New Old Photo

A nice shot of the Vintage Club pit area at Borgers Speedway in 2014.  It looks just like any pit area of 40 years earlier.  (Click the photo for an enlarged view.)

The Longest Track

Here the Vintage TQs are on the track at Wall Stadium this past Saturday.

Wall Stadium is "the longest track" in a couple of ways.  First, for decades it was the largest track on which the ATQMRA raced.  Second, and more importantly in this context, it is the track on which the ATQMRA has raced the longest.  The TQs began racing at Wall Stadium in the 1950s and have raced there every year since.

Countless Race Victories

We don't have anywhere near enough fingers and toes to add up the number of racing victories represented by this group, photographed at a Vintage Club event at Bethel Motor Speedway.

The occasion included a tribute to Jim Maguire, which is why he is holding the plaque.

Bethel Motor Speedway is relatively close to the site of Max Yasgur's farm, where in 1969 the famous Woodstock festival took place.  Some of these guys were racing that weekend!

Not Quite 75 Cents

What’s this?

It is the remnants of one of the ATQMRA’s most successful cars, the Zrinski “Six Bits,” the Crosley-powered #75 driven to multiple race victories by Jack Duffy.

Included among those victories was the one-and-only automobile race run inside New York City’s Madison Square Garden more than 40 years ago.

It is now in the hands of Lou Zrinski once again, and Lou is undertaking a full restoration.  (Click the photo for an enlarged view.)  Jack has his helmet bag ready!

An interesting sidebar to this story is that Jack Duffy was the only driver this car ever had.  In the years when the driver was one of the parts most often changed in a race car, the relationship between car owner Zrinski and driver Duffy was solid.

Here is another shot of the car, with Duffy at the wheel, taken after a feature race win at the Freeport Stadium in 1975:

A Stock Car?

What’s this doing here?

It’s here because the smiling young driver in victory lane at Freeport over 40 years ago vacated the seat in this street stock Camaro and began racing with the ATQMRA.  (Click the photo for an enlarged view.)

He’s Joe Schaefer, who got his start in racing at the wheel of this Camaro in 1974, driving for Fred Tuski.  The team had quite a year, winning eleven features that season.  Those of us in the ATQMRA witnessed most of those victories since the TQs were racing at Freeport on a regular basis.

It was obvious that Joe’s success was due both to the advantages of the light and nimble Camaro – most of the Freeport street stocks were mid-size and full-size cars – and to his smoothness at the wheel.  Clearly, Joe had the knack.

But at the end of the year the track management – Don and Gino Campi at the time – told Joe that he could no longer race in the street stock class, that he was required to move up.  Problem was, he did not have the money necessary to advance, so he and Fred instead purchased the #18 TQ from Pete Petraitis.

They repainted the car white and burgundy and re-numbered it X-1.

Joe started the 1975 season in the ATQMRA but soon landed a Late Model ride, so he only raced the TQ when time permitted. He  won the Late Model Race of Champions qualifier that year so he headed back to the stock car world.  He later drove Modifieds for Lou Timolat, a former midget driver himself and helicopter traffic pilot for WCBS radio in New York, until injuries ended Joe’s racing career in 1983.

During the time that Joe had the TQ he raced it at the Long Island tracks as well as a time or two on the dirt at Grandview and an occasional trip to Pine Brook.

Joe Schaefer went on to become President of Konig American, and he contacted us to help fill in any blanks in the history of the race car, which is now restored as the #18 and participating with the Vintage Club.

42 Years Later

A few minutes before the doors opened for the annual Motorsports show in the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in January of 2014, the freshly-restored Barclay #93 stands ready in the ATQMRA booth.

The car was looking extra-sharp and attracted plenty of attention during the weekend-long exhibit.

The ATQMRA and the Vintage Club occupied a shared display space, calling attention to both the 2014 racing schedule of the modern TQs and to the activities of the Vintage Club.

Below is a photograph of this same car, at New Egypt Speedway 42 years earlier, with Jim Barclay up on the wheel.  (Click either photo for an enlarged view.)