For me, as a young enthusiast, Watkins Glen was the Valhalla of road racing, the place I wanted to be when the annual weekend festival occurred. The circuit was superbly located in the hills above scenic Seneca Lake and the atmosphere was exhilarating. Even the main street would be lined with sports and racing cars that I'd never seen beyond the pages of Road & Track, while local garages were used as service areas by the teams with the fastest, most exotic machines. I can still remember being among the crowds of onlookers at night, kept out by ropes but able to watch, up close, as the cars were readied for the next day's racing. You can appreciate, therefore, why I'm so pleased that the Fairfield County Concours d'Elegance Presented by Porsche is featuring an elaborate, authentic Watkins Glen display that re-lives those wonderful racing years.
Said John Shuck, co-chairman of the Concours, "We will have a host of truly significant race cars on display, many of which have never been shown together like this. From Briggs Cunningham's 1939 Bu-Merc to Mario Andretti's Lotus 79, we are showing an incredible array of original and important race cars. But we didn't want to just show them statically- we created a display to give these cars an historic context. The cars will be lined up in a Le Mans start configuration, complete with a starter's stand, a period start/finish banner, period ads and the lot." Now get this, folks! At the noon Reveille on Sunday, September 21st, every race car's engine will be started exactly at 12 PM, creating an enormous cacophony of sounds and sensations. The 60 Years of Racing at Watkins Glen highlights a presentation featuring 190 cars and motorcycles in a chronological display covering a century of motoring. Worth the trip to Fairfield, Connecticut.
[Photo: Mario Andretti's Lotus 79 F1 Car]
I thought I remembered the lettering on JPS cars to be yellow. Does anybody but me miss the days when racing machines weren’t moving billboards and you could tell what country they were from by the color?
September 6, 2008 @ 8:15 am