Virginia International Raceway And SVRA Team Up For Gold Cup 2009

[PressRoom-GFN]

DANVILLE, Va. -- Virginia International Raceway and Sportscar Vintage Racing Association officials have announced the annual Heacock Classic Gold Cup Historic Races will become a joint venture promoted by VIR and SVRA for 2009 and beyond.

Next year's Heacock Classic Gold Cup is scheduled for June 5-7.

“We are excited and honored to have SVRA bring their expertise in vintage sports car racing to the Heacock Classic Gold Cup Historic Races,” track owners Harvey Siegel and Connie Nyholm said. “The Gold Cup has become one of the most significant events on the vintage car calendar each year and together with SVRA we can continue to grow the event.”

SVRA Competition Director Carl Jensen noted the organization's participants enjoyed racing on the historic track.

“It’s an honor to race on a track that still has the same layout it did when Carroll Shelby raced and won here in the first feature race in 1957,” Jensen said. “To be able to put some of the same cars on the same track over 50 years later is a huge thrill for all of us.”

For the competitors, this means the traditional SVRA classes will be folded into the Gold Cup, but some unique VIR traditions will remain like the Vintage Go-Kart Challenge. Moreover, VIR and SVRA plan to continue with the Heacock Classic Gold Cup social rituals, that have helped make the event special, including the traditional Black-and-White party on Friday night and the false grid welcome party on Thursday. Live music will be provided Thursday-Saturday.

For the fans, picture a paddock where a brace of exotic Italian cars from the '50s are being tuned, then turn the corner and see a front-engined Chaparral rumbling out to start a session, flanked by Allards and Jaguars. Take a few more steps and be confronted by a Bugeye Sprite and a Morgan parked next to a fleet of formula cars. Filling their own corner of the paddock is a large crowd of historic stock cars, some of them still in the colors they wore at Rockingham, Charlotte or Richmond. This is the Heacock Classic Gold Cup, truly a melting pot of automobile racing, combining history, speed, thrill and heritage, all at the track that is one of the few road courses in the country still raced in the same configuration these cars first saw when it opened in the 1950s.

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