Forum: Racing From The Past (go)
Moderators: Racing From The Past

What a weekend. You can't appreciate a track such as Belleville till you have the opportunity to be in the infield or on the track. The High Banks takes a backseat to none of the other classic tracks. Don't think you could have had a better prepped track for a vintage weekend, and this was with temps about 100 and wind on Sunday. Imagine a 5/8 mile track, smooth as silk, wide enough to run 4 wide all the way around, and only a little dust for the first couple of sessions, then no dust at all for the rest of the weekend, and you get the idea.

Last I heard, 105 cars checked in, from coast to coast and border to border. They broke down nicely into 7 classes: caged and uncaged midgets, caged and uncaged sprints, modifieds, super modifieds and other(rails, wire wheels, street driven indy roadster, etc.). All classes got warm up laps, heat and feature races. Saturday night things went so smooth that they elected to run another heat for all classes to end the night, so they put 105 cars on the track 4 different times. Races would be 6-8 laps, so all cars got close to 50 laps for the weekend. I think all drivers felt they had all the track time they or their cars wanted for the weekend.

Breakdown on cars were from soup to nuts. There were several Offy midgets, but no Offy sprints. No other sound like the Offy midgets out there mixing it up lap after lap. The hit of the weekend was the legends that were in the pits, and often, in the cockpit. I pitted beside the last Mutt Anderson prepped Offy midget, which had Jon Backlund at the wheel. Others I talked to were Dave Ross and Jack Petty. I also heard that Gordon Wooley was present, and I am sure there were several others. Just as the show was ready to start Saturday night, a car drove into the infield with an older man and wife inside. As soon as you saw the black panama hat, you knew Speedy Bill had arrived. Bill and Joyce set up a table, unloaded many cases of catalogs, and spent the evening talking to those in attendance and handing out Speedway catalogs.

Edited by RFTP

My personal favorite was when I was talking to a couple of guys, and one pointed to his hat to show a car he had driven. It was a RFTP cap with a picture of a red #4 super. Any one who followed the supers in nothern Kansas knew it was one of the John Schippert cars. I found out I was talking to Roger Thompson, who wheeled one of the Schippert supers for several years. If Roger's name doesn't ring a bell, go to the RFTP website(not the forum), pull up the pictures of Warren's favorite cars, and you will see the classic picture of Roger("I was higher than the powerlines" Thompson at Enid. He was there for the weekend, driving a Bob Trostle built super owned by Bob McCall from Salina.

By Sunday, quite a few cars had departed, so the classes were smaller, and they only ran 3 sessions. With the quickness between sessions and the heat, lots of cars were suffering from heating. The rusty rail began to show low oil pressure from hot oil, but I babied it alone, and ran every lap for the weekend, and came home with an intact race car. Life is good. An oil change and she will be ready to go again.

Would be remiss to not mention the people that are on this forum that I got to talk to. It was great to meet all of you, and hope you have pictures to share.

Was told this was the result of trailer whipping and parking the nose of the truck againt a guard rail. Being die hard racers, they patched it up and kept on to Belleville.

I will agree what a weekend, ran my Sedan every session. I to meet a lot of new people seen a lot of new cars, there were a lot of stuff at the swap meet. Paul Marten is making a lot of new old parts at his Machine shop if you are looking for some things he's the man, complete front axles, spring & torsion bar, arms, stops. I wish to thank everyone that had anything to do with the show. Over 500 cars on the track in two days and not one spin out, thanks to all the drivers for there great performance. Been going to that track since the middle 60s what a thrill do drive on that place. There were two guys taking pictures as soon as I get there web site I will post it. Thanks again to everyone, Dwane

I would like to thank all involved with the Vintage Nationals at Belleville this past weekend.

The track was one of the most well preped tracks I have ever been on . Very smooth run show. Everyone i met and spoke to were nice and helpfull. The show both days rans with no problems.

I to had a accident drive down from Iowa and they may total my tow truck, But it i could do it again i would make the trip again this weekend,

I was very impressed with the quailty of historic car that were present.

Anyone that missed this show missed something that will be in my mind for ever.

Great people ,Great cars , Great track and best of all Great people that made history at a historic track.

One last thing i hope and prey that they can do this again in the future.

LETS RACE BOYS

Is anyone else having trouble seeing rustyrail's slide show?

Take it to the Top & let it Rock

I just posted single photos. That slideshow bit is something that gets carried over from Photoshop. I posted them in medium format because when I post in large format, the pictures only stay up a day or so, then all you have is a red x where the picture was. I will repost the pictures in large format for better detail. I didn't take many pictures since there seemed to be alot of more professional photographers on hand, and I hope their pictures will start to surface soon.

For some reason, it is only letting me post pix in medium format. Sorry.

If you have them saved to your computer just click on the icon with the mountain and the sun (It is the 15th icon from the left on the top) and upload your photos directly to the forum. A window called remote file explorer will pop up. Then click on browse and another file window will come up with your files from your computer. If you have them on a cd insert the cd click that cd drive and find the photos you want to post. You probably saved your photos under photos if not find where you saved then, then click on the photos you want to post and click upload. It will up pop up with highlighted around the photo, then click insert.

Maybe somebody else can explain it better, that is the way I see it. You can practice and if it don't work you can delete it and try again until you get it right. I'm 56 and if I can do it anyone can do it. Remember the old saying practice practice etc.

Posted from Pryor, OK

Warren Vincent
Cans 4 Kansas Heroes

From Dwane Wolf

"I was talking to a couple of guys, and one pointed to his hat to show a car he had driven. It was a RFTP cap with a picture of a red #4 super"

I'm getting old and the memory is going, I knew I made several of those caps with the #4 on them and meant to give one to Roger but man I can't remember doing it. I wore out a 3 or 4 dozen myself. between #86 Jon Johnson and #4 Roger Thompson

The hat I remember actually giving to any drivers was the #6 Isaac's & Dale Reed to Dale and I think I mailed one to Jon when he was in the hospital. Another one I wore a lot was the #24 with Jay Woodside driving.

But that is so cool that Roger was wearing one. I remember when I had the shirts there were 4 sitings of viewers wearing them at the 1st Kansas Speedway Nascar race. I thought that was pretty cool also.

Only to have the money to do the shirts again. Bought a program to do the caps on the embroidery machine, but couldn't learn the program.

Warren Vincent
Cans 4 Kansas Heroes

I need to get out more, LOL!!

Warren Vincent
Cans 4 Kansas Heroes

You and me both Captain!

Isn't this a Luther Brewer car?