-First—congratulations to one of the newest members of the Corvette community, Scott Dixon. He’s added a 2008 Indy Pace Car Edition to his home fleet by winning the 92nd Indianapolis 500-Mile Race this past Memorial Day weekend.
Also, kudos to him are also in order for remembering the proper Victory Lane protocol re the bottle of milk that is handed to him, unlike what pas 500 winner (and this year’s Pace Car driver) Emerson Fittipaldi did when he won his first 500 back in 1989: take a drink of orange juice first. -A couple of blogs ago, I mentioned the name Betty Skelton in my cyberscribblings about racing CERV-I at The Brickyard. She was the first woman inducted into the Corvette Hall of Fame, thanks to her record-setting runs on the “Measured Mile” on Daytona Beach back in the ‘50s, behind the wheel of Corvettes and steel-bodied Chevys of that time.
Here’s where you’ll find her page in the Corvette Hall of Fame section of the national Corvette Museum’s website: http://www.corvettemuseum.com/library-archives/hof/skelton.shtml
Read that, and you’ll get an idea why she would’ve done very well piloting CERV-I at The Brickyard.-Those of you who’ve been to your local road-race course’s track days—be they open days or ones with fellow Corvette club members—have probably seen someone wearing a t-shirts with the phrase, “I Am The Stig” on it, accompanied by a graphic of a man in a white Nomex racing suit and full-face helmet. (Or, at least the helmet.) You’ve encountered a devotee of the BBC television program Top Gear, which is now producing a new season’s worth of episodes that’ll air on BBC America sometime later this year. It’s a show about cars that’s not like other shows about cars, thank goodness. Their new-vehicle evaluations by their presenters--Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May--are extremely and delightfully subjective, with plenty of tire shredding you’ll never see on Motor Week. Show-biz guests are featured in their “Star In A Reasonably-Priced Car” segment, where they do a hot lap around a road course laid out on an airfield (after tutelage by the ever-mysterious Stig.) But it’s their filmed, out-of-the-studio pieces that are the show’s best feature, at least for this half-blind couch pilot. With their state-of-the-art editing and music, they come across as a latter-day version of the classic live-action short comedies that the Hal Roach Studios made with performers like Laurel & Hardy. Let’s hope they meet up with our Tom Falconer sometime, if they haven’t already. -Later this month, I’m headed up to St. Paul, Minnesota, during a trip to visit family and friends in the Upper Midwest. I’ll be taking in “Back To The ‘50s,” the huge show for 1964-earlier cars and trucks that’s put on by the Minnesota Street Rod Association (MSRA), and fills the 300-acre Minnesota State Fairgrounds. I’ll keep my eyes open for C1 and C2 Vettes and Vette Rods to show off here, among the thousands of rides that will be cruising in and out of the fairgrounds that weekend. With as many participating cars and trucks as that show draws (as many as 11,000 in recent years), it’s a good thing that they’re not all on the grounds at the same time!