Vintage NASCAR 1/24 Scale races, October 29, 2005

Buena Park, CA

One for Anderson, the Other for Dokk!

Organized by Paul Sterrett and Chris Gallegos, Buena Park Raceways has been successfully staging vintage NASCAR races over the past two years. Recently and with the input of slot car racing neophyte but nonetheless great enthusiast Rick Salvino, the racing has split into a Sportsman (stock FT36D motors) and Grand National (using rewound Mabuchi or Cox NASCAR 36D blanks and ARCO magnets inside Cox cans).

There soon will be a new website inside Electric Dreams to tell the stories and race reports as well as showing the construction and engineering of the cars.

In the meantime, down to the races Saturday, run right after the TSRF 1/24 scale race.

Sportsman Race

The Sportsman class qualifying was dominated by the incredibly smooth car of Paul Sterrett, but his motor gave up the ghost during the race. Second fastest qualifier Dokk P, AKA Philippe de Lespinay led for a short while but his motor also died, allowing the brand new and exciting car built in the past 2 weeks by John Tore Anderson to win by a mere 2 laps over Philippe's sick car. Paul Wilde caught Philippe but the Dokk applied a good dose of psyche to edge Paul in the last few laps. All the other entries ran into some kind of mechanical trouble with the over-stressed Cox motors in these very heavy cars.

Practice before the race with Gil Gundersen (closest) trying to cope with the tilt factor.

Sportsman class winner John Tore Anderson, the only man to have won G7 national-level races in FIVE decades, smiles after his tough win with his 1963 Galaxie. Second place Philippe is holding his still smoking Curtis Turner Ford car, while Paul Wilde shows his Team Penske, Bobby Allison AMC Matador with which he just lost second place after a heroic drive.

Grand National Race

Rick Salvino destroyed the lap record with a blasting 5.99", a time that would have been world record material in 1968... The race began with Rick leading a charging Mike Steube, with a whole bunch of angry and concentrated racers after his tail. For nearly three segments, all the racers were within one lap, with the racing getting more and more intense. Then, the crashing began.

Philippe drove prudently at first, trying to avoid any time-wasting offs, then slowly, inch by inch, reeled first Steube, then Salvino and built a 3-lap cushion at the very limit of his Salvino-built loaner car, seeing the chassis design more than once and even spinning twice in the donut! Somehow he corrected the spin and nursed his advantage to the finish. Mike Steube and Rick had a terrific fight, with Rick edging Mike at the very end after Mike crashed his car into the errand machine of Gil Gundersen under the bridge with two laps to go. What a race it was!

John Anderson switched motors for the Grand national, but his car proved a difficult machine to drive, as it was too light and tilted too easily. Back to the drawing board but it sure looked pretty!

Rick Salvino has single handedly lauched the vintage NASCAR Grand National program, capturing dozens of old Champion motors all over before relying on Monty Ohren to build reliable motors. And that, Ohren did, using the old Cox cans and Champion ARCO 33 magnets to good effect. While Rick's cars, patterned after some run in Oregon, look a bit crude in the chassis department, they DO go fast, handle superbly AND the bodies are first class especially in the paint department. 5 months ago, Rick hardly knew what a slot car was and walked in the Electric Dreams store in Costa Mesa to purchase a home racing set. Philippe did his best to orient him onto "The Right Stuff", and indeed, it worked!

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