Oct. '14 CSRG Charity Challenge

[John Z Goriup]

After spending the morning enjoying Jim's hospitality at the EASY gathering, three of us packed one car and took off for Sears Point / Sonoma Raceway for the Fall '14 CSRG Charity Challenge.

Great attendance, lots of interesting cars, the usual wonderful ambiance and great racing…………but Lord, was it ever brutally hot ! Stayed late in the hope it would cool down, but it never did.

Strong single-seat vintage F1 presence and many perfect opportunities to try my new Leica with a telephoto lens attached, and a fine selection of interesting, notable, fast and rare cars…………but in the end the heat and the blast-furnace wind just wore one down to where the wisest tyhing to do was to go home, jump in the pool and enjoy a tall cold one.

Posting many more photos than I normally would for a local event, because after next weekend's Canepa C & C that's it for the NorCal area. Thank God for the EASY meetings every 1st. Saturday of the month.

Enjoy,

JZG

[John Z Goriup]

another set………..I thought #5 was somewhat poignant. You work on the car all summer, you look forward to a successful weekend and the damned thing breaks in first practice. Not all vintage trips end on a happy note. At least it's not bent due to an accident, just a mechanical failure.

[John Z Goriup]

…….and another !

[John Z Goriup]

As mentioned, there was an interesting lot of Formula 1 and Formula 5000 cars present, starting with a GP winning ex-Sir Jackie Stewart '71 season Tyrrell, and including a pristine ex-John Watson '82 McLaren MP4, one of the first all-composite F1 chassis, designed by John Bernard. What a delight that vintage racing isn't governed by the fanatical politically correct faction………YET, and that you can actually run a car in period livery, Marlboro colors and all - the DFV Cosworth sounded great as well.

[John Z Goriup]

Carrying on with the open-wheel theme, some images taken at the hairpin, Turn #11, trying out the new Leica M-P body and Leica 180mm f2.8 Elmarit-R lens on a monopod with electronic viewfinder. Waiting to find a perfect used Leica APO 2x extender which will make this a 360mm f5.6 lens arrangement for better capture of the cars on track.

After the intensity and serious approach of the classic Formula racers, image #5 is a real non-sequitur…….the famous upside-down 24 hours of Lemons racer which many of you probably have seen or heard about on u-tube - here's someone who is just unabashedly having fun with his particular brand of "vintage " car - actually did a couple of laps during lunch recess - Good for him.

[John Z Goriup]

As I always manage to do, an entire set of 5 dedicated to a particularly worthy subject, a Porsche 910 in this case. A splendid example of Porsche Racing in the firm's most innovative and historic motorsports era.

[John Z Goriup]

Another set of 5. Image #4 is of John Thornton's old SWB '68 912, which John and Gary Emory transformed into one of the most iconic and recognizable 4-cylinder Porsche race cars anywhere.

Don't mean to get sentimental or maudlin, but I miss John a lot. I can't say he was my closest friend, we were temperamentally too different for that, but I can say with absolute sincerity and conviction that I enjoyed every moment of his company, especially during many years of CSRG weekends. I don't think many appreciate the depth of knowledge and expertise John brought to the hobby of true, classic gentlemanly vintage racing, which entailed incredibly thorough research and bringing decades of personal experience to establish a base of what these cars were really like, and then building an entire clubs philosophy around the abiding conviction that the integrity of these old cars was not to be compromised and had to be maintained at all costs.

I remember one weekend he got into trouble at Sears Point, stuffing the car into a sandbank, damaging it significantly. At the post-mortem he recalled clearly that it was the unique, oversize four-spoke english-made Moto-Lita steering wheel he had chosen originally that prevented him from rapidly lifting his left foot off the clutch and onto the brakepedal when the car in front of him spun - to avoid damaging the other car johnt, as he signed off on our Registry, headed for the dirt bank, and determined that the steering wheel had to go. Before the car was finished being repaired, I presented him with a spare MOMO I had kept for a future project. After John's untimely passing his wife sold the car to another CSRG member……..the MOMO is still on the car.

JZG

[John Z Goriup]

Another set of 5.

Images #4 & 5 are of a pre-A '55 Porsche 356 Speedster, in fact the 356th Speedster ever made ( per Serial number ) It was crashed early on, and the then-owner decided to repair it using a Devin body for its sheer good looks and weight saving. In '61 the owner then changed the design somewhat to eliminate the hump in the rear-deck required to clear the vertical, horizontal-shaft stock 356 fan and go with a Corvair-style driven flat fan, as well as slightly modifying the front 'mouth' to accomodate an oil-cooler. Nice looking job, I'd say.

JZG

[John Z Goriup]

another set, starting out with a rear-view shot of Speedster #356.

[CidTito]

John

Your photography is extraordinary [extra-ordin-ary], or should that be 'extrordinary' [pronounced that other way - ex-t'roar-din-ary]!!!

I wish I was there but was drinking beer at Oaktoberfest.