The All British Field Meet (ABFM) has been a part of the Portland/Vancouver Pacific Northwest British car scene for 33 years! For many, many years it has been held over the Labor Day weekend at the Portland International Raceway (PIR) and for the last 6 years it has been held in conjunction with The Columbia River classic Historic Races (CRC). And this year the CRC hosted the Kas Kastner Cup Challenge for Racing Triumphs! This perpetual trophy was established by Kas Kastner to honor Triumph race drivers and and to promote Triumph race cars. It has proven to do just that in its 6 years of existence, for details see: http://www.kaskastner.com/kastnercup.html
My wife Alice and I have often visited my brother and sister-in-law in Vancouver over Labor Day and several times we have gone to the ABFM car show and really enjoyed seeing all of that British iron, especially the large showing of TRs, on the big grassy field at PIR. On Sept. 4th the Friday before ABFM Randy and I spent about half a day cleaning, waxing, and detailing his Spitfire and my TR250 to prepare for the participant's choice car show on Sat. Unfortunately, it was mostly in vain, as Fri.. night it started to rain and it rained hard most of the night, The next morning when we arrived at the car show, the nice grassy field was pretty muddy but all of the die-hards that did decide to make it, showed their cars as best we could. However the judging, which all of the car show participants were asked to do, was really difficult as the score sheets got very wet by the time we worked through all of the various classes. As the judging wound down, the rain began to slack off a bit and some of the participants were able to comfortably stand around their cars in order to talk to the folks that came out to see the cars. Just like a normal car show, but with mud here and there! I did get to meet a bunch of people that came to the ABFM because of its status in the area. Several people from the TR List some from halfway across the country, a couple of folks that live in the Portland area now but used to live in the SF bay area and were members of the Triumph Travelers Sports Car Club and knew several people that I knew when I was living in Palo Alto. It was great! After lunch (in the rain again), we watched some of the practice for the various CRC classes and also walked around the pits and looked at a lot of really nicely prepared sports cars set up to race! At 4:00 the awards for the car show were handed out by the various marque clubs, Randy took a 1st in his Spitfire and I took home a 3rd for the TR250. At some point in the afternoon we spent quite a bit of time in the pits and talked with several of the Triumph drivers that were there from around the country and were slated drive in the Kastner Cup race on Sunday. We talked quite a long time with Tony Drews, Uncle Jack Drews son, about his car and his racing, and Uncle Jack and of course JonMac's Stag Tour around the country, who's Stag his named Uncle Jack in honor of Tony's dad. Tony is a capitol guy, very open and friendly. We also met Tony Garmey, the owner I believe, and driver of the Peter Brock designed TR250K sports racer. We got to spend some time checking out the car, as it is of course a one-off design, I had seen it once before at either the Portland VTR or a Triumphest, I can't remember exactly when. But that time, it was hard to get close enough to the car to really see it, this time though we could really check it out! There was a lot of discussion by many of the drivers whether they were going to need to run practice and/or race with their rain tires or their racing 'slicks'. The weather couldn't seem to make up its mind and of course Sunday was a real unknown! In one of the TR pits we found Kas Kastner sort of holding court and introduced ourselves, We mentioned that we had enjoyed hearing him speak at Triumphest a couple of times. We also told him we had both enjoyed his recent books. He said his next book was going to be a real treat, but was going to be expensive! He wouldn't say any more about that at that point... We also saw Joe Alexander in the pits and actually we had seen him earlier at the car show venue, he brought his TR powered, special fiberglass bodied, Ambro from his home in the mid-west, Iowa? Anyway I forget but Joe is the inventor of several popular accessories for our TRs, built by his company ARE, and sold through several suppliers. In 2007 Joe and Uncle jack attended Triumphest in Laughlin, NV and a bunch of us that are on the TR List sat around with the two of them and listened to them talk about their racing experience, it was a gas! On Sunday we ran the rally along with 33 other cars. It was advertised as a TSD Rally, but it was actually a 'gimmick' rally, or at least that is what I would call it. It was fun though and it took us over many roads I had never seen, although Randy had been n most all of them. We finished in the alloted time, answered all of the questions, stayed on course, and didn't place! Like I sad it was fun though... We spent the rest of the afternoon watching the historic races including the Kastner Cup Race. What a race that was! There were perhaps 20 cars in the race with Tony Garmey in the 250K starting late for some reason. But when he started to race and he definitely started to race for by the 2nd or 3rd lap, he was in 2nd place behind Tom Kreager in his immaculate #7, TR6. Tony Garmey and Tom Kreager spent the whole race so close together you could almost throw a blanket over the two of them. Sometimes the 250K was in 1st, sometimes the TR6, it was really a great race. There was also a great race going on for 3rd and 4th and 5th! It was really fun to watch. On the last lap, as they exited turn 11, we thought Tony Garmey was going to pass Tom Kreager by the checkered flag, but the TR6 was able to hold off the 250K and win! Tuesday night we went to the Portland Triumph Owners Assoc. (PTOA) meeting. It is held at the Stark St. Pizza where PTOA has held their meeting for some 40 years! PTOA is a big club, 130 some members 230 some cars, they are obviously a successful club. They are also happy to see new people and they welcome guests, even from AZ with open arms! Next weekend, John Macartney arrives. More later, in Part 9! Regards, Jim Jim Bauder TR 250, CD47L Scottsdale, AZ (currently visiting in Vancouver, WA) Cell: 480-309-9525 _______________________________________________ Support Team.Net http://www.team.net/donate.html You are subscribed as [email protected] [email protected] http://autox.team.net/mailman/listinfo/spitfires http://www.team.net/archive
