The Gruppe tradition of a large flock of 356’s heading to Lexington, Ohio to watch the Vintage Grand Prix each year has long since died, but there is still a core group of hardy souls that still make the trip, albeit a day trip, to the Mid Ohio Sports Car Course to watch Vic Skirmants and Dave Burton run their 356’s at speed. This year that group consisted of Charlie Brown III, Dick Zarbo, Tom Walworth and Sebastian Gaeta.

The drive down is always terrific and is laid out on beautiful twisty back roads. The weather was warm and sunny, sometimes a bit too warm, but certainly much better than rain. Here are some shots of the track (with Vic in the #70 car). I used a “vintage” effect on my camera to take these photos in honor of the Vintage Races.

Here’s a short video clip of Vic at turn 1

During this annual event, vintage cars are allowed to park together by marque in the infield. This year’s featured marque was Mini.

I liked this one in particular, it was very clean and sharp looking.

A chopped Mini next to a Formula One Mini.

 Mini Formula One “driver” getting instructions from the “team manager”.

Nice examples of a Lotus and Allard.

Even though the infield was filled with British cars, Porsches were also very well represented. I did not take any pictures of the Porsche corral, mostly because the only 356’s there belonged to members of our caravan. One early 911 was in the corral and the rest were later model air-cooled or modern water-cooled cars.

This is a VINTAGE event, so let’s get more VINTAGE cars to participate. It is a great one day trip so let’s see if we can cajole a few more people into coming down next year!

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