It seems like it’s been a year since I last raced. The PNW Historics was seven weeks ago and I missed the mid-August race in Mission due to not having a race engine for the car.
Though I was rue to miss Mission, I took the open weekend to travel to Michigan to help my daughter with some projects on her Bugeye and then catch a day of VSCDA vintage racing at Grattan. It was great to see some friends from Road America last year, and also to meet some new-to-me members of the excellent Midwest Sprite-Midget Race Series, senior to our Sprite-Midget Challenge by about ten years. Grattan is set in a beautiful location; it looks like the cars are racing though a golf course!
Last weekend I put the fourth different engine *this year* in the car (including the loaner for Historics). It’s been a epically exhausting and expensive year with little #12. For better or worse, the engine in the car now is staying in the car through the end of the season.
The CRC in Portland hosts the last of five Sprite-Midget Challenge races for 2025. The battle is pretty much down to one for the third podium position: Stephen Newby is ahead of me by eleven points for first, and there’s a near-zero chance of an eleven point swing between us in one race: He’d have to not start and I’d have to finish 3rd or better. With 14 Spridgets entered, including the perennially speedy Paul Quackenbush and Bill O’Kell…well, it’s going to be fun out there with 14 Spridgets running!
And, this will be my first weekend in Portland with a 1275 and without the mixture issue in sustained right turns that plagued me much of 2024; I’m looking forward to punching it after the apex of Portland’s multiple right-hand sweepers and having the car roar.
Here’s the preliminary schedule. I’ll update it next week if it changes.
