Pueblo Trans-Am Invitationalrmvr.com/assets/documents/ta2010-program.pdf · 2018-06-06 · John Morton, El Segundo, CA, Age 60, Datsun 510 #25 Airplane pilot, fabricator, racecar

Thanks to the following major sponsors: Obialero Concrete Inc. • 3R Automotive • AAI Speed EquipmentAutosport Collision • Industrial Chemicals Corp.Mile High Crankshafts, Inc. • Rallye Coach WorksCoors Brewing Company

ROCKY MOUNTAINVINTAGE RACING

Pueblo Trans-AmInvitationalPueblo Motorsports Park, COJune 12-13, 2010

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John Morton, Peter Brock, and Mike Downs with one of the Brock Racing Enterprises Datsun 510s. In 1972, BRE cam-paigned three 510s. The first two were driven by Morton and Downs and the third was a guest car. Wilkinson photo.

Shelby American in route from Watkins Glen (NY) to Kent (WA) stopped off at Lake Garnett (KS) in early July 1963 to run a National SCCA race. The cars swiftly and efficiently defeated a field of corvettes and left a lasting impression. Chuck Brandt photo.

Cover: John Morton finished 2nd in the 2.5 liter Trans-Am Championship race at Laguna Seca 1971 after a vicious battle with Horst Kweck who never stopped for fuel and was disqualified for running an oversized fuel tank. Morton photo.

John Morton in the BRE Lotus-Ford A-car at Elkhart Lake July 1972. It was a big deal stepping up from 1800cc sedans to Formula A 5-liters and the L&M Continental 5000 series. Wilkinson photo.

2010 RMVR Pueblo Trans-Am Invitiational 1

Welcome to Pueblo Motorsports Park and the Trans-Am Invitational presented by Rocky Mountain Vintage Racing, Ltd. (RMVR). This event is a celebration of the Trans-American Sedan Racing series that was held at race tracks in the US and Canada, including a former 2.6-mile road course in Castle Rock, Colorado called Continental Divide Raceways (CDR). The Trans-Am was organized by the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) and became a manufacturer’s competition that pitted two liter Alfas against Porsches, BMWs, Datsuns, and Cortinas and the larger O2 (over two liter) Chevrolet Camaros against American Motors Javelins, Ford Mustangs, Plymouth Barracudas, and Dodge Darts and Challengers. It was (and is) one of the most exciting motor racing series to watch because everyday sedans that the public owned were raced by professional drivers on American and Canadian road racing circuits.

In 1971, SCCA gave the under 2 liter (U2) sedans their own 10 race series and called it the 2.5 Challenge. They ran separately on the same program as the 5-liter cars at some venues and ran with other series like Formula A at others. By this time, the Trans-Am series was no longer coming to Colorado and instead went to Limerock, Bryar, Mid-Ohio, Edmonton, Donnybrooke, Road America, Olath NAS KS, Mont-Tremblant, Watkins Glen, Michigan International, Riverside, and Laguna Seca. The competition was top shelf with Alfa GTVs driven by Kwech, Everett, and Midgely and others, BMWs driven by Pike, Zieries, and Norburn and others, and the Datsun 510s driven by Morton, Sharp, and Downs and a host of other drivers and cars.

Brock Racing Enterprises (BRE) out of Southern California out shined, out financed, and out drove the competition in 1971 and 1972, fielding up to three team cars driven by John Morton and Mike Downs and a guest driver. In 1972, guest drivers included Sam Posey, Bobby Allison, Jim Fitzgerald, and Peter Gregg. The BRE team won the 1971 and 1972 Trans-Am 2.5 Challenge and put the Datsun 510 into the history books.

We are honored to have SCCA Trans-Am champion John Morton joining us this weekend. John has a long list of champion-ship wins and podiums beyond Trans-Am that include SCCA C Production Championships, and a score of IMSA and FIA wins including Lemans and Sebring. John has brought his helmet and gloves and will be driving one or two club member cars, so watch your mirrors ladies and gentlemen!

In this program you will find historical photographs from Colorado’s former Continental Divide Raceways (CDR) and other memorabilia associated with Colorado’s racing past. Included is information on how to drive the Pueblo racing circuit, pictures from previous year’s events, RMVR club information, and Trans-Am history.

We wish to thank the many sponsors of this event with a special thanks to John Obialero, Inc., AAI Speed Equipment, 3R Automotive, Coors Brewing Company and host of other long time supporters of vintage Trans-Am racing in Colorado. We ask that you support all of the advertisers at this event who share our enthusiasm for the Trans-Am, Colorado’s racing history, and vintage motor racing.

Keith Davidson, Chairman, RMVR Trans-Am Invitational

Pueblo Motorsports Park and the Trans-Am Invitational presented by Rocky Mountain Vintage Racing, Ltd (RMVR)

Horst Kwech Alfa GTA and John Morton Datsun 510 and the field of 2.5 Challenge cars on the pace lap at Elkhart Lake July 1972. Wilkinson photo.

Sam Posey in the Autodynamics Dodge Challenger at Willow Springs in 1970. Sam later drove a Datsun 510 guest car for BRE at the Glen and Elkhart Lake in 1972. Friedman photo.

2 2010 RMVR Pueblo Trans-Am Invitiational

ROCKY MOUNTAIN VINTAGE RACING LTD.RMVR is a non-profit club of more than 400 members who are vintage rac-ing enthusiasts. Our club’s primary focus is the organization, production, and sanctioning of vintage car races in the Rocky Mountain region. We have over 350 eligible cars that are a minimum of 20 years old. Names such as Lotus, Corvette, McLaren, and Lola, along with lesser-known marques such as Abath, Morgan, Siata, and Zink participate in our events. The range of engines includes less than 1000 cc to more than seven liters of “ground-pounding” force. As Charter Members of the national group, Vintage Motorsports Council, we are pledged to promote the preservation of these cars in a racing format which emphasizes driver safety and “etiquette”. To achieve this goal, we have devel-oped our own team of race officials including Event Chairs, Race Stewards, Registrars, Pit and Grid, Corner Marshalls, Starters, Tech Inspectors, and Timing and Scoring.

The Benefits Of RMVR Membership: •The Apex

•Free Admission To All Track Events •Invitation to All Speed Events and More

•Free Classified Ads in the Monthly Newsletter

You need not own a vintage car to become a member and participant in Rocky Mountain Vintage Racing.

RMVR • 32034 Snowshoe Rd. • Evergreen, CO 80439 • 303-319-3062

2010 Schedule of Events

DATE EVENT LOCATIONMarch 20-21 Fire and Rescue School Denver, CO

April 16-18 Spring Driver’s School High Plains Raceway, CO

May 15-16 Spring Race High Plains Raceway, CO

June 11-13 Trans-Am Invitational Pueblo Motorsports Park, CO

June 21-27 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb Pikes Peak, CO

July 10-11 Summer Race Pikes Peak Int’l Raceway, CO

Sept. 3-5 The Showboat Grand Prix Hastings, NE

Oct. 2-3 HPR Enduro High Plains Raceway, CO

Greg Moore speaking to the crowd at last year’s Trans-Am dinner. Greg worked in the engine room with his brother Daryl build-ing racing engines for Bud Moore’s Trans-Am and NASCAR race cars. He moved up to helping manage the Bud Moore Engineering race team. Rodgers photo.



John Morton at Atlanta 1971 at the ARRC championships. Morton and the BRE Datsun 240Z took the C-Production Championship for the second year in a row. From the BRE Collection. www.bre2.net <http://www.bre2.net/>


The BRE team on the podium at the ARRC Championship at Road Altanta. John McComb, Miss Bird Cage, Bob Sharp, unknown beauty, and John Morton. This picture is from the 1970 runoffs where they took the DP and CP championships with the Datsun 2000 Roadster and 240Z respectively. photographer unknown.


D r i v e r L i n e u p f o r Tr a n s - A m I n v i t a t i o n a lMichael Cox, Brighton, CO, Age 46, 1970 MustangAircraft Mechanic started vintage racing with RMVR in 1998 with previously experience with the NORCAL Shelby club at Laguna Seca, Thunderhill and Sears Point. Driving a newly prepared 1970 Mustang fastback this weekend. His first race was at Stapleton in 1998. He has five Trans-Am finishes and a podium or two. “My biggest thrill in racing was running at Steamboat Spring vintage races followed by the 2006 Denver Grand Prix”.

Michael Curley, Lyons, CO, Age 50, Red Camaro #108Manages rental property. He started in RMVR around 1985, helping his dad keep the Bocar running and got his chance to race when Gaylon had back surgey. “We never finished races back then because the Bocar would overheat or break”. In 1994, he decided to put together a Camaro in one year. It took 2 years of hard work and all his spare time and he finally finished a race in 1996. He holds a record with six Trans-Am finishes and a couple of wins. “My biggest thrill in racing was running in the Trans-Am here in Pueblo”.

Eric Heczko, Longmont, CO, Age 68, Datsun 510 #14Retired test engineer from disc drive industry. Started racing on motorcycles at age of 16, running motocross, then as a passenger on a road racing sidecar and then racing GP motor-cycles in the AMA pro series. He started racing a Lotus FF based DSR in 1989. (which is for sale). He presently races the Datsun in SCCA Regional and National races and with RMVR. “My biggest thrill was to win the SCCA RMD Championship several times in both the ITC and GP classes, not by being the fastest but by always finishing.”

John McComb, Hutchinson, Kansas, Age 31, Mustang #41Public relations executive and had an old '57 MGA, which he fixed up to take racing. He led his first race, at Green Valley, Texas., for awhile. Then others started passing him. "So that day I ordered an MGB and went to driver school in the spring." McComb wound up Midwest Division A-sedan champ with two wins, a third and fourth place finish. He raced a Datsun 2000 for BRE and won a DP championship. My biggest thrill was playing football at Kansas State.


D r i v e r L i n e u p f o r Tr a n s - A m I n v i t a t i o n a lJohn Morton, El Segundo, CA, Age 60, Datsun 510 #25 Airplane pilot, fabricator, racecar driver. First raced a Lotus Super 7 and Lotus 23B inSCCA club racing on the west coast. Raced Cobras for Shelby and drove Datsun 2000s,240Zs and 510s for BRE. Drove a few seasons in F5000, Can-Am and did some stuntdriving for the movie industry. Drove Porsches for Jim Busby and Jaguars w/ Bob Tullius’sGroup 44, and Nissans in IMSA with wins at Sebring and Le Mans. Most fun was racingin the Baja 1000 in a Datsun 510 with Pete Brock [not].

Brian Nelson, Boulder, CO, Age 44, BMW 2002 #466Manager of Information Systems. He cut his teeth at Second Creek Raceway, CO and has a first place finish at Nostalgia’s Can-Am Weekend, Miller Motorsports Park, 2007. He holds four RMVR Trans-Am finishes with a podium in 2008. “My biggest racing thrill was racing in the Denver Grand Prix with RMVR in 2006.”

Kyle Popejoy, Evergreen, CO, Age 53, 1972 BMW TII #143An application administrator for a building materials supplier. He drives a BMW and a 1967 Ford Mustang #267. His first big race was RMVR’s Steamboat Springs vintage race in 1997 and since has four Trans-Am finishes under his belt. He has been actively participating in the development of the new High Plains Raceway track. His biggest racing thrill was racing in the 2006 Denver Grand Prix in the Mustang.

Scott Stekr, Westminster, CO, Age 24, Green BMW 1600-2 #160Structural Engineer who designs tall structures for TV, radio and cellular applications. He designed and supplied the small tower for HPR that holds the PA and communication systems. He has four RMVR Trans-Am finishes with U-2 wins in 2007 & 2009. “My biggest racing thrill was coming in second OA in the 2009 Trans-Am ahead of many O-2 cars.”


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John Morton and Oregon Datsun dealer Jack Scoville at Sears Point in 1969 in factory lightweight Datsun 2000s. Scoville later won the DP title at Daytona when the BRE cars ran lean and bad things happened to pistons. http://www.datsun.org/fairlady/ photo.

Nash Jimenez after winning the trophie dash in his flathead 1932 Ford coupe at Carpenteria Raceway in Southern California 1955. Father of RMVR member Robert Jimenez, he also ran at Santa Maria, Ventura, and Ascot Raceway Park in the jalopy races. Jimenez photo.

John Morton’s First Sebring 12 Hour

“In 1964 I was 22 and working at Shelby American as a fabricator. We were getting Cobras ready for Sebring and I really wanted to go, so three of us set out with $25 each for gas money and we drove nonstop to Florida. When we got there I saw Ken Miles and Lew Spenser. Miles looked at me and said, “have you got an FIA license?” I said ”no” and he said “get one”. I had a SCCA license and with a recommendation, they sold me a license.

The car was the prototype of the 427 Cobra, almost stock with a huge engine. Miles crashed it in practice. It was bashed back into shape with large hammers, bars, and jacks. I was hauling tires in the pits after the race got underway and when it came time for a driver change, somebody came and told me Shelby wanted to talk to me. He said “John do you know this track”. I said “yea, I’ve been here several times before, I know it real well”. I couldn’t believe I said that. I had been there three times as a spectator. Some of the turns I had never even seen on foot.

“Well, if Miles wants relief, I want you to go out”. Miles came in and he was ready to get out of the car. He looked tired. He was thin anyway and beside the big cobra, he looked small, his face sunken around his hook nose. He was a funny looking guy; they called him the Hawk.I get in the car. I’d never driven anything like this. I had no idea how it would feel but I thought it better not be too bad or I’m really going to look like an ass in front of a lot of people. I was shaking when I bucked myself in. Here I was going to drive the Sebring 12 hour in a factory car that was the fastest car I’d ever driven, on a track I’d never seen, on a team with Dan Gurney and Ken Miles. My mind couldn’t handle all of that. I remem-ber depressing the clutch and thinking it was heavy looking and seeing my clutch leg was trembling, so badly it was making my whole body vibrate. When I left the pits and accelerated onto the track, the Cobra right away felt big and clumsy. As it accelerated through the gears it felt very fast but it also felt like a piece of junk, a scary kind of combination. The suspension

felt mushy, and loose. It felt more like a ‘forty nine Buick than a race car and I couldn’t help wondering if all racing cobras felt like this or was it because it was driven into tree 2 days ago? I saw right away why Ken was so tired.The steering was very heavy and the car didn’t let me feel like I was driving it, more like I was herding it. I was going easy not knowing what this turd was going to do but when I got to one of the runway turns that I’d never seen before, I ran off the track. Driving back on the track and into the next turn, I spun. It was a wide turn with nothing to hit so I just slowly looped around. My first thought wasn’t “will I crash” but “did anybody see me”? They didn’t. I was far enough from the pits so I was by myself.

After about three laps I began feeling more at ease. It was still a terrible-feeling car, but driv-ing it was beginning to feel fun. On my fifth lap as I approached the 180 degree turn behind the pits at about 150, the brake pedal went right to the floor, dead brake pedal. I slowed back down through the gears with that awkward super long gearshift lever that Miles has installed. I made it through the turn, coming into the pits. I got out of the car and asked Miles to try it and possibly diagnose the trouble. He went out and, returning immediately and said “The brakes don’t work”. The mechanic rechecked and found that the pivot pin had fallen out of the pedal. They fixed it and I returned to the track. The car still felt heavy and awkward but now I was feeling at ease and starting to try to learn how to drive it faster. I suddenly became aware of a bad vibration. It had to be fairly severe to

notice because everything on the car vibrated anyway. The shaking was getting so bad that I couldn’t see out the rear view mirror. There were a lot of very fast race cars in the race and the rearview mirror was very important to me. Now the clutch started slipping badly and I pitted. I was told to go out and circulate slowly using only four thousand rpm. This I did for a while. The car felt like a huge reducing machine, only instead of reducing me, it was reducing itself to junk. The car slowed to a crawl at about five to ten miles an hour and I returned to the pits. The mechanics made some makeshift repairs and sent me back out to circulate at a very reduced rate. Miles was per-fectly happy to let me do the driving now because the car was so destroyed and far behind it wasn’t fun to drive and it’s meaning-less to him now. I was still enjoying it though. It was getting close to dark and I wanted to try night driving. Shortly before time to pit and have the tape removed from the headlights, the engine suddenly stopped. The car had stopped shaking and with this piece of shit it was an ominous sign. I thought the coil wire had fallen off and then I looked in the mirror, I saw a huge cloud of smoke and knew the engine had blown. As the silent slug had coasted into the esses, it nearly spun it it’s own oil that was splattering all over the track. When I got it safely off the track and in the grass, I lifted the hood and saw a hole in the block big enough to stick my hand in. That was it; the slug has finally died.

Source: The Stainless Steel Carrot by Silvia Wilkinson

Bill Stowe photo



The 2009 under 2-liter Trans-Am podium: Mike Reis, Scott Stekr, and Robert Toscano finishing out the weekend with miles of smiles. Scott took home the gorilla trophie. We are gunning for you this year Scott! Scrappy Cox photo.

Don Adams of Nathrop, CO on Pikes Peak in his 1972 Camaro. Don has 12 class wins in the prestigious Baja 1000 and the Mint 400 off road races plus over a decade of domination in long desert, short track, and hill climb racing. Adams photo.


303-526-2807


To join RMVR go to http://rmvr.com/forms/membership.pdf to down-load an application for membership.

For additional information call us at 303-319-3062 and lets go racing!

Rocky Mountain Vintage Racing, LtD.Application for Membership:

Tom Blank’s 1966 Super Sport Chevelle at Woody Creek Raceway, CO 1976. A SCCA Alfa Romeo Trans-Am driver and hot shoe, he terrorized the Aspen crowd with this American Iron. Blank photo.

Scott Stekr on the pace lap leading a field of sedans comprising BMW2002s, Porsche 911s, Mustangs, Datsun 510s, Alfa GTV, an AMC Javelin and a Lotus Cortina at last year’s Trans-Am Invitational. Scrappy Cox photo

60,000 race fans were wowed at 1963 SCCA Nationals Lake Garnett, KS. Bob Johnson, Dave McDonald and Ken Miles ran away from the Corvettes of Dick Thompson, Grady Davis & Don Yenko. Miles won the modified champi-onship race contested by Harry Heuer (Chaparral) Jack Hinkle (Cooper Monaco) and Dick Thompson (Corvette Grand Sport). R&T photo.

Arthur W. Porter

Arthur W. Porter

312 South Weber Street, Suite BColorado Springs, CO 80903

[email protected] 719.577.4447f 719.227.7255Professional Corporation

Welcome John MortonBMW CSL Driver Extraordinaire!

John Morton drove the Nissan 300ZX turbo for Cunningham Racing USA at the Sebring 12 hour in March 1994 with co drivers Johnny O’Connell and Steve Millen. They took 1st place. In June, with Clayton and Cunningham backing and some big sponsors, they took 1st in IMSA GTS at the 24 hours of Lemans and 5th OA. Kooyman photo.

Peter Brock and John Morton flew their famous #46 red, white, and blue pattern on another classic Japanese roadster, the Mazda MX-5 Miata at Road Atlanta's Walter Mitty challenge in April 2010 as a celebration of BRE's racing achievements. BRE photo.

Pueblo Trans-Am Invitationalrmvr.com/assets/documents/ta2010-program.pdf · 2018-06-06 · John Morton, El Segundo, CA, Age 60, Datsun 510 #25 Airplane pilot, fabricator, racecar

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