2011 Mopars at Maple Grove Raceway

[BananaDan]

I thought there was a thread for this show already but couldn't find it.  Maybe I'm losing my mind?  Anyway, a few of us made it out to the Maple Grove show this weekend in PA.  Here are my pics from Sunday when I was there.  My car made the trip with flying colors, her longest trip by far since getting back on the road.  It was about 230 miles round trip and she passed 500 miles on the odometer (set to 0 during restoration).  It was a great dry run for the Carlisle trip and rollin' down the highways in her through the countryside was awesome.

http://s1093.photobucket.com/albums/i432/dstrzelec/2011%20Maple%20Grove%20Mopar%20Show/

In the end, the show wasn't bad.  It's still in its infancy, but they seem committed to keep it growing.  They had 2 classes per body style, stock and modified.  Bill440RT took 2nd place with his Sublime 69 in the B-Body modified class.   

[71ChallengeHer]

Nice meeting you, Dan. Your Charger is beautiful.  Bill , congrats.  You guys missed Bill Stiles almost wrecking his Duster. 

[BananaDan]

It was nice to meet you too Jackie.

[bill440rt]

Kudos to Dan for having the guts to drive his Charger that far with so little wheel time. I thought it performed awesome, Dan! Congrats! 

For it's first show, I thought the Maple Grove event was very promising. It was great to hear they are supporting it. While it doesn't compare to Carlisle, with the promotion, sponsors, Mopar Action magazine support, & attractions it blew away the Mopars at E-town joke by a country mile. I would definitely go back.

Nice to see the DC.com members here that also made the show. Jackie, can't wait to see those pics! 

[71ChallengeHer]

Kudos to Dan for having the guts to drive his Charger that far with so little wheel time. I thought it performed awesome, Dan! Congrats! 

For it's first show, I thought the Maple Grove event was very promising. It was great to hear they are supporting it. While it doesn't compare to Carlisle, with the promotion, sponsors, Mopar Action magazine support, & attractions it blew away the Mopars at E-town joke by a country mile. I would definitely go back.

Nice to see the DC.com members here that also made the show. Jackie, can't wait to see those pics! 

Bill. As soon as Steve gets them to me. I'll post em up.  I could have driven the Challenger. The noise I heard was the leaf spring bushings. 

[Just 6T9 CHGR]

Looked like a lot of nice stuff there....maybe next year for me.....if they move the date away from Carlisle

Even looked like some guys already had their Carlisle stickers already on the windshields!   

[BrianShaughnessy]

Thanks for the pics Dan and congrats Bill.

For what it's worth...  I called Rick up around lunchtime when I was at work Sunday and tried to influence the car show judging for you guys but apparently some local club was in charge of the show so whatever happened happened on it's own.   Lotta good that did 

Heres the gist of what Rick and I chatted about.   They're pretty happy for the first time...     they sold a lot of subscriptions,  gave away some T shirts with the subs, and Rick sold some older leftover Nats shirts.   They signed up to do at least 2 more years.   They really like the location.    Looks nice in the pics 

As far as the date, well,  if I'm still employed next year at the same place then I will still not make it.   Last year when I first heard about this they wrote me in for working the booth... sorry but I got a real job, it's end of the quarter and I gotta be there.   But anyway the Track owner is possibly thinking about moving it in another week to move it further from Carlisle.  I don't think he has to worry much about Etown.   Would that be better for anyone?

Prices: I had mentioned some people were unhappy with the admission prices.    Track owner made the prices the same as Super Chevy events he has there.     Prices will be reviewed for next year.

Rick wants to see more people racing so another thing to be considered is a couple time trials for car show participants for maybe $10 or so extra fee.   Track owner admitted the event is geared more towards pro racing than street cars.   Would car show guys go for a couple runs or not?  I think most won't but maybe there's a few.   

Other than that,   I'm told Jersey Joe won best E body with his B7 '70 Chally R/T.

[BananaDan]

He did, I met him for the first time but I didn't know he was JerseyJoe.  His Chally was nice. 

Regarding the judging/show aspect... yeah, I didn't want to bitch too much because there were definitely a lot of nice cars there, and as soon as I rolled in I knew I wouldn't place.  But the judging was definitely sketchy.  They walked down the row of B-Body stock cars and spent a lot of time on the first few cars in the row with their clipboards and then at a point just walked down the line past 10 more cars in about 60 seconds.  It was more like the two classes were "cars that are car club members" and modified, rather than stock and modified.  I'm not saying my car is a concourse car, or even that I care that much about getting a trophy because the cars that won were great rides.  But after paying $30 to get in to show her, driving 2.5 hours each way, 25 gallons of $4/gal gas, eating their crappy food and they walk past my car without giving it a second look?  And next to me were two beautiful max wedge cars, not even a second glance from the judges.  Who knows, maybe their pens ran out of ink?  But they were crawing on the ground to inspect the undercarriage of the Hemi GTX next to me for about 10 minutes.

I was actually talking to JerseyJoe when they were judging the GTX next to me and in a blink he asked me, where'd the judges go? (he was hanging with his buddies that had the two max wedges)  They literally disappeared.

[BananaDan]

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[Chris G.]

But anyway the Track owner is possibly thinking about moving it in another week to move it further from Carlisle. Would that be better for anyone?

Moving it one week will not help at all. I was there both days, and the car show was thin but nice, the "manufacturers midway" was non-existent and the swaps were 3 or 4 guys way out in the fields. Nobody is going to travel to a late June PA show knowing Carlisle is right around the corner.

The race cars were great. No shabby cars at all. It was a breath of fresh air not seeing stock Challengers and Chargers lined up to make passes all day like you see in E-Town.

Back to the date...I know it won't happen, but moving this show to May would really bring it to life. It would take anything e-town still had to offer and also bring in people who don't want to wait until July to go to PA. A May show would be almost like an east coast kickoff show and it would probably bring in a ton more show cars and even more race cars. The facility is great, the food is no better than e-town (price and quality), and the admission price is painful, but that's the same at any race track event.

The show has potential, but keeping it around late June is a huge mistake.

[BrianShaughnessy]

May is what killed Etown...  that and that stupid deal about sales tax that scarred off all the vendors... and the hundreds of other reasons people don't bother going there anymore.

Weather in May is just too shaky until you get out to Memorial day and then people have other things to do.   Beginning of June is probably earliest it can go.   If the schedule opens up.  Even then the week before is probably fathers day and that's another headache.

This show may never take full flight ... who knows.   

[TUFCAT]

Good pictures Dan. See you at Carlisle.