Anyone who has been involved in racing at any level and in any capacity knows that there are good days at the track when everything goes right and bad days at the track where the almighty is telling you to stop from the get go.

One weekend the UMass Motorsports crew towed our trusty little VW Rabbit race car down to Lime Rock for the SCCA New England Runoffs. The runoffs are an important race as it is the race that qualifies people for the ability to race in the National Runoffs, and compete for an SCCA national crown.

Our lowly class, ITC, was not recognized as a national class, and therefore the Runoffs were our Super Bowl. For a team of broke ass college kids we actually ran fairly well and over the years had some shocking near successes at the Runoffs. We actually podium finished one year if my memory is correct.

Our little car was a tired lump with a mostly junkyard sourced motor, old and worn out suspension pieces, and by this time in the season we were running on others’ junk tires. The good thing was, none of the previous info was a shock and we were mostly there for the fun and to try and beat the guys who really took this stuff seriously.

In typical team fashion we had to push the car to tech inspection because we couldn’t get it to run off of the trailer. We managed to get the car running about 30 seconds before we had to have the car onto the pre-grid. Driver Adam went out and qualified somewhere in the better half of the field so our spirits were up. We thought miracles were possible.

That was about our 32nd mistake. After loading Adam and the car into the pre-grid area I ran over to spectator hill in the center of the track with my camera to start taking photos of the car.

All was going swimmingly for several laps until disaster struck. Heading through “The Esses” and setting up to head down the “No Name Straight,” Adam dove to the inside. Another competitor got underneath him and put the car into a quick slide. As Adam tried to recover he hit one of the pieces of raised curbing, upsetting the car and sending it onto its roof, skidding off the track and towards the deep Connecticut woods.

Adam was extracted from the turtled VW and he checked out fine. The car would never see the track again while I was at school, and I don’t think the next generation members of the club ever did much with it, which is a shame.

Here are some photos of the car upside down and Adam crawling out. Also see the crappy in-car video which was actually converted from a VHS tape by a club member back in the day. As a side note, you can hear that he kept his foot all the way into it as the car went over, sending the motor to the moon as all of the oil was rushing away from the pickup in the pan. The poor little mill came apart as well.

Here’s the in-car video.

Anyone who has been involved in racing at any level and in any capacity knows that there are good days at the track when everything goes right and bad days at the track where the almighty is telling you to stop from the get go.

One weekend the UMass Motorsports crew towed our trusty little VW Rabbit race car down to Lime Rock for the SCCA New England Runoffs. The runoffs are an important race as it is the race that qualifies people for the ability to race in the National Runoffs, and compete for an SCCA national crown.

Our lowly class, ITC, was not recognized as a national class and therefore, the Runoffs were our Super Bowl. For a team of broke ass college kids we actually ran fairly well and over the years had some shocking near successes at the Runoffs, we actually podium finished one year if my memory is correct.

Our little car was tired lump with a mostly junkyard sourced motor, old and worn out suspension pieces, and by this time in the season we were running on others’ junk tires. The good thing was, none of the previous info was a shock and we were mostly there for the fun and to try and beat the guys who really took this stuff seriously.

In typical team fashion we had to push the car to tech inspection because we couldn’t get it to run off of the trailer. We managed to get the car running about 30 seconds before we had to have the car onto the pre-grid. Driver Adam went out and qualified somewhere in the better half of the field so our spirits were up. We thought miracles were possible.

That was about our 32nd mistake. After loading Adam and the car into the pre-grid area I ran over to spectator hill in the center of the track with my camera to start taking photos of the car.

All was going swimmingly for several laps until disaster struck. Heading through “The Esses” and setting up to head down the “No Name Straight”, Adam dove to the inside. Another competitor got underneath him and put the car into a quick slide. As Adam tried to recover he hit one of the pieces of raised curbing, upsetting the car and sending it onto its roof, skidding off the track and towards the deep Connecticut woods.

Adam was extracted from the turtle VW and he checked out fine. The car would never see the track again while I was at school and frankly, I don’t think the next generation members of the club ever did much with it, which is a shame.

Here are some photos of the car upside down and Adam crawling out. Also see the crappy in-car video which was actually converted from a VHS tape by a club member back in the day. As a side note, you can hear that he kept his foot all the way into it as the car went over, sending the motor to the moon as all of the oil was rushing away from the pickup in the pan. Poor little mill came apart as well.

Here’s the in-car video.