
Curt Vogt of Cobra Automotive, one of the premier builders of vintage race cars in the world, gets a little bit more specific: "A weekend of racing these cars probably costs the guy from between $2,000 to $5,000
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