Rocky Mountain 356 Porsche Club
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Rocky Mountain 356 Porsche Club
OVERSTEER
April 2006 Laguna
Seca Fall Vintage Classic. Ralph
Veit In late October, this vintage racer and his wife headed to Laguna
Seca in Monterey to race in the Fall Vintage Classic with my 1957, 1300cc racer.
The San Francisco region of the SCCA puts on the race. I ran in group 1,
which was a mix of small-bore cars. The schedule called for practice all day on
Friday, with two run groups, open wheel and closed wheel, with each practice
lasting 20 minutes. The noise level could not exceed 90dp, or you would be
black-flagged. My first practice was an
adventure, as having never seen the track, except for a map. I tried to follow
someone who seemed to know the proper line, and after four practice sessions
found a decent line and ran some nice feeling laps. They did not record any lap
times on Friday, but by the feel of my seat the car seemed to improve. I had the opportunity to practice with Al Leake,
who’s holds several SCCA titles,
little to say he was fast. Saturday morning, we ran a qualify race, in which
best lap times would be used in the
afternoon feature race. Group 1 was
strange mix of cars, Porsche 911’s, Alfa Guilia’s, Morgan’s, MGA’s,
TR-250, Lotus’s, Spitfire’s, Porsche 356’s, Ford Cortina’s, Sprites,
Ginetta’s, Devin’s, Lola MKI and one Elva Courier. I still don’t understand the SCCA rules for small bore cars. They
don’t take engine size into consideration for the class, and called the whole
group SBP1. My little racer was the only 1300cc, car with drum brakes in the
entire class. I don’t know what happen to Al Leake , but was told he could not
make The noise limits. His racer ran a 1300cc engine, but had disc brakes. I
felt bad about his not running, but he would have made me look slow. The qualifier race went well, and my racer ran a lot faster than
it did in the Friday practices. I was able to use all the gears and only had to
do hard braking on three of the corners. I was able to pass several cars and was
two laps from the finish, when I received the meatball flag. I pulled in to find
out the problem, and was told that I exceeded the noise limit. I was measured at
91 db, which was 1 db over the limit. The noise limits is measured by the County, and the SCCA gives you three
chances to resolve the problem, or your sent home. It was lucky that Dick Smith
loaned me a super trap to take with me. I installed it and after removing four
plates resolved the noise issues. My lap time placed me in row five for the Sunday feature race. Next to silver 356 Porsche which had decals about it running the Mexico road race, it was a clone of Norn Pettitt's 356. We were surrounded by British cars. The start was a problem for me, as I was behind a car that did not get a good start, and the silver 356 got a jump on me. I was able to catch him on the hill towards the corkscrew and made a pass, and also passed a white Spitfire coming out of the corkscrew. I had a great race with a yellow Sprite, and after several laps made a pass. He was on my bumper the rest of the race. but I held him off and finished in ninth place. My best lap time in the race was 2:10;182, which was decent for my little 1300cc racer. I would like to do this event next year, as racing Laguna Seca was
a goal of mine, as I was born and
raised about 60 miles to the north of Monterey, and my wife and I had our very
first date at Laguna Seca in the 1960’s. If you would ever want to race there,
you will need to belong to the SCCA, and hold a current competition license for
a VMC member club. The rules and regulations
are on the SCCA web site as well as noise limits for Laguna Seca. Ralph
and Peggy Veit, RMVR #212 9 |
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