Submitted by Bob D'Amore
(11-Jun-2007)

Hi,

Butch and I made the trek to the Weatherly Hill Climb. 75 other like-minded drivers joined us. George Bowland showed up with his AutoX A-Mod Champion "Shark" from N.C. and set FTD on his first Saturday run, despite not having been on the hill for 22 years. He kept removing wing slats until he got down to 49 seconds, at which point he had scared himself sufficiently and started adding elements back on. The hill record is 48 seconds and I'm sure George would break it if he came back in the Fall when the road is 1.5 seconds quicker. Not sure why, but everyone's times seem to back that up. 2d place was in the 57-58 second range.

Both Butch and I did not acquit ourselves that well. Once again Butch was lined up in class against the heavy hitters like Bowland, a supercharged big-block Ford open wheel winged car, a couple of nasty Corvettes -- one blown, and 2 great looking modifieds. I think he got everyone except Bowland and the winged big block wonder. He had carburetor troubles and tried a few different rear end ratios and finally seemed to get what he wanted -- but his front wheels, wearing new soft sidewall tires took up the Saber Dance as soon as he got air going over the jump, ruining the balance of his really fast runs. When last seen Butch was roaring off up the hill in the rain, still trying to break the magic minute.

I went down there with a big sprint car wing trying to see what effects that would have. I made an easy run and the next one was also easy but equaled my fastest last year time of 59 sec. I got cocky and thought this was going to be easy --wrong! The faster I drove the slower my times. I had no idea how to take advantage of the wing and it showed. What I discovered once I was going fast enough, the car would deaccelerate at about 1G just by lifting off the gas. Consequently, I kept finding myself almost stopped 50 yds from turn one's turn-in, without using the brakes. So I would go faster and I thought, deeper but the end result was always the same as I ended up using the throttle again to reach the turn. Going into the hairpins was completely different because there wasn't enough speed to make the wing work. For the first time ever I could go over the jump without braking, but once I finally got a decent speed through turn four's hairpin I flew off the jump and bounced pretty hard upon landing. I was lucky to stay on the pavement. I think the steep up hill before the jump must have caused the wing to catch air on its bottom -- and up, up and away I went.

'My poor daughter walked up to turn one to watch the action from there. The corner worker told her to watch out for the blue formula car, and be ready to run as the driver had to be the craziest one there. He said the car really scared him. She said she couldn't believe that the man was talking about her good old dad, until I went by.

We were fortunate to have had great weather until 3 pm on Sunday when the skies opened up. As usual, Weatherly's wrecker made more runs than anyone else, limiting us to only 3 runs Sat. and 5 on Sunday. We were getting half the field up the hill in less than a half hour, but the wrecker runs were interminable. Most of the wrecks occured at turn one (?). Not sure why the corner worker singled me out as I never came close to losing it there. He was funny -- he kept shaking his hat at me on the return run, and waving to everyone else.

Oh well, Pagoda is next, giving me a chance to practice winged flight on an other slow course. I'd love to do Okemo if someone can solve the no-ground-clearance at turn-around for me. Weatherly allowed several of us with low formula cars to turn around on a small side road right at the head of the waiting line, rather than requiring us to go down to the end of the road where everyone else was 3 point turning in a fairly rough area.

Entries ranged from both winged and non-winged formula cars, through big V8 specials and mods to wildly pumped up turbo cars. My paddock neighbor was running 30 psi in his Mazda RX-7 and blew a turbo or two, before departing early. Vintage saw a couple of nice Triumphs and a beautiful TVR, along with a cherry Mach 1 Mustang. I was amazed at all the superchargers and turbos being used -- wonder if Arlo recently made a promo tour through the area? Quite a few of the blown cars wrecked, leading the drivers to conclude that sudden boost was not necessaroly a good thing. Bob Ozwald turbocharged his VW Ghia funny car, making it a real comedy coupe. He's still trying to tune it. Says the boost comes on at 6000 rpm, which is too late to do him any good -- fortunately at 71 he's still got the reflexes to catch it when it leaps sideways. There were many fast formula cars, but most were the smaller FFs, FCs, Solo Vs and Atlantics which are better suited for this tight technical course. The big supercharged winged car made a trip into the woods when his boost came on, but he was able to repair the damage and return to the fray -- just to aggravate Butch. He was no faster with the blower than without it last Fall. Many of the faster cars seemed to be sporting new dents and scatches upon returning to the pits -- reminiscent of Philo? I spent some time working on the 2d place car, a very fast D-Sports Racer. I was amazed that the driver had never taken his Solex carbs apart and had no idea how they worked.

I got there at 2 pm on Friday and was lucky to get the last pit space near the start. There's another huge parking lot for the cars located more than a 1/4 mile away, but no one likes being stuck out there. By noon Sunday the pits around me were empty. Either they had all blown up or wrecked -- and left.

We are trying to get NEHA types down for the Duryea race Aug 18-19. Dan Rutan won it 2 years ago. 2.2 miles with only 12 turns, one of which you can fly over and thus don't have to learn it. The course is smooth and is easy to learn. It is similar to Burke and our guys and gals should do very well on it. I hear Bill Hudson will make the trek.

Giant's Despair July 8-9 is also a great take. It's only a mile with 5 turns and it is extremely fast. Of all the hill climbs this one leaves me wringing wet and just happy to reach the top in one piece. The spectators can exceed 10,000 here, which is not always a good thing as the drunks can cause an early cessation of hostilities. Last year they were not bad -- the year before they set the woods on fire at the Devil's Elbow and the resulting smoke, and traffic jam of firemen and cops stopped the race before the last run.
As I reported last year the winner averaged more than 92 mph over a standing mile -- a mile that rises at 22% and involves 5 turns.

Brgds,

Bob D'Amore