A bittersweet weekend at the Pacific Northwest Historics in Kent WA on June 30-July 2

The sweet part of this weekend was the 1961 # 00 Simpson Special raced by the late Dave MacDonald that took Dr Ernie Nagamatsu 2 years to re-create.  (Please feel free to contact us for more details in our Corvette Race Car Archive). 

The bitter part is that Dave’s son Rich has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer.

 High spirits prevailed nonetheless as racers from back in the day like Wally Peat, Dave’s mechanic, Larry Webb engine builder and Joe Freitas made things special.

Five (5) Solid Axle Corvettes spiced up the group for small bore sports cars that numbered 44 in total.

# 00 Ernie Nagamatsu from Los Angeles in his 1961 Simpson Spcl SCCA CM as mentioned per above doing battle with…..

# 61 Cooper DuBois from Portland OR in his 1962 SCCA B Production.

# 111 Jake Angel from Bainbridge Island WA in his 1960 ex Doug Nicoli SCCA BP.

# 283 Ron Erickson from Bainbridge Island WA in his 1957 ex Fred Yeakel SCCA BP leading # 614 Tony Garmey from Buckley WA in Steve Earle’s 1959 SCCA BP ex Bob Bondurant SCCA BP.

# 6 Brad & Debbie Briscoe in their 1957 ex Paul Reinhart SCCA BP was on display.

 Four (4) Corvettes and a Cheetah raced in a field of 25 big bore sports cars.

# 15 the above-mentioned Brad Briscoe from Renton WA in his 1976 TA Greenwood chassis 010 ex Sam Mancuso.

 # 31 Chuck Ward from SeaTac WA in his 1969 SCCA A Production.

# 71 James Buskirk from Kingston WA in his 1968 ex Bill Leonard Mecca Performance SCCA BP.

# 86 the above-mentioned Cooper DuBois from Portland OR in his 1964 ex Bruce Leven SCCA BP.

# 11 Jeff Taylor from Bend OR in his 1964 Chevy powered Cheetah by Bill Thomas in SCCA CM. 

A heap of credit for organizing the 70th anniversary of the Corvette goes to Jacob Angel who also manages the SOVREN website, to Bob and Becky Pengraph and a host of devoted members.

Photos courtesy of David Schultz and Patrick Krohn.