chapter 353

Sahlen Six Hours of the Glen

6/29/2014

it's red hot

The excitement of a sports car race is enjoyable every once in a while. Not everyone's cup of tea, so I put most of the car shots in the linked picture folder above. This Youtube video best captures the essence of this Watkins Glen sports car endurance race. There are 4 classes of cars all on course at the same time so confusion is part of the excitement. The roar of the engines and feeling the power is the main draw.

The highlight of being there is the access to the principals of the race; the drivers, pit crew and owner-managers. I had one main objective, to get a picture of Joe Sahlen. Joe is President of this Sahlen Buffalo meat packer, official hot dog of the Bills and major sponsor for this race. He also drives a Porsche for his team. Totally forgot as soon as got in the pits. Excitement was overwhelming. Sights and sounds. Stalked the Patrick Dempsey (Grey's Anatomy) pits but no good shots. Yet somehow I did capture all of the class winners during the confusion of the day while only sticking around a few hours.

Bro Bill and I were sitting resting on the Florida based 8Star Motorsports Racing pit wall barrier when we had a conversation with the mother of driver Eric Lux. She was excited to know that our Mom was also from her hometown of Williamsville, NY. Then talking to one of the pit crew, turns out he had the second fastest qualifying time in Mazda Prototype lites a day before. Snapped an off hand shot of this young 18 year old Venezuelan guy, Christian Potolicchio, the team owner/driver's son ( just in case he becomes World Champion).

Bill and I got our Veteran's arm bands upon entering the gate. The Army Golden Knights jump team put on a terrific and unexpected display.

The piggy back maneuver seemed unnecessarily dangerous? You could get hurt in the Army.

Speaking of backs, "backsides" is the theme for our photo club in August so I've been looking for opportunities like this. Otherwise I wouldn't have noticed. She was the remarkable Italian Momo Girl. You know, they make racing fire-resistant underwear. I couldn't resist, and just had to do a little more "research".

So on the way home near Bouckville it struck me, why don't the race cars use wind power. They are now recovering and generating electrical energy from braking to add back for power boost. Why not have some wind turbines on the cars. It's not like they aren't moving thru the wind at high speed. Something to consider.

As I saw this one horse power vehicle trying to cross Rte 20 traffic, I was reminded that I had always considered the 300 HP in my old Corvette to be a safety feature on this rural highway.

Class Winners (race results) :

P Visit Florida class winner #90 Richard Westbrook Michael Vallante Corvette DP

PC Core Autosports class winner #54 Jon Bennett Colin Brau James Gue Oreca FLM09

GTLM Corvette Racing class winner #3 Jan Magnussen Antonio Garcia Corvette C7 R

GTD Turner Motorsports class winner #94 Dane Cameron Marcus Palaltta BMWZ4

the Glen homepage IMSA website wiki: IMSA USSC