South Mountain Raceway – The sky poured out some liquid sunshine on this morning at South Mountain Raceway, but that gave way to a fresh, clean track for the opening race of the Vintage Eliminator season. You can see a lot of different kinds of racing on TV, and it’s all good, we love it all, but for many, the generic, corporate appearance of the top professional racing classes has become dull and boring. A quick glance down this pit row today won’t reveal any multi-million dollar hauling rigs or teams, no high-dollar corporate sponsorships, no bright TV lights or cameras. What you will see is what could possibly be the most interesting race series in drag racing anywhere. Not the fastest, not the flashiest bunch of race cars you’ll ever see, but you could chose just about any car in attendance and find more character in that one ride than you’d find in an entire field of a NASCAR or NHRA event. In fact, I’d be willing to bet you won’t find a race car at any sanctioned professional event that would be sporting bullet holes like you can find here. And not only do the cars have more character, if you talk to any of the drivers, you’ll get to talk to real people who act more like a big, happy family than competitors. And that character thing? They’re all so full of character, you might get some on you if you get too close. No carefully rehearsed corporate sponsor speeches from this bunch.

Top level professional race cars have their birth in exotic race car shops. Some of the cars in this lineup had their start being found in a field or a barn. It’s just plain different than most any kind of racing out there. Where else could you find an NHRA World Funny Car Champion like Bruce Larson walking around the pits with a big smile on his face? Bruce told me these cars brought back a lot of memories for him, memories of the days when drag racing was pure fun. It’s hard to argue about that if you saw how much fun these folks were having with these cars.

The South Mountain crew put in the hard work to get the track dried off and ready for the racers to get their cars sorted out after a winter of building, changing, and tweaking. One new car in the field was being changed, built, and tweaked right up to 1:30 on the previous day. Not only was the car new, there was a new driver making his debut behind the wheel. Keep checking dfmotormag.com for more on this new driver and his impressions of his first race!

With more clouds on the horizon, the racers and track staff did their best to keep everything moving along as quickly as possible, but the race had to be shut down before the final, leaving the suspense of who win be crowned winner of the first race until the second event. If you’re keeping score at home, that final will be run between Liz Leggett and Brian Ketterer, two great drivers and great people, driving two great cars! If you’ve never seen these cars run, drop everything you’re doing and find out when the next Vintage Eliminator race will be! Half the speed, half the noise….with more than twice the fun! I think track owner, Mike Natoli, said it best at the end of the day. “The race track gave us a place to be together every weekend.” That’s how it was in the old days. You can relive that feeling again at South Mountain Raceway. Join in with this bunch. If you didn’t bring friends along, you’ll make new ones faster than you can imagine.

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