Ramblings of an Old Fart...
Racing at Wilmot Hills
My first driver school was in July, 1965 at Wilmot Hills. My mount was a small-mouth TR3 we'd pulled from a farmer's yard. Prodigious amounts of Bondo and an Earl Scheib paint job later, it didn't look too bad. STP in the lever shocks, new Michelin X's, a straight pipe for the proper sound, rollbar, comp belts, and we were ready to go.
At the time I lived just down the road from Rupert Seatbelts at the Palwaukee Airport in Wheeling, so I popped over there for a set and some good advice on mounting. The rollbar was more of an adventure. Monroe Machine Works, Monroe, Wisconsin, was the recommended vendor. That wasn't right down the street. We had no trailer yet, so very early on a cold spring day I headed the Triumph north.
Monroe, home of Huber Brewing, is a hospitable town and the guys at the welding shop suggested a nearby bar as a waiting room. This place was purported to have a direct line to the brewery. After a couple of hours of cheese and beer, the rollbar was finished, I paid the $35 and headed home. It started to rain. The top had gone early in the race prep, of course. Thankfully, we hadn't deep-sixed the windshield yet. Somehow (the beer?) I got lost on the way home and ended up driving almost into Chicago on I-90. In the rain. With no top.
The Triumph faithfully carried me through the driver school and I won my novice race. And I never won a race again for over five years!
I raced a number of events at Wilmot. The front straight was over a quarter mile long, so you got up a pretty good head of steam on it. Turn 1 was a bend that could be taken flat out if you were on a good line. I would hook my right front tire on the inside lip of the paving and use that to haul the reluctant dragster through the turn. (Would I yell at a student for doing that today!)
Pray Hill was the uphill section between turns 1 and 2. Somehow the word PRAY had been painted across the track in big letters midway up the hill. (On a ski trip twenty years later, I could still read PRAY clearly.) I don't recall Turn 2 as being any particular problem. Going uphill helped you brake for it. A little acceleration downhill brought you to the Esses. The first right hander may have been off-camber. I had a devil of a time getting into its apex. I recall an instructor standing at the apex, beckoning me toward it. And this was well after driver school. If you could get to that apex, the run through the left hander onto the back straight was easy.
One morning practice, I screwed up the Esses more than usual. I slid off-course to the outside, hooked my wheels on a rut, and did the standard high-CG TR3 rollover. The car stopped upside down. I popped the seatbelt and fell on my head. Gas leaking from the fuel filler provided incentive to scramble out. I was fine and the car wasn't bad. Except it had rolled over on the driver side and rather than rolling it back to the driver side, the emergency crew rolled it right side up via the passenger side. So I had two mirrors to replace and two fenders to bump out, rather than one.
Did I mention that this was the day I had finally convinced my Mom and Dad to come out to see me race? They hadn't arrived yet when I dumped it and a wild attempt to make the car look normal ensued. As you might expect, I was not the most aggressive racer on the track that afternoon. I suspect Dad guessed what had happened and elected not to tell Mom. Thanks, Pop.
I'm not sure I ever learned the correct line through Turn 4, the hairpin turn between the two straights. There was a gentle curve at the end of the back straight. You were turning just enough so that hard braking would kick the car sideways. This was before we learned to use the trail braking technique- essentially doing this on purpose. Then you'd make a very sharp turn and accelerate down that quarter mile plus front straight again. The start-finish line was about 500 feet past Turn 4.
At the end of 1965, I sold the TR3 and bought a race-prepared Alfa Super Spider from Bill Knauz in Lake Forest. The 1300cc Alfa was not quite the equal of the 2-liter TR in a straight line, but it handled oh-so much better. It steered right around Turn 1 and up Pray Hill like a dream. It would even hit the Turn 3 apex.
Miscellaneous Wilmot memories: Having my Alfa's left rear wheel pass me on the back straight. The practice then was to weld up the spider gears to lock rear ends. This was tough on axles and one of mine snapped off at the wheel flange. I slid to a stop in a straight line, but chewed up the brake. That wrote finish to that day.
Another: Getting assigned Alfa pro drivers Horst Kwech and Ed Wachs as instructors at a drivers school there. I had gotten the Midwestern Council sophomore itch to try SCCA, gone through the ritual to join and was at their school in my Alfa. I knew Horst, as he had raced in Council and worked at Knauz, my usual source for Alfa bits.
Another (really good one): Watching Horst and Ed carve up a club racing field in their U2L TransAm Alfa GTAs. Lap after lap, they took corners on three wheels and swapped the lead in a beautifully choreographed show of racing skill- purely for the fun of it. (Photo)
Another: The ground shook in the paddock when the big bore cars raced. I don't know what the composition of the earth was at Wilmot, but you could feel it jiggle like Santa's belly when the big iron rumbled through.
Another: The ski lodge inside the track was a deluxe accommodation. A bar and restaurant, gift shop, real restrooms and other amenities spoiled us for other tracks. Complaint: The picture windows were oriented up the ski slopes, so you couldn't lounge comfortably and see the cars on the track. (Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth!)
Another: 1967 was the last summer Wilmot Hills had any sports car races. Something happened for that season that caused only the SCCA to have access to it. Midwestern Council and other clubs were locked out. I never did know whose decision this was. I got the impression that the relationship between the sports car racers and the ski hill operator was somewhat frayed by this time, but have no first-hand knowledge of this.
Question for SCCA veterans: I had just started racing as Wilmot Hills was wrapping it up, so was never involved in producing an event there. Do I recall correctly that the operating company for the race course was neither the ski hill owner nor the SCCA, but rather a separate private company that had a lease from the ski hill owners and laid the original paving for the course? From items in the Chicago Region history, I gather that this company was made up of region members, but was not an official part of the region. If you can clarify this, please do. e-mail. Thanks.
Ross Fosbender
