The reason we went to the northwest in late August and early September was that SOVREN, a vintage racing organization, was hosting a 40th anniversary celebration of the creation of the racing class of Formula Fords worldwide. A year after they started in Europe, the cars began to race in the U.S. Trout crewed at the 30th anniversary of Formula Fords in the U.S. at Buttonwillow in southern California. He raced at the the 35th in Las Vegas in 2004. He hopes to go to the 40th at Elkhart Lake Wisconsin next summer.This event was combined with a regular SOVREN race at Portland International Raceway. More modern Formula Fords that normally aren't allowed to race in vintage racing because they are too new were allowed to race side by side with the older cars.
On Friday the 29th, Trout went up early to test and tune with another group using the track. Long time friends, Mike and Diane, live just a stone's throw from the track. Mike raced in the past. Diane brought their 3-year old daughter, Melissa over Friday afternoon for awhile. She seemed to like sitting in Trout's car. We had dinner with them Friday night and they all came all three days to enjoy the racing.
Here is Trout coming under the Bridgestone bridge during the test and tune.
The way Trout normally races with the International Conference of Sports Car Clubs (ICSCC) is that there's a practice on Saturday morning, a practice and qualifying on Saturday afternoon, a practice and qualifying on Sunday morning and a race on Sunday afternoon. There are rules that prevent the drivers from really racing at any time except during the Sunday afternoon race. Where they are positioned on the grid for that race depends on their best time for the qualifying sessions.
The normal ICSCC racers really liked the way SOVREN did it better. They had a practice and qualifying Saturday morning and races both morning and afternoon on Sunday and Labor Day Monday. The 1st race's grid position was determined by the qualifying time on Saturday morning, but all other grid positions were determined by the finishing position of the previous race. That meant that the drivers actually got to race 5 out of the 6 sessions on the track.
The pictures that follow are not necessarily chronological. I just picked the best ones to illustrate the drivers and the track. One of the reasons Trout keeps going to the northwest to race is that he likes the tracks (Portland, Seattle and Spokane) better than the one at Phoenix.
Here he is on the grid. Some of those vintage Formula Fords are behind him.
The drivers that pit with Kenny Dye and his sons, Tracey (here with the umbrella) and Stu are typically called Ken's Men. But the racer in the beautiful vintage Lola shown here is driven by a woman, Carolyn. The yellow car behind her is a vintage Titan driven by John, who drove all the way from Montana where he owns a microbrewery in Belt. Unfortunately, he blew his engine early on Saturday morning. Trout helped him remove it and it was taken to Jay Ivey's shop in Portland. Jay is the premier Formula Ford engine builder in the northwest.By Sunday night, Trout was pretty pooped and feeling really sorry for John, so he decided to let John do a warm up on Monday morning in his car and then let him drive the race Monday afternoon. We always say that Trout is the fish that hooks others into getting Formula Fords instead of whatever else they are racing. As with most any older vehicles, the vintage Formula Fords are beautiful, but they don't have the power or the maneuverability of the modern ones, so drivers can't drive them as fast. John could really tell the difference between driving his vintage Titan and Trout's more modern Crossle.
The driver in this Formula Ford, Brad, is another example of Trout's fishing ability. He used to drive a Porche, Trout lent him his Crossle and the next thing you know, Brad owns a Van Diemen.
At the beginning of the grid here are Stu on the left and Steve on the right. Both of them, as well as the guy in the white car behind Steve were pitted with Ken's Men. By the way, Steve has been racing for many, many, many years. He gets his longevity from working at Hanford.
Here are the drivers starting off with Stu in the lead.
This is Stu (in front) with his primary competition for the weekend, Neil. They constantly swapped racing positions by passing each other in various places on the track.
And here's Stu behind Neil at this turn.
Here's Brad in the middle of a bunch of cars at the Chicane.
And here are Stu and Neil again in roughly the same location.
Steve had an incident early on the weekend involving another car. It seemed to fare okay, but Steve got airborne had some pretty serious damage. Kenny was able to fix it by the afternoon and Steve still got to race the entire weekend.
Here's a track worker making sure Steve is okay.
And here's Steve in a different turn at a different session.
Here's Trout behind another car at that same turn.
And here he is at the entrance to the Chicane.
Most of the Formula Fords were pitted in the same general area. These are some of the vintage ones.
And here's Kenny's pit area. All the cars are out on the track except Brad's. He also had a mishap, had to miss one session but was able to race the rest of the weekend because Kenny and the boys fixed the problem.
Here they all are back and under the EasyUps.
I mentioned that there is one woman that Kenny supports. I like her bumper sticker.
And here's Carolyn with her mom. Yes, we did have some typical northwest weather on Sunday. It rained and it blew and it was cold.
That wasn't any particular problem for the vintage racers that didn't mind going out in the rain because they have treaded tires. But the modern Formula Fords race on slicks normally, so they were scrambling to change tires before the next race.
This is Brad.
And that's Kenny standing in the middle with Ron hauling a tire to him.
And we finish with Trout. He isn't in his racing suit because he thinks it's cool, but rather because it was cold.
When he didn't have his suit on, it was usually hanging inside out along with his Ninja underwear to air out. We did get them washed and dried before packing them. He didn't do that last race in Spokane in July and unpacking was not a pleasant experience for him when he got back.
When Trout goes up to the northwest to race, he usually stays with Kenny and his wife, Sandy, and borrows Kenny's MR2 to drive around town. I've always been a little shy of doing that when I'm along because I didn't want to impose on them, but this trip I decided to do it at least for the time before and immediately after the race weekend. It turned out great for us and I really want to thank Kenny and Sandy for their hospitality. It was a help for us plus we got to visit more with them and that was great.
There are a few more postings from this trip so check the list for them and see British cars, kids, grandkids, the Pacific Ocean, Puget Sound, Mt. Rainier and lots and lots of trees, sand and water. I'll try to get them all done by the end of the week.
