{"id":1827,"date":"2016-06-17T11:12:10","date_gmt":"2016-06-17T18:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/erikdolson.com\/?p=1827"},"modified":"2016-06-17T11:15:43","modified_gmt":"2016-06-17T18:15:43","slug":"pnw-racers-doing-well-at-indy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/?p=1827","title":{"rendered":"PNW racers doing well at Indy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Racers from the Pacific Northwest are doing well at the 2016 Brickyard Vintage Racing Invitational<\/a>, weathering a storm that threatened to blow them away when they arrived.<\/p>\n

As of early Friday, David Kuniki, driving an A-Production Corvette with a 427 cubic inch motor, was running first or second in the event against cars owned by professional race shops.<\/p>\n

Curt Kallberg, also driving a 427 Vette, is in the top middle of the pack, according to Kuniki.\u00a0Jeff Taylor of Sisters Oregon was racing his 1964 Studebaker in A Sedan. Taylor could not be reached. Norm Daniels is driving a Camaro Trans-Am car.<\/p>\n

Matt Parent was first in his class in his Cup Car (a stock car), and was doing quite well driving his small block Corvette in B-Production with a 350 cubic inch motor, according to engine builder Craig Blood of Blood Enterprises.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s 4th in B Production and 13th overall,\u201d Blood said.<\/p>\n

Jeff Mincheff and Jackie Mincheff, experienced drivers from the Portland area but new to Corvettes, are doing well, according to their mechanic Jon Bibler, who also wrenches for Kallberg and Erik Dolson.<\/p>\n

\u201cJackie is doing pretty good. Jeff\u2019s car ( a recent acquisition) is a neat piece, everything on it is as it was raced in 1972. But there\u2019s some work to do (to make it competitive),\u201d Bibler said.<\/p>\n

Kuniki said the track reminded him of Portland International Raceway.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are two fast chutes. After one, there is a hard right and left, like the chicane in Portland. The back section is technical, you can overdrive it and lose time.\u00a0 <\/span>Curt (Kallberg) and I both think it\u2019s similar to Portland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kuniki qualified 1st on Thursday,\u00a0\u201con new tires with a 1:38:8. This morning I qualified second with a 1:39:3. I had the older tires on, maybe I was too nervous. This afternoon I\u2019ll have fresh rubber and put it on \u2018kill.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cAlong the straight you are three feet off the wall, and the sound from our big blocks is pretty cool.”<\/p>\n

Kuniki is dueling with an “incredibly prepared” Corvette driven by Edward Sevadjian, president of\u00a0 <\/span>Duntov Motor Company<\/a>, and\u00a0<\/span>Peter Klutt, owner of Legendary Motorcar Company.<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“They made Klutt\u00a0<\/span>put a small block in his car to run A production (small blocks normally run B-production), and he still\u00a0qualified behind me with a small block on old tires,\u201d Kuniki said. \u201cCurt Kallberg is in the upper middle of the pack, even though he’s running with the wrong gears and the wrong carb setting.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the racers set up on Wednesday, a thunderstorm blew through the area that threatened to take them out. Bibler said it was like a tornado almost touched down. Kuniki said that he and mechanic Freddie Jonsson had all they could do to save the tents and awning.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt came on in about a minute. Freddie and I were both holding on to the awning on the trailer and it was picking us up like Mary Poppins. We managed to save the awning but then had to grab the tent and hold on to it for about an hour.\u00a0 <\/span>Nobody could help anybody else, everyone had their own problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom Cantrell said the weather was fierce.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first day the weather was bad, storms came though and were just ripping us. We got about 5 inches of rain in two hours, canopies were blowing away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then, though, weather has been good, if a little humid.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re having fun,\u201d Cantrell said. \u201cSo far the track has been good. We\u2019re getting to know the Can-Am car, making little changes here and there, but it\u2019s doing really well. The cup car is just excellent. We cut four and a half seconds off the last time we were here. We let Brent Glassetner (a builder of Nascar race cars in North Carolina ) have it in the off season, that was a good decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cNorm Daniels is doing good, Kallberg seems pretty problem free. All the guys from the Pacific Northwest are doing well,\u201d said Cantrell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Racers from the Pacific Northwest are doing well at the 2016 Brickyard Vintage Racing Invitational<\/a>, weathering a storm that threatened to blow them away when they arrived.<\/p>\n

As of early Friday, David Kuniki, driving an A-Production Corvette with a 427 cubic inch motor, was running first or second in the event against cars owned by professional race shops.<\/p>\n

Curt Kallberg, also driving a 427 Vette, is in the top middle of the pack, according to Kuniki.\u00a0Jeff Taylor of Sisters Oregon was racing his 1964 Studebaker in A Sedan. Taylor could not be reached. Norm Daniels is \u2026 Read more\u2026 → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[290,1],"tags":[356,292,359,358,297,295,79,357],"class_list":["post-1827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-never-enough","category-uncategorized","tag-can-am","tag-corvettes","tag-indianapolis","tag-indy","tag-mustangs","tag-race-cars","tag-racing","tag-trans-am"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3mcOb-tt","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1827"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1834,"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1827\/revisions\/1834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erikdolson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}