October, 2002
Magnaflow Vintage 2.5 Challenge
With our last race of the season at Phoenix International Raceway nearing, it’s time to get your car ready! For those that have not raced at PIR, the road course layout uses the banked turns 3 and 4 as well as most of the front straight before dropping to the infield course. It’s a fun track and well worth the tow and with a Friday practice option there is plenty of track time available.
We have heard from a number of drivers that plan to attend and this year’s field looks to be larger than last years.
The season points race is as close as ever with two points separating Jeff Hecox and Kevin McKee and only one point between Bob Wass and Mickey Cohen for “Rookie of the year” honors (these guys don’t drive like rookies!).
HSR-West will hold their annual end-of-season dinner on Saturday night and as we found last year, it is quite a feast. This last race also marks the return the popular VSRG lunch on Saturday, as well as the after race happy hour, drivers and crew as well as visiting members are invited.
Entry forms are on the web site if you don’t have one and if you hurry you can beat the late fee!
We now have a tentative 2003 schedule.
March 8-9 - Willow Springs
April 26-27 – Las Vegas ??
May 31-June 1 - Thunderhill
June 20-22 - Southern California Historics (spectator)
July 11-13 - Portland (spectator)
Oct 18-19 - Buttonwillow
Nov 15-16 - Laguna SecaOK, lots of notes are in order ! The Las Vegas date is very iffy. Our last trip to Las Vegas had a small turnout and most found the return trip to the Southern California area to be an exercise in gridlock on the crowded freeway. Our plan is to hold this as a possible date and sometime after Willow Springs we are going to take a head count of those that want this race (remember this is the BIG course that uses part of the super speedway, not the small club course). If there is sufficient interest we will use this date otherwise we will not.
We are going to go with Thunderhill one more time even though this has been typically a low turnout event. We have a lot of members in the Northern California and Pacific Northwest that have urged us to keep this on the schedule and we (as well as HSR-West) would like to see this turn into a larger race. Thunderhill is a great track and a favorite of HSR-West President, Ed Swart, but unless the 2003 turnout is larger that this year this track will probably not be an option after next year.
While we show the Buttonwillow date in October we are holding our October date open for now as we have a number of options that we are working on, one of which might not be resolved until later next year.
Our Laguna Seca date has been moved to November and PIR not on our schedule next year. HMSA has moved the September date to November and HSR-West dropped PIR for next year.
If you are wondering why we did not take up the Fontana date in March shown on the HSR-West schedule, we understand that this will use the infield only rather than using the front straight & banking plus it falls only two weeks after the Willow Springs race. We also realize that the traditional spring Willow Springs opener is very popular with the member’s as it has had our largest non-spectator race field in our first two years.
Finally, we tried hard for a Sears Point date but found there simply was not an available “club” weekend available in 2003 with HMSA. We will continue to work on this venue as we know there is keen interest in racing in the beautiful Sonoma hills.
Got some video you want to share? We are working on a project to put the photos, results and video from our 2001 and 2002 season on CD’s but we are in need of more video. If you have video from any of our races that you are willing to share, we will make sure you get your tapes back as well a copy of the CD’s once they are produced. We can only use VHS tape or most any multimedia format that will run on a PC. Please mail the materials to:
Jim McAdory
1330 Barbara Drive
Vista, CA 92084Magnaflow held an open house and car show on the same weekend as our Buttonwillow race (hence the missing-in-action Peter Nitoglia). They have posted photos on their web site at www.magnaflow.com .
Nissan commercials update. We have heard that a second commercial has been made with Jon Peterson holding a photo of his crunched 510 and there are three different that feature Paul Davis’s 510. Jim McAdory’s 510 has not made it to the small screen yet but we understand that there will likely be a release of new commercials soon.
The December issue of “Sports Compact Car” magazine has an eight page spread on Jim McAdory’s Datsun entitled “510 Fantasy”.
We have heard from a few members about a problem with a group known as the "510 Again" club. This club has been around for quite some time but seems to have fallen on hard times recently. From what we are told you can expect a long delay in getting anything you might have ordered but we have heard they do plan to fufill orders and memberships at some point. Let the buyer beware.