Just had a great race weekend at Hastings Nebraska..

I know its in nebraska, but it was still pretty impressive.
A bunch of enthusiasts banded together to do the impossible and it came out well.

we were the very first ever race to be held on the track and they rolled out the red carpet. The town was great, the racing was great, the track is great...
hmmm... I had a pretty great time overall.

Have some pictures and links.
first off here is the Hastings website

followed by a bunch of other people's pictures

and also a bunch of Professional photo's


I didn't finish as high as I had hoped.
but the racing was superb. I still had a blast.
I only finished in 10th overall

I really had fun dicing it out with bob dent
we were neck and neck for about 6-7 laps and he beat me by .294 seconds at the finish.

here is bob dent's car:

We rolled into Hastings on friday and were practically knocked over by the humidity...

luckily it was cloudy and overcast much of the rest of the weekend.
no rain... no unbearable heat.. and no significant humidity.

truely a perfect weekend weather wise with just a touch of cool breeze and 80some degree temp...

the Track grass hasn't been planted yet
it was surrounded by mud due to construction delays
but even though I had 2 spins, I never ended up leaving the pavement!

here is a picture of the mud:

more pics...
track:

paddock:

LOL farm implements in the background.

Looks like our new track

(looks like fun!)

was your impression that the track could be a "pretty fast" track? I saw the arial photo of the track and it looks like it has two nice, long straights and the area between the straights looked pretty high speed with a little dogleg to it.

But arial photos can be deceiving, however looking at the construction equipment in the photo to try to get scale made me think they are nice and long.

I ask because if I end up moving to Denver area, I will need a track that I can go to with a car that can hit 160-ish, or I will never really be able to hang it out with my current configuration (why I like Willow Springs out here so much v. other tracks I have been to so far). I ran Willow - a "fast" track by most people's standards, in 3rd gear only last time the car was together. I could have gone to 4th and over 140, but didn't have a cage and the car just wasn't safe at that speed, let alone more. Now I want to be able to hammer it.

guess who designed it?
yep.. same fellow!

Its pretty fast...
not 160mph fast though

most 911's were in 4/5th on every corner
with my new box I was 3rd and 4th on all but 1 corner.

its pretty fast.

brant

In all fairness it wasn't really very wet
(it rained friday night, and I took most of these pictures first thing saturday am before it dried out)

teener's stuck together
(in order to reduce the amount of time we would of spent walking around trying to borrow parts... ha)

so these were my paddock neighbors:

Track principal owns a motor shop that also is liscensed as a manufacturer...

they build these monsters with 427's:

run's on snake oil:

2nd fastest car of the weekend (beaten by a quick formula car):

more cars from my run group:

and:

and:

and, Robert Ames' extremely well driven 2.0:

and another:

all of these so far (not the cobra) were in my group.

This is george mcdonalds....
unfortunately he punched a small hole in the case on the last lap of race #2

I was holding off a bmw for most of that race and had 4-5 car lengths coming into the last corner. Luckily I judged that I could go slow and safe, yet hold onto the lead.

I went around the final corner and no oil flag was out... suddenly the car wouldn't turn... I managed to shut it down and come practically to a stop without going off road. I thought to myself.. "shi**t, I've lost it to the bimmer now" and put it into first gear and go for the checker.

I checked my mirrors to see which side the bimmer would pass me on.

he on the other hand was making a bonzai corner to try and catch me.
he hit the oil and apparently had no reserves.
I saw him in my mirror as he shot straight through the corner exit into the mud.

whew.....

The bimmer from the above story.
I beat him all 3 races:

another bimmer in my group:

another car in my class:

and I really liked this car.
met with the owner from kansas city
he runs scca and vintage... really nice guy.

he was in my class too:

so I did have a missed shift on saturday.
went from 3rd to 2nd on the straight.
I think I survived.... we did change a rocker shaft saturday night because of a damaged elephants foot lock nut.

leakdown is coming up in a week or so and will say for sure.
its the first time I've missed a shift, and the new tilton sure isn't forgiving in that sense.

but hopefully, it appears that the short gearing may have allowed me to come through it.

we ran on sunday and really still did well and it pulled strong.
so I'm optimistic.

we will see
brant

Cool pics, my Mom went to Hastings(as did Tom Osborn), my parents grew up in Scottsbluff. I like the old Capri too, knew a guy in HS who had a 302 ford V-8 in one, yikes

It was a really nice town
it took me a bit to figure out why everything was "tom osborn" boulevard, drive, avenue, etc...

Brant,

Great pictures, you had one of the nicer weekends this summer to run. I had heard about the Hastings facility, but locally there has been nothing about any active out there. It appears that everything is focus on MAM which is just across the river in Iowa. I'll have to keep my eyes open and be sure and make the next event out there. I'll assume that this was put on by your vintage racing group?

Eric,

Those aren't nearly big enough to be farm implements. Somebody must have brought their childrens toy tractors for the kids to play with while Dad (or Mom) went racing.

Really looked like fun.

Tom Cooper