Archive for January 2010
Chump Car Champs
It’s Monday and I’m making the rounds through the winery, checking in with everyone. I’m asked how my weekend was, and I immediately brighten up; I spent the weekend with my Dad and brother at Infinion Raceway.
Now this is not an unfamiliar place to me, I learned how to drive manual on this track, but I have to admit I haven’t spent much time there over the past few years. Yet I happily spent every moment of this past weekend watching and timing my Dad, Brother, and two other racing friends in a 7 hour enduro race. Seven hours is a long time for any car to be racing on a track, to be put under the pressure of four different drivers. But this race was special, and this car was new to these four drivers.
The boys of the Trefethen family (they really are boys at heart you will quickly learn) participated in the Chump Car World Series, where every car on the track can only be worth $500 at most. That meant some great American mechanical ingenuity was needed. So to conserve money, they forewent a gas gauge, speedometer, and didn’t limit themselves to just one car. That’s right, I can’t tell you how fast they were going, because I haven’t a clue. They didn’t know when they were running out of gas- they simply waited for the car to give a little sputter and then came in for a pit stop and driver change after about 1 1/2 – 2 hours. And the track announcer wasn’t quite sure what to call this car, because you see it was a Camaro in front… but a firebird in the back, with an engine from an all together different car.
And after all that these “boys” in my family drove that car into the lead on saturday, and then proceeded to lap everyone a good 5 times before the 7 hours were up. They won $1000!
Cheers,
Hailey T.
