senor honda

Keystone Motor Club supports 2023 Cigar City Flatheads Winterfest March 3rd to 5th
2023 and cohosted by Drifters of Tampa.
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Stirling Moss, I thought about you today.

When the Cigar City Flatheads and the Tampa Drifters finished the Cigar City Winterfest Tour on Sunday, it was at a peaceful park on the East side of Lake Tarpon at John Chestnut Park. Cliff and Maggie Danielson pointed out to me that there was an Eagle in a branch over looking our cookout

Stirling, in your time you did the impossible more than once, outrunning Ferraris that overpowered your outdated
Lotus-Climax Formula 1 car.
I understand that, since long ago I learned that after doing the impossible once, doing the impossible gets easier.

I have an old picture of you and Juan Manuel Fangio racing and winning at Sebring in 1957.
There were no guard rails. There were 50 gallon drums and rubber cones. Telephone poles were right next to the track. There were no roll bars on race cars.
Drivers raced in T-shirts when there were no fire suits and no fire suppression systems, Racers wore shorty helmets at a time when there were no full coverage helmets, and before you quit racing, you had worn the same shorty helmet for at least 30 years.

You once said there were only two states when you race a car. One is full throttle and the other is braking so hard the tires are chirping.
I know first hand what that chirping sounds like. In the 70's, under maximum braking the LeMans Porsches were fish tailing side to side and they really move around like that under high speed braking at Lemans.

In between full acceleration and fish tailing with brakes chirping is where the magic is. Stirling was at the Annual Bathurst 1000 many years ago and did the impossible. Stirling was invited to co-drive one of the works GM cars. Second practice lap out, having never driven the car before on a 4 mile mountain circuit,
he was lapping within 2 seconds of the factory drivers.

He pulled into the pits. The car had all four brakes on fire and the engine smoking out of the valve cover breathers. He asked for some tire pressure changes and "it could do with another litre of oil. I wont switch it off in case it doesn't start again." This was just untimed practice. Off he went again and broke the class lap record 4 laps later.

Stirling as we are approaching April 12th 2023, I was thinking about you.