The 2016 U. S. Vintage Grand Prix at Watkins Glen

The SVRA U. S. Vintage Grand Prix is always one of the best events of the year. It has it all – a fantastic and historic track, usually beautiful early fall weather, tremendous local spectator turn out and one of the largest entries of the year. The race wasn’t on the calendar in 2015, as the track was being repaved, so the turnout for the 2016 race was huge.

Duntov brought Tony Parella’s 1958 Corvette, his 1972 Group 6 Corvette, and Clair’s 1968 Corvette. Tony planned to run his Group 6 car in the enduro, the Group 4 car in the two sprint races and Clair planned to run everything.

Clair and Tony on the false grid

For the enduros, Group 6 has been split up so the small block cars run in the 60-minute “little enduro,” and the big block cars run in the 90-minute “big enduro.” It’s unfortunate, as Clair is normally the only big block Group 6 car that runs the enduros and with the split group, he doesn’t have anyone in his class to race.

Tony and his daughter Adrienne ready to head to town and the reenactment of the early fifties city street races.

One way to look at it – Perhaps Clair all the year’s negatives over with at Watkins Glen.

The 2016 U. S. Vintage Grand Prix was a race Clair would like to forget. After a run of nine straight races during which he had zero problems and never missed a session, everything seemed to go wrong this weekend. All weekend the engine was way down on power, and the crew didn’t discover the problem until they got back home. After two and a half years in the car, the differential blew up and the spare wasn’t plumbed for a diff cooler. It is not a good idea to run an endurance race in a big block Corvette without a diff cooler, but they did it anyway and blew that one up as well! Oddly, many Corvette differentials blew up at the recently repaved track this weekend, in fact after Clair’s second diff blew, no one had a spare because everyone who had brought a spare had had a failure and had to put it in the car. The widespread and unprecedented diff failures may have been related to the new pavement.

ard refuels Tony’s car during the “little enduro” with Tony manning the mandatory fire extinguisher

Tony’s cars both ran perfectly all weekend. His ’58 Corvette qualified on the Pole in BP. He wasn’t able to run the first Group 4 race, but he ran the second one and finished second in BP, fourth overall. In the enduro with his Group 6 small block car, Tony again finished fourth overall, but was first in Group 6.

SVRA’s Kim Hoxie hangs the bronze metal on Clair after the first enduro. He looks quite happy, but not really!

In Saturday’s Group 6 sprint race, Clair finished 7th overall and third in AP. The car was about 100 horsepower down on power. After blowing up the second differential during the enduro, Clair had to miss the Group 6 feature race that was won in spectacular fashion by Peter Klutt.

Klutt had blown up his differential in the first Group 6 race, so he had to start at the back in Sunday’s feature race and sliced through the field to pass for the lead on the last lap. It was good to see Klutt take the win after the miserable race he had at Indy, and it sets the stage for the next race at COTA where he will get to race the Duntov team for the National Championship.