Historic Winton
A large part of the enjoyment of attending a live event or function is the atmosphere and interaction with others attending that event. It’s a very different experience to watching the same event on TV regardless of how big the screen is!
There is also the opportunity to see and do lots of things that the cameras do not cover, and I find those aspects to sometimes be more interesting at times than the event itself.
Which is why Shaaron and I made the trip to the Historic Winton race meeting where we met up with a group of friends from our days in Canberra.
As with most classic car race meetings there is a classic car display as well as the racing. So we took my BMW 700 on a trailer behind my E21 323i JPS Edition – which was an interesting experience in itself. The towing capacity of the E21 is 1200 kg and the 700 plus trailer is about 1000 kg, so not much room to play with. It actually towed OK, even if it struggled a little on the hills – level road happy speed being about 95 dropping to about 85 up hill - and there are a lot more hills on the route when one is towing!
A common compliant of “modern” car racing is that the cars don’t slide and one can not see the driver at work, which does not apply to the refreshingly old school classic cars. If you are a bit of a Luddite your deeply held suspicions of the advantages of so-called technical advancement can be sated by the sight of cars from the first generation of a particular formula beating the supposedly much faster later generation cars. Which actually proves that the driver is at least as important as the car and that preparation and setup may have a significant role too.
Historic Winton uses the short course layout, so the entire track is visible form several locations. The to and fro of battles can be watched right around the track. Some of the racing is very close, but the drivers seem to remember the age of their cars so it remains respectful although a bit of paint does get swapped from time to time.
Winton also has races for historic motorcycles, which looks terrifying, and side-car combinations, which looks borderline suicidal but strangely fascinating.
The event this year celebrated, amongst other things, 60 years of Mini, so there was a strong contingent on track both in the races and on the Sunday lunch break parade laps.
Selected cars from the display were invited to join the parade, using a set of criteria which is unknown to me and possibly to the organisers, but the 700 was selected which was nice (thankfully the JPS was not also selected otherwise I would have had to do a lot of running between cars!).
So, I can now truthfully say I have taken the 700 on the track! Although they were very successful in racing in the day I think they must have had a different clutch in the race cars and probably a lot less wear in the gear change mechanism.
My two cars attracted a lot of attention and positive comment which was nice. They were located in what is considered the premier display area for this event, by invitation only, handily placed for maximum exposure but a little dowdy.
Situated next to us was a display of ambulances from times gone by, complete with a compressed air driven CPR machine – “The Thumper”!
After dropping off the 700 and trailer at Hastings we made our home on the ferry – getting star treatment and a parking spot well away from any other car!
We enjoyed the weekend, a bit different from the Sandown Historic meeting and not as atmospheric as Phillip Island but still a great weekend away.
Lawrence Glynn | Member #3
BMW Drivers Club Melbourne
