Report and photos by Paul Smith
Over the July 3-5, 2015 weekend, the Society Of Vintage Racing Enthusiasts (SOVERN) conducted the primary racing event of its annual season, the Pacific Northwest Historics. This weekend of great cars, drivers, fans and volunteers raised funds for the Seattle Children’s Hospital, and while this year’s amount is being tallied, SOVREN takes pride in reflecting that the total last year was $450,000.
This Pacific Northwest Historics 2015 competed at Pacific Raceways in Kent, Washington, a road course to challenge the skill and mettle of all drivers. The Pacific Raceways road course is 2.25-miles of elevation change and 10 turns. The 10, however, feel and look like 12 with the 3a/b and 5a/b combinations. The course is narrow in parts and offers little or no room for correcting a misjudgment.
The spectators were treated to fantastic racing between seven groups, plus the BMW PRO-3 excitement. Some of the cars catching new attention included: Allen Karlberg’s Stohr Formula Atlantic; Cameron Healey’s Porsche 911 Carrera RSR, Mark Adams’ E-type Jaguar with added cylinders; Matt Parent’s NASACAR Oldsmobile; Joe Harding’s Ralt RT-3 Formula 2; John Goodman’s 1988 Chevrolet Corvette and Tom Cantrell’s NASCAR Taurus.
PRO-3 racing is primarily a northwest phenomenon, and consists of BMW 325 cars with 1796cc to 2500cc engines. The class was first raced in 2002 after being sanctioned by the ICSCC, the IRDC and CSCC subsequent to petition by Ken and Wes Hill. BMW E30 series cars were not competitive with newer E36 series BMWs, and modifications would have been overly expensive, so the Hills proposed this new class be created. PRO-3 is entertaining to observe with many of the colorful cars on track at the same time. And there were forty of them running at the Pacific Northwest Historics 2015 race weekend.
Pacific Northwest Historics 2015 – Photo Gallery (click image for larger picture and description)
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[Source: Paul Smith]
Very surprised to see winged OW and stock cars in the same group. I know OW drivers have balls, but….
We have an “agreement”! We don’t lap them, they don’t run over us……
The stock car guys have big balls too. They run with the OW cars in the Exhibition class, since they don’t fall within SOVREN’s age-range. Probably the biggest thrills of the weekend was a lunchtime demo-race by the PRO-3 guys, with ride-along’s offered to passengers who donated to Children’s Hospital. Every one of the passengers crawled out of the BMW’s with huge grins on their faces.