LAST WEEKEND at the TRACK – The 1st Tournament of Fall: A Fast & Furious T/A race!

Power on! Voltage dialed in to exactly 20V, controllers set to 120ohms, LET’S RACE!

Last year labor day weekend was the cause celebre of the 1^st ever vintage Trans Am race at Drag City! The track was a little late opening for fall this year due to weather conditions; following an epic heatwave of 100F + temperatures, the weather inverted dramatically on Friday bringing cold weather and even rain! As a result, the crowd for first race of fall at the track was enormous, and the crowd got a quick but ferocious battle between the high horsepower Trans Am cars! Open to real “survivor” T/A racers and expertly prepared clones of the originals, a judges panel scrutinized every car for accuracy to make sure every detail was done the way it was for the original SCCA Trans Am series in its glory days between 1968-73. In the intermittent rain, AMC Javelins, Ford Mustangs, Mercury Cougars, Chevy Camaros, Dodge Challengers and Plymouth Cudas met to battle it out on a track that was sometimes wet, making for some slick and scary conditions!

This was the 3^rd T/A tournament to run at DC Mk IV and for the 2^nd time the winner was the the oldest, most battle hardened car of the entire fleet: the #26 1968 Firebird driven by Stanley “Captain Nemo” Stanford. Stanford was once a mainstay of the sports car series before the Trans Am race was created as a separate event, removing the powerful T/A style cars from the Sports and Sports Racing series, where his familiar red and white hog was known as “Carzilla.” Needless to say, this is a prime example of the Pontiac that gave their famous “Firebird Trans Am” its name!  “Captain Nemo” is a crowd favorite due to his tenacity, which as you can see, paid off: he takes home his 2^nd tournament trophy in as many years!

Made up of only 12 cars, the race was a short affair lasting just over 2 hours, and was a great way to gear up for the fall racing season; a full weekend of muscle car racing using all 64 of the “big iron fleet” is coming up next; if the weather is as nice as it usually is in Wardglenn, CA in mid-fall, the crowd should be huge!