April 30, 2002
Magnaflow Vintage 2.5 Challenge
While we have already had our season opener, the real season is upon us with three Magnaflow Vintage 2.5 races in three months and two of those are large spectator events. It's gonna be a great summer of vintage sedan racing out west.
The second race of the season at Thunderhill is only a few weeks away. There is still time to get your entry in…HSR-West is offering a $50 discount to those of us that have to tow over 300 miles and combined with the fact that Thunderhill is a fast, long and fun course makes it worth a long tow.
All of the VSRG merchandise will be available at the VSRG table and you can count on VSRG providing lunch on Saturday. Rather than the typical burgers and hot dogs we are going to use a killer tri-tip recipe.
The Pacific Northwest Historics is picking up steam and promises to be a great event and possibly the biggest event for 2.5 cars ever! We have noted that SOVREN is pouring tons of work and money into this event which will have the Magnaflow Vintage 2.5 Challenge as the feature race of the weekend.
We had a good response to the poll and find that we should have an exceptional turnout of cars, many of which will be racing with us for the first time. If you are still a little undecided, we urge you to join us for a spectacular weekend of fun, food and great racing in the Pacific Northwest.
Many of us plan to take an extra week after the races to vacation in this beautiful setting.
Remember the deadline for you entry is May 31, 2002 but we highly recommend that you get it in sooner. There is a entry form and related information on our website on the schedule page. We highly recommend that you place you entry as early as possible, especially if you want your car to be included in the program.
We are working on having some of the posters for this race available at Thunderhill where we will also have plenty of entry forms and a SOVREN representative there to accept your entry as well!
The Fontana Historic Sportscar (and Sedan?) Festival is close at hand also. This is going to be another big event and will vie with the Pacific Northwest Historics for total entries in the 2.5 Challenge. We have a good schedule position for this race but unlike the Seattle race, we are not the feature race. Based on what has been published to date, we should be finished by around noon on Sunday so the folks with a long tow will be able to get away earlier than usual.
We have seen a number of print ads in magazines and understand there will be local advertising of this event as well. It’s hard to gage the level of spectator turnout but we do recall that the now defunct Tustin Thunder drew crowds in the six-figure range so we would expect this event to draw a large spectator contingent as well.
Just as with the Pacific Northwest Historics, we highly recommend that you place you entry as early as possible to have a chance to be included in the program.
On-line shopping update-We have gotten quite a few orders on the on-line shopping page. At the current rate it looks as if some of the items are going to be in short supply soon. A good example is the rare “How To” 510 book, we are down to only two copies left and once gone there are no more new (NOS) copies known to exist.
The other very limited item is the great book on the “Trans-AM Pony Car Wars”. This beautiful book covers the early years of 1966 through 1972 and does have some 2.5 coverage. What makes VSRG's copy of this book so great is that our copies have been autographed by Horst Kwech and John Morton.
We are working on a line of T-shirts and hope to have them available by the Thunderhill race and are looking into golf/polo shirts as well.
If you have placed an order and have not received it yet it should be shipped soon. We had a delay in getting in replacement merchandise and should be re-supplied before the Thunderhill weekend. We plan to carry the merchandise to Thunderhill and will fill any outstanding order at the track if possible.
We can only take a credit card for orders in excess of $250, all others are by check made payable to “Children’s Hospital of Seattle”. The complete payment and payment mailing instructions will be on the order confirmation sent via e-mail.
Remember that 100% of the proceeds of your order goes to the Children’s Hospital of Seattle. In addition to your orders we ask that you donate as much as you can to this worthy cause as your donation not only goes to the hospital, it speaks volumes to VSRG’s commitment to help make SOVREN’s Pacific Northwest Historics an unqualified success. We dare say that the majority of our membership has never had the opportunity to participate in an event of this stature. We know our racing is up to the task but we need to show that our hearts are up to the task as well. Dig deep, we need your help. If you would like to make an donation, please make your check out to the Children’s Hospital of Seattle” and mail to:
VSRG
C/O Kevin McKee
1231 University Drive
Menlo Park, CA 94025There will be new Magnaflow windshield stickers soon, hopefully by Thunderhill. These will replace the existing stickers and will have a more professional appearance in that they will have a color background. Bring your soapy water and razor blades to the next event! (Note- everyone will have to change to the newer sticker but do not remove your old one until we can provide you with a new one!).
Also watch for new Magnaflow ad's appearing later this year in popular car magazines such as "Grassroots Motorsports" that will have a vintage 2.5 flavor!
Some members have asked why we have not put up photos of the Willow Springs event? The answer is simple, we have run out of disk space on our web server and have not had the time to free up some space. Our plan is to archive the 2001 season results and photos into a downloadable “zip” file. Once that is done we will remove the images from the 2001 results pages and begin adding the photos for 2002 to include the first race at Willow Springs. With any luck we should have these up a week or so after the Thunderhill weekend.
We are working on a photo/video album for the 2001 and 2002 seasons. Our plan is to put the best photo’s and video clips for the first two years onto a CD. Everyone that has entered any one of the races will receive one automatically, probably around the first of next year. We will also offer these for a nominal fee on the web site shopping page but do not expect to see it until January 2003.
Reminder: If you are a VSRG member and are reading this from the web site and did not receive this via e-mail, then we have a problem with your e-mail address. Please drop us a line at jim@bsedan.com with your revised e-mail address.
To help notify members we have also added a new page that lists missing or bad e-mail addresses of members. The page can be accessed from the top of the "Notices" page.