 I'm John Seaman, and I'm here at Road America Race Track in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin for the 28th annual Elkhart Lake Vintage Festival, hosted by the Vintage Sports Car Driver Association. This is the weekend of September 6th, 7th, and 8th. On Friday, there will be practice sessions for the different race groups, followed by an hour-enduro. Saturday will feature the 2.5-liter Trans Am racing group, followed by a gather on the green car show in the evening. Triumph is the featured mark this weekend, and you'll see a large variety of triumphs from early TR2s up through and including the TR8. Several other notable cars that are appearing this weekend will be a Cunningham race car that ran here at Elkhart Lake in 1952. In 1958, Lister Jaguar Nobly that won the Elkhart Lake Road races in 1958. Kaz Kasner is the guest of honor this weekend, and Kaz had a lot of success back in the 60s preparing triumphs for racing. Kaz Kasner is also involved in a series of races called the Kasner Cup. The winner of the Kasner Cup is judged based on racing performance, car preparation and appearance, and enthusiasm. On Sunday, the Elkhart Lake Vintage Festival will also feature the Kimberly Cup, the Sheldon Cup, and the Elkhart Lake Cup. I'm with Dan Fowler and Robert Johns. These gentlemen have a very interesting history in racing back in the late 50s, I believe. Dan, would you start us off with a little bit of how you got into the sport? I started racing as a stock car before I got into the sports car, but then I got into the service. We were stationed in a little airport base of Bittburg in Germany, and it was about 30 miles from the Nürburgring. So I got a lot of time in and went to Bittburg Sports Car Club, and we used to hold meets up there. So I got a lot of time on the ring, and I think I got to know the ring probably as well as most average Germans did at the time, and helped out a lot in the race. About 54 and 53. Robert, how'd you start it in here? Ironically, Dan and I were members of the Bittburg Sports Car Club. I had been to Watkins Glen in 51 and 52 and got the bug about sports cars. I enlisted in the Air Force and ended up being shipped to Germany, and was stationed at Bittburg in the Sames Quadrant as Dan. And then he got an MGTF, which he had not mentioned, and then he used to take me up to the Nürburgring with him, and then eventually I got an MGTC, and I used to go to the ring in practice, and I didn't even know about the race until I came back from to Africa. And here he had won the race, won it, and raced it and won it. What year was that, Dan, when you won? It was 1954, August, you know, along with the Grand Prix of Europe. So there were a lot of spectators there. I think the estimated there were 250,000 spectators at that race. Now, after the service, did you stay with triumphs after that? Oh yeah, I raced triumphs in the United States for a couple of years after that, and then I got an AC Bristol later. I raced it here at Elkhart Lake several times. It was probably 58, 59 somewhere in there. Mostly through 58, I raced it pretty heavy. Now, Robert, did you do any racing when you got back? Well, before Dan shipped home, shortly after he raced at the Nürburgring and won this race at the Nürburgring, and I continued to race my triumphant in local events, and then in the spring of 1956, I went to a racing driver's school in Monza, Italy, and that was a big help to me, not so much from what we learned, but from the notoriety of being there in connections, connections. I raced at the Armed Forces Day in the spring of 1956 in Germany, and won the race there, and then I came back to the States shortly after that, and then because of the success I had had in Germany and going to this Swiss Racing Driver's School, I got recommended to be invited to drive for the Triumph Team at Siebring in 1957, and I drove for the Triumph Team in 1957, who took 19th overall and first in place, first in class, and then after that, I could see my future was not in the sports car racing, so I went off to college and got a degree in engineering and had a career in mechanical engineering. I raced all through the Central Division here, Mid-Ohio and Elkhart Lake and Brainerd International and Milwaukee. I had both the Triumph and the AC Bristol. There was a four-year stretch there where I won 85% of the races I entered. Now, I understand that you later got involved in Formula Vs, and this is the 50th anniversary of Formula V. Yeah, that's true. I was racing stock cars for a while, and I really didn't like going around in circles, and road racing was my thing, and they come out with this Formula V, and it looked like it was going to be a pretty reasonable racing, and so I got into that, I bought a beach kit and put it together myself and built an engine up for it, and went out racing, and I ended up winning the American Road Racing Champion. Yeah, 65 is when the American Road Racing Champions. You're both friends with Kaz Kasner, and he is our guest of honor this weekend, and the Kasner Cup, have you been to any of those events in the last couple of years? I started at Wicens Glen, and when was that, five years ago, and then I've been to all of them since then. I really missed the racing, but after a while you get too old to do it, but it's left me with many great memories and enjoyed all the time I did it. We all regret not continuing on. It's an expensive proposition, and that's one thing that you have to balance with. Yes, we may have had the ability to drive, but did we have the ability to support it? And so you make your choices in life. I'm with Kaz Kasner. Kaz is an honored guest here at the Elkhart Lake Vintage Festival. I got interested in sports cars back in the early 50s, in 51 and 52 with the MGs, and rather than go to the dealers who didn't know anything, I sent England for books, and I sent to Germany for tools, and I started working on my own car and figuring out a thing and made mistakes, but I found out how things worked. I didn't know a camshaft and a spark plug, and in two years I was building engines and tuning other people's cars and beating everybody while I was doing it, so that was the start in it and just kind of expanded from there. Eventually I got into a TR-2 in about 1955, 54, 55. I raced that car about eight months, and at the same time I had an MG Special that I built, or I built my own body onto the stock chassis, and one would tow the other and I never knew which was going to tow the other one home, and the closest race was about 350-400 miles, so in those days just a few races, and they were straight races primarily. Aspen, Colorado was my first one, but in Salida, Colorado, and I did Buffalo Bill Hill Climb, I had a race in Midvale, Utah, I came down to the West Coast for the Pebble Beach race in 1956, the last one that they ran on a 17-mile drive, and I ran at the Glendale Grand Prix in those days, and just a lot of races, wherever there was one that I had the time to get off and get there, I drove the car on the road there, raced it and drove it home again. In 1958 I went to work for the Triumph distributor, and in 1960 the factory bought them out and I became the service supervisor for I guess the 11 western states, and so I did that, and at the same time I was racing my own car, TR3, up through 1960, just in almost 1961, and I crashed it pretty good into Santa Barbara race, and the factory, the executives in New York found out that I had crashed the car and told me promptly that the executives of this company do not race. So my choice was I could have a career with this company, or I could continue on to driving cars that were never going to win me anything and do nothing but cost, because primarily I couldn't get in the really good cars because they were too big for them, too tall for them. So I made that choice and said, okay, that's what I'll do, but at the same time I started running the driving school for the California Sports Club, and I ran it for three years, teaching everybody else how to drive. The Castner Cup has been going on now for how many years? This is the 11th year. I started in 2003 at Mossport, and I went to one of the races back in Mid-Ohio in 2002, and I saw some of the nice trophies that were given at a long-time, yearly annual trophies that were given by the MG Club, and I said, jeez, that's a nice thing to do, because some of the trophies that the guys get are not much. I said, well, I'll buy a nice trophy and I'll just offer it, and I made some rules, and so it's not all based on just that particular race, but the car has to be nice, it has a nice looking and all that, and that they have to be interested in vintage racing, and so that was it, and it's worked out wonderfully well. The thing is that no one can win it two years in a row. It's not at the same racetrack ever, two years in a row, so it's been all over the country. It was in Mossport to start with, it went to California, it's gone to Atlanta twice, it's, let's see, it's gone to Hallett, Oklahoma, it's gone to Watkins Glen, it's gone to Portland to Button Willow in California, and next year it'll be in Texas. So it's getting now, it's getting now to where some clubs are kind of vying for the opportunity to have the cup race, and so that's cool. It's great for the Triumph guys, they talk about it for six months before the race, and they all seem to gather together in this particular place, they've just done an absolutely marvelous job of organizing it. Joey Alexander I think has been the spark plug in back of it to keep everybody looking in the same direction and down the road. It's 50% for track performance. So if a guy's, you know, he's got a nice car but he can't drive, I'm not interested. I mean it's too bad, but that's how it is. There's a lot of people have a nice car, have a lot of enthusiasm, and good drive, and they do show the car off. But I'm looking as much as anything, I'm looking for a car that's performing out of class. A guy that's racing with people he probably shouldn't be racing with, with that kind of car. So that's why we've had Spitfires win, we've had TR3s, TR3 won last year, we've had TR4s, TR6, the TR250K, my old car, that one one year, but it depends on the circumstances and the field of drivers and so on. $10,000 off-penders. $10,000 off-penders. $10,000 off-penders. $10,000 off-penders. $10,000 off-penders. $10,000 off-penders. They did have two seats and they used the 4-inch. $10,000 off-penders. This is for our Kimberly Cup race, which is the time to bend of course, and it's three minutes slower our term and they get a one-second grace period because never quite sure and our winner David Prolich had a 259.327 so he squeaked in with three tenths of a second where he would have been disqualified so he knows how to play the game so I should get an award for that I'm with Robert Williams and this is one of the rare Cunningham C4Rs can you give us a little bit of the history of the car it's a 1952 C4R Roadster the most successful of all the Cunningham racing cars in terms of races entered and wins and its most distinguished victory if you will was to be third at Le Mans in 1954 and first in class Briggs Cunningham achieved that level of success at Le Mans twice once in 53 with a C5 and with this car in 54 his goal of course was to win Le Mans do you know how many other races the car was involved in other than Le Mans yes it won here at Elkhart Lake in 52 with John Fitt I think there were seven or eight victories number of seconds John Fitt was the primary dot driver this car did not win Sebring we thought for many years it did it is the other Roadster which is in the Collier Museum the engine does this have the Chrysler in it it's the 331 Hemi and highly modified by Chrysler we've had it apart a couple of times and it was very interesting what we found another kind of interest part of the car was that it has a sea out of bus transmission and there was a real problem having all that torque and how could you handle it with reliability a third interesting part which is visible if you take the front wheels off is that there are sensors in the drum brakes there and the idea was that you wanted to wear the brakes down at 4.8m to exactly halfway and a light would go on on the dashboard if they got at that halfway point they were thinking about the future no question about do you know about what the car weighs I think it's 2400 about 600 or 360 horsepower how did you find out about the car my cousin owned it and when we were together one time I just said if you ever want to sell it let me know and he did so I took up the cause that was 1983 and in the succeeding 25 30 years almost now I've tried to celebrate what Briggs Cunningham was in terms of a real pioneer a real gentleman and a very major commitment to American motorsport it was just extraordinary what he did there's a website Briggs Cunningham comm that's gives a lot of the detail so I've had the car now for this period of time I sold it actually in 1990 to a neurosurgeon in Philadelphia Fred Simeone who has a fabulous museum a provenance of the cars that he has is just extraordinary this is such a rare treat and such an exciting time here to have the C4R at Road America for this Elkhart Lake Vintage Festival so thank you for bringing it well it's a pleasure to be here it's like coming home we did several races here in the 85678 and the goal was to participate not to win and in that context celebrate what Briggs Cunningham meant to motorsports in America I'm a Tony Garmay and he has a 1967 Triumph 250k which is a special car what's the association with Cas Casner well 1967 Cas Casna came up with this with Peter Brock to come up with a production-based sports car that they could go race to help promote the Triumph product and Pete Brock designed the body and Cas and Pete both built it through 67 and raced at Sebring 68 how did you find and acquire the car well actually I'm just a mechanic there's a family in Seattle where we're based who owned the car and I originally restored the car for them in 1998 and it gets used once a year for the K Cup race and it's still going pretty good it is I was watching you yesterday and you have some pretty good times with it well that's thank you for that the cars are doing quite well yeah it's a rather lightweight I assume and what's the spec on the engine CCs etc. actually it's not as light as you think it's 2,200 pounds all the lights work turn signals wipers washable everything works as it was for the FIA prototype rules in 1968 and current weight 2200 with a 2-liter GT6 engine 165 horsepower at the flywheel sir yeah so it's not overly powered but it's a bit it had the handling is a little has its idiosyncrasies it's a little odd with the arrow and the driver adjustable wing is bolted in a fixed position because when it closes nothing good happens I hope I broke three I saw you almost about a GT6 I come like a dog, chase my car, I catch him at every corner this weekend and it is award time we've got a class award based on top time in each of these categories are we ready? all right first up Spitfire with a time of 249 Jerry Barker with a time of 250 no, all right Leo with a time of 240 oh here's a big surprise Sam in the TR8 at 239 another shocking surprise contested GT6 with a time of 253 is largely it the special category who else? right, but peyote and will Chris has gotten better every year there are so many close things to think at and look at and I try to keep track of everybody as well as I could and this is a different absolutely outstanding performance by 1090 DCA for inverting the field that's an incentive Joe Alexander took on a great event my support is wife who was out kicking buddy group 2 and then Rush Matt we had a close phone, the Elkhart Lake Cup till now so as most of you probably know we have the Kimberlake Cup, the Sheldon Cup, the Elkhart Lake Cup and the races in the streets from 50-51-52 we started that in 2010 on the anniversary I know