The Friends of Triumph brought our race prepared Triumphs down to Road Atlanta to run the Classic Motorsports Mitty. We were greeted with some fantastic southern hospitality and with the exception of Saturday morning, great racing weather.  

Historic Sportscar Racing (HSR) and Tim Suddard, publisher of Classic Motorsports and Grassroots Motorsports magazines and TR3 racer, invited the MG Vintage Racers and Friends of Triumph to bring as many racecars as we could to run the MG/TR Challenge. We rose to the occasion and dragged out almost 30 cars, while the MG guys did a bit better with over 70. Remember, they did make lots more MG's...

Our honored guest for the weekend was Kas Kastner. Kas delighted the crowd with his stories at the driver and crew dinner on Friday night plus did a few Q&A sessions throughout the weekend. Kas was also seen wandering the false grid as the Triumphs were preparing to race. It is quite a thrill to be strapped in your racecar waiting for the signal to take the track and have Kas walk up, shake your hand and wish you luck!

Bill Babcock towed all the way from Oregon with his Peyote MkII, a TR3 based special built by the late Bill Ames. Bill delighted the crowd and the guys on track with the amazing speed and handling of this attention-grabbing car. Other cars of interest were Kas's original Kastner/Brophy Vitesse, and a Dolomite Sprint.

With around 100 cars we were divided up into two race groups, the earlier cars and the later cars. The early group had all the sidescreen TR’s, while the later group ran all the other Triumphs.

The feature race in the early group was very exciting, with Jeff Snook and Randy Williams dominating the field in their TR3A's. With Randy on the pole in the qualifying race, there was a mix up on the start that caused him to pass the pace car with 5 competitors in tow. HSR held a dim view of this, and decided to have the 6 offenders start the feature race at the back of the pack. As it turns out, cooler heads prevailed on the grid, and the six fastest cars were put out mid-pack. As the green flag waived Jeff hammered the loud pedal and passed what appeared to be half the cars in front of him before turn one. Randy was unable to get by as much traffic on that first drag race down the front stretch, and rounded turn one many cars behind Jeff. Next time around Randy had picked off many of the slower cars and was gaining ground, but in his haste to catch Jeff, Randy spun and was unable to get back into the hunt fast enough. Jeff drove a wonderful race and came out on top, taking first place, with Randy taking second place.

Two MG ringers dominated the feature race for the later cars, the MGB GT-V8's of Jerry Richards and Les Gonda. Seems Jerry and Les decided to build their own race group, they developed the specs and built a pair of 3.5 litre V8 powered cars. Other MG racers came loaded for bear as well, and we had our hands full. The Kastner/Brophy Vitesse was our fastest car, and took third place on the podium when it was all said and done. It should be noted that the Vitesse did turn the fastest lap, but was no match for the horsepower of the two V8 powered MG’s. Bill Babcock was running very fast all weekend, but decided to change from Hoosier tires to Goodyear Bluestreaks on race day. Having never run the Bluestreaks it was a gamble, and unfortunately for Bill, one that did not pay off. His lap times were a bit off, and he did lose a couple of positions as a result. When asked about the Goodyears, all he could say was "HIDEOUS!" There were 4 Triumph powered cars finishing in the top 10, including one on the podium, six in the top 15, a pretty good showing. Even more impressive, of the 27 Triumph powered cars running that weekend, only 2 didn’t start the feature race!