Virginia International Raceway - June 29-30, 1974
Photos by Jim Myers - click here for more
MOVIES - from Bob Snow
"Championship Regional Race" by Joe Planck
(from NC Region SCCA 1974 Annual)
The June Race started out as our annual mud slogger. I arrived at the track Friday evening, slithered up to the gate to wait for Henry Wallace to open up and wondered if everyone would got in all right. The weather went from worse to awful. Saturday morning saw a meager mud covered crowd trucking through a steady rain, all muttering under their breath that the Race Chairman ought to do something about it. This is why Race Chairmen got grey hair.
My salvation came when Nick Holland informed me that one of our entrants listed his occupation as a Minister. Now, if you want to fix anything, the best way is to go right to the top, right? Well, I wandered on up through the paddock and found this green Lotus sports-racer with the usual crew of wet and dirty souls doing what wet and dirty souls do to a race car on Saturday morning. I enquired around and one of those follows allowed as how, yes, he was the Reverend Mr. Luce. I explained my predicament and Tom Luce reckoned he would do what he could to help things out. He walked into the rain, held out his arms, looked Heavenward and said, "Lord, sure would be nice to have some sunshine". It wasn't thirty minutes before the clouds parted, the sun burst through and there wasn't another drop of rain all weekend.
Poor Tom used up all his influence, though. He DNF'd - engine trouble of unknown origin. We hope you make it back next year, Tom.
Now if you think the aforementioned events were a bit out of the ordinary. you ain't seen nothing yet. Check the results (elsewhere in the magazine) and see who won G production for the first time ever at VIR.
Once the rain went away, I trucked on out to Oak Tree and played corner-worker while Chief Steward Robert Lewis whipped things along so quickly that the last race was over before the beer was cold. You know how much that slowed everyone down!
Overall, it was a relaxed weekend. with a smallish field giving some good racing, fairly typical of an N.C. Region early summer regional. I know I enjoyed it. I hope you did too.
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