"The Loooong Race," Ambience Post (1 of 2)

"The Looong Race" is always the last event of my club's season, always at Blackhawk Farms, at the end of October.  The point of it is that drivers get 45 minutes or more of seat time, not the usual half hour.

Normally the weather is dependably crummy: temperatures in the 30's or 40's, with horizontal precipitation.  So I never go.  This year, temperatures were in the high 60's with a cloudless sky and a light breeze from the southwest.  So I went, and took a jacket. It wasn't needed.

While Blackhawk may not be as challenging as, say, Autobahn Country Club's South Loop, its autumn ambience is much better.  It has a nice mix of Maples, Oaks, and Evergreens.  It has a decent basic restaurant and good spectator sight-lines.  This ambience post includes two Seldom Seens at Midwest Council events.

Vintage racers chase each other through Turn 2 toward the Corner Station at Turn 3.  Not typical late-October weather.

OK, this is just a guess, but I'm thinking there isn't much to do in Wind Lake but eat, party, and bat fish.  So you
cheeseheads from Wind Lake have a standing invitation to come down any time for an Asian Carp fish-batting
party on the Illinois River.  We will show you a good time: world class fish batting.  (See the YouTube vids.)

The Pilote-Approved Corner Worker's car.  No, silly, the Civic Si.  Turn 6 at Blackhawk Farms.

My camera, and iPhoto's editing tools, normally produce beautiful pictures with spot-on color.  But I cannot get this
one to reproduce the absolutely gorgeous highly-oxegenated-blood tone of Ferrari's red.  It's not tomato, and it has
no purple/blue tones in it, like this pic.  I have sneered at the styling of the nose of the Modena series of Ferraris.
But there's not much to complain about from the side and rear.

Another thing seldom-seen at Midwest Council events: a real-deal Porsche GT 3.  I have no idea what class he ran in,
and didn't stick around to see the "big bore" race at the end of the day.  But it's a safe bet that he won.