I worked at the historics for Toyota all weekend as the paddock team captain, partially responsible for making sure the "show" went off as planned. Basically I got payed a grand to hand out with car guys and shool the bull.
The F1 deal was mind blowing, especially when you consider that Ricardo Zonta told me on friday that the Toyota F1 program was capable of laying down an easy 1:02 lap if it were important to do so, but it wasn't. They only gave him part of the engine and car's performance, just enough to do the job. They ended up breaking the track record (at laguna seca) over and over again. I think his fastest was around 1:063 or something like that.
On Thursday he ran a mid 1:08 at 8/10ths and waved to me for a photo-op while diving into ther corkscrew at well over over 100 mph. He's a machine.

Anywho, met some very cool drivers. Hanging out with them during the day, dinner at night, Fangio's hotel room was 2 doors down from mine
Ivan Stewart was in my care for a while, as well as Juan Fangio II , Ricardo Zonta, Rod Millen (pikes peak record holder). Scooter Patrick and my favorite, Dave Jordan.
Most of you won't remember Dave, he was a very well known SCCA racer in the 60's. He made his name racing a Porsche and kicked butt, then ran a sunbeam alpine for a while spanking cars with 4 times the HP. I saw a picture of him at Riverside in one of those cars, we was passing Corvettes in that little car all the time.
Dave's name is on the door of this 67 Toyota Shelby 2000 GT. He drove it and did all the R&D/development testing on the shelby GT cars.


Turns out, Mr. Jordan lives in Running Springs and in in the process of building a race car, a 914. Chopped top with aluminum roof skin, metal flares, probably a very high strung six cylinder engine. How cool is that?
My bet is that the car will be fast but even faster in the hands of a driver like him.

Anywho, Dave invited me up to his house to check out his 914 project. I can't wait.
Maybe some day we can have a little Porsche run up the hill and stop and see Dave and ask him to tell up some stories of the old days. He's very humble and kind of shy but I had a blast talking to him, one conversation went on for at least an hour. He was supposed to be in signing aurographs for the crowd by dave and I were out telling stories of the old days instead. That is, until one of the big wigs at toyota noticed and called me on the radio, then dave had to go start signing.

From a nice website ( http://www.vpracing.com/The_Drivers/Davey_...vey_jordan.html ) : Here's a list of the cars he raced in his career:
Porsche 1600 speedster
Sunbeam Alpine
Volvo P-1800
Porsche RSK
Porsche RS-60
Dolphin Porsche
Elva Porsche
Porsche 904 (4 different cars)
Ferrari 275 LM
Porsche Carrera "6"
B.M.W. 1800 TISA Sedan
Brabham Formula III (in Japan)
Honda S600 and 800 (in Japan)
Lola T-70 MK 1 with Ford 289
Porsche 911 S
Mustang Trans Am Sedan
L-88 Corvette
A.M.C. SC/Rambler 390 (off road)
Toyota 2000 GT
Lola T-70 Coupe with 305 cid Chevy
Porsche 908
Eagle F-5000
Chevron B-19
Mclaren M-14 (converted to Chevy power for F-5000)
The cars I have done testing in are as follows,

Shelby Lola T-70 with 427 Ford (Shelby American)
AutoCoast Ti-22 Can-Am car (Peter Bryant)
Porsche 917 Can-Am non Turbo (Vasek Polak)
Surtees TS-5 F-5000 (American International Racing)

BTW, Dave gave me his e-mail address, i'm going to send him the address to this club.
Hopefully he'll join. If he does, please welcome him and help him out, he's a class act and about one of the nicest guys we will ever meet.

A picture of his first race car, the speedster:

Another pic, driving an RS60 for Vasek Polak:

Davey and Vasek Polak:

Riverside I think..... Davey's in the lead tail dragger.

Davey in the 908

L to R: Unknown, Davey Jordan, Alwin Springer, Milt Minter, and Vasek Polak.

Some pretty impressive names.

wow, good stuff Sammy, thats what I call Experiencing the Historics. The Toyota 2000Gt is a good lookin car.

Ivan "Ironman" Stewart is something else. That guy is in great shape, must be a total gym rat. he'e prolly in mid mid 60's but no doubt could kick my butt. He'll prolly live to be 200 or something.
Really cool though, not as much ego as I expected. Actually a regular guy.
Juan Fangio II was very polite, I didn't even realize who he was for a while. He was there driving the dan gurney 1987 toyota celica GTO championship car. 2.1 liter 4 cylinder, 700 hp. The only thing stock on that car was the roof, windshield, and maybe a door latch. Everything else was pure one-off race car.
We stood there and talked about the car for a while, I figured he was just some rich guy from Europe. Here I was telling him all about the car and about how Fangio, willie T ribbs, Dennis Cord, and one other guy drove them and totally dominated that year. Later he came back with his driver's suit on and I went uh oh...... I hope I didn't say anything too stupid. For the rest of the weekend I made sure
He had some young thing hanging around him all weekend, musta been his daughter or niece. Except for his bald spot he looks like he should still be racing with the young kids.

Hey!

I met Dave Jordan today. There were several of the older drivers around. The race 914 is still on the rotisserie, taking a backseat to the 912 which looks great.

Turns out I live about 1/2 a block down from Dave Jordan. His garage and office are simply amazing. It's like the history of racing is 5 doors down.

He had a get together at his place. I kept seeing all these 911's, 356, boxster, maserati's, etc going up the street. Took my primered 914 with the FORD engine to go investigate... saw where it was and then walked up there to investigate. It's quite the place and he's quite the host.

Next year Porsche is the featured car, SCHWEET! I'll be there all weekend this time.
BTW, that 4 cyl Toyota was lightening fast. Incredible.

Now this I want to attend! If you can set something like this up, definitely put me on the list to be there!
Sounds like you had an awesome time. And did I read that right.. That you've personally driven a 917!?! If so, you lucky SOB!!
Mark D.

That 917 part was from Davey's website.

Which day did the F1 car run?

We were there on Saturday and got to see Andretti in the Lotus 79, which was awesome. I'd have loved to see a modern F1 car as well.

We had the 2yr old and the 4yr old with, so it was nearly impossible to actually watch anything.