Corinthian Vintage Auto Racing

Hold on to your hats, folks. Chris, I repeat, Chris, the man who has never even commented here (ahem), has written a post for my blog. Maybe his first blog post deserves a first comment from a fellow race fan that I know reads here. wink wink

This post has been reviewed and approved by Kelsey.  Since I'm the one galavanting around while she stays back and cares for the family, I thought I'd try my hand at a blog post.

~Chris

This past weekend I accepted an invitation from one of my co-workers to join him as a corner worker at the last (and first) CVAR race of the season.  Saturday was the last races of the season and Sunday was the first races of the 2013 season.  Corinthian Vintage Auto Racing is a racing circuit in Texas and Oklahoma featuring 4 tracks and 6 weekends.  3 of those weekends happen to be at Texas World Speedway at College Station.  TWS is an oval and circuit track built in 1968.  

Notable events at TWS include:

• Mario Andretti set a world closed course speed record in 1973 which held for 12 years
• A.J. Foyt won more races at TWS than any other driver, including winning in Stock Car and Indy Car on the same day
• Ferrari introduced its new F-50 model at TWS in January 1996

Texas World Speedway Leader board
Non-functional along with everything else

The sad part is that TWS is run down.  I think the grand stands are even condemned.  The track is still used year round, but with bigger tracks with better facilities, TWS just couldn't hold up.  There are rumors of the track being up for sale for land development, but nobody wanting to touch it because of the cleanup costs of tarmac, cement and the 1000's of tires.

CVAR racing is limited to race and street cars built and operated before 1972.  This opens the field up to so many affordable cars.  I spoke to people who said they have an annual investment of less than $1500 (including travel and hotel) and others who paid over $9000 just for a replacement engine.  Many of the production cars were "Race Prepped" which means all interior was removed, headlights removed, glass replaced with a high density plastic and hood hinges were removed to allow the hood to be completely removed.  Others were driven to the track and still had license plates on them.

This Corvette was a blast to watch run.  It wasn't very powerful but had quite a bit of torque combined with lots of wheel play.  Seeing the driver come through the corners twisting the wheel back and forth made me tired just watching.

This is 2 of the 4 Formula Atlantic cars that were there.  Compared to many on the track, they were very fast. They ran Ford Cosworth engines and sounded great.  You can't tell it by this picture, but the rear wing is way behind the car, actually mounted on the back side of the transmission.

Now to my job while I was there.  Corner workers have one main responsibility which is to facilitate communication between Race Control and the drivers.  Since drivers are working hard just to keep their cars on the track, the communication has to be simple and is delivered to the drivers through flags.  There are 6-7 different flag colors that notify the drivers of conditions.  For example, if a driver spun his car on the track, it was my job to immediately put up the yellow flag to warn the other drivers and then radio back to control to let them know who spun and what the situation was.

For the most part, I was paid to get very tired and sore from standing while getting to watch some very fun racing in very old cars by some really cool people.  Not a bad gig.