Monday, March 7, 2016

Indy's Bench Racing Weekend coming soon!



 
 
We are less than 2 weeks away from Bench Racing Weekend 2016 with another terrific event planned. The event starts Friday March 18 and concludes on Saturday night March 19th with a featured interview -no doubt attendees will hear some interesting racing history.

In summary, Bench Racing Weekend includes:

·         This year’s events begin on Friday evening. Dave “The King” Wilson will lead an informal conversation session from 7PM to 8PM on Friday with Terry Lingner in the Ballroom area, right next to registration. Also included in that evening event will be a display of fabulous race cars courtesy of Bob McConnell.

Barb Hellyer and the RacingHistory.org group will also provide video in the Stapleton Hospitality Suite featuring memorable videos and conversation about racing.  If you are arriving Friday night or if you are local to Indianapolis, you may want to drop by to enjoy these additional features. You can also get your registration material and avoid the rush on Saturday morning.

·         Saturday morning there are two private race shop tours including a visit to renowned race car restorer Walter Goodwin’s shop. Then the second tour of an active F2000 race team – John Cummiskey Racing.  John Cummiskey is also a restorer and will have some interesting cars in addition to his F2000 program.

·         An outdoor car show dedicated to former driver Bob Harkey.

·         A presentation of two very rare and immaculately restored Indy cars from the private collection of Bob McConnell.  A 1962 Watson roadster driven to second place by Len Sutton in the 500 and a 1970 Mongoose driven by Lloyd Ruby.

·         A small memorabilia and art exhibit.

·         Wanda Devin, mother of Al Unser Jr. will host a conversation with attendees.

·         A presentation of rare 16mm films of the Indy 500 from raresportsfilms.com presented by Doak Ewing.

·         A cocktail hour, and banquet. We expect to see many former Indy 500 drivers in attendance. The main feature, will be  “A Conversation with Chief Mechanics.”  Donald Davidson will interview Paul Diatlovitch, the owner of PDM racing and Ron Dawes from Hemelgarn Racing.

Information provided by
Bench Racing Weekend 2016 Team Members
Chuck Shuman & Anne Mitchell
408-373-8701, 317-243-7288
Clare Poremsky
419-350-2371

Sunday, March 6, 2016

A pair of must-read websites for Indy 500 fans  and racing historians 

Here at the Checkered Past, we promote the writing of racing history. Our friend William LaDow does a great job with his site Speedway Sightings which follows IndyCar happenings throughout the season, but particularly in May. The current posting is entitled "The Indianapolis 500 is a unique slice of Americana that should be on everyone's bucket list." I strongly encourage our readers to check it out

here's the link
  

https://speedwaysightings.wordpress.com


William is also the author of Conversations with a Winner - The Ray Nichels Story which you can get details about at 

 http://www.raynichels.com/index.html