1 Northlander March 2013 - North Country Region

Bernie Ecclestone, who manages the Grand Prix “circus”, deferred his franchise fee for the event. He was never paid. Fittingly,
the independent team of Frank Williams won the last US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen with driver Alan Jones as World Champion.
The era of 1200 horsepower turbo 4 cylinder F1 cars had come and gone at Watkins Glen.
-Epilogue Watkins Glen was rescued from bankruptcy by the Corning Glass company in 1983, with Bill France from NASCAR
providing support. Their first move was to remove the Scheckter Chicane in turn 2. NASCAR eventually took a majority interest
and created Watkins Glen International, the track we know today with NASCAR races there being the biggest spectator events
in New York State. Cam Argetsinger was the grand marshal of the first Winston Cup race in 1986. He died in 2008.
Perhaps this bit of history will give you some new perspective on Watkins Glen. I hope you go there and make your own memories.
P.S. Last year I used my monthly Social report to the BOD to provide a running commentary on Magnus Racing. They are an
independent GT3 Cup team racing in the Grand Am series and I have a good friend who is their data acquisition guy and who
also helps the team engineer with gas and pit strategy. Well they ended up 5th at the Rolex 24 hr. endurance race at Daytona
in January. They were leading with an hour to go but a disagreement on pit strategy lead to a green flag pit stop while others
pitted under yellow. None the less, Magnus was the highest finishing Porsche in the GT class. Yes, higher than Brumos. Check
out their website www.magnusracing.com. They post in-car video clips of hot laps from test sessions at various tracks and also
publish tongue-in-cheek interviews with crew members. Very humorous. On race day they provide live webcasts from their pits.
You can’t get closer to the action unless you are there in person.
March 2013
13 Northlander