tirsdag den 13. august 2013

Vestjydsk Grusbaneløb #2

This weekend I attended the second annual Vestjydsk Grusbaneløb, a dirt track race near Esbjerg, which is on the west most side of Denmark.
Going that long, and staying off the motorways, was a task in itself, but luckily we ran into Ole Skov, who were going there in his '54 Chevy custom. That gave a nice view on the way.



Arriving on the spot, we were some of the first, so we had to kill some time. After an improvised hill climb, where a sufficient run-up secured me the selfappointed title "King of the hill", we stopped racing for friday. Then I had a go of some good quality, jydsk moonshine! In this case, I like chemistry!


The settings for this meet was fantastic, the partially clouded skies and the piles of gravel gave some good pictures.









Lining up for the race:







My biggest ambition this weekend was to beat Allan Stendrup in his '29 Tudor. He is running the same Scintilla magneto ignition, but he has a Stromberg 81 carb off of the 60 horsed later V8 (I run Weber) and stock head (mine is welded), and then he is fenderless, so Ole-Henry is ca. 200 kilo grams heavier than his '29.
Off the line, I beat him and was the fastest, but going in to the soft turn I opened too much on the inside, so he slipped past and never gave me a chance to overtake him. Foolish mistake - but my car was still the fastest!!














Thomas (webmaster on traditional-hotrods.dk) was there in his apparently-too-fine-to-race '32 british tudor with french flat-V8:


Second race was against Ole in the '54 with almost stock straight 6, and again I was first off the starting line.















This time I had learned from my mistakes (the hard way), so I cut early in the the soft turn, and ended up beating him.

After that there were a break, so we headed down for lunch. There I got to talking to Søren, the owner/builder of this fine '30 roadster, about some of the fine details on his A-V8.





   












After lunch, the weather got worse, so second half of the races was rather wet. I beat Otto in his '54 Chevy with 305 V8, it was just not a Chevy day.



At my last race, I got beaten by Allan Evers in his '50 (?) Dodge, which could have ended much worse! Going in to the soft turn, I tried to take him on the inside, as Stendrup did with me, but all the loose gravel made both cars loose traction, so a little fender bending ended up with him going out first.




Of course, Hell-Bent was here racing his 350cc BSA, which landed him a second place, only beaten by a larger BSA dirt bike.


During dinner, it started raining, so Rikke swiftly made herself a new hat:



You'll find gold at the end of the rain bow, in this case the creative mind of Teddy:


Saturday evening would the guys behind the meet, Anders and Johnny, present the top three races in the two clases; cars and bikes.
The prices were a fine, cut-in-half brake drum off of one of Johnny's old vws, with an engraved plate on it. As I had only lost two races, I came in third, which landed me one of the trophies.

















Looking forward to next year, guys! I will be back!
Keep 'em kruzin!
Dannerr