A Fond Farewell to Goliad County Airport
The March 2011 Texas Mile is in the books. Numerous personal victories happened, but no overall changes in record top speeds for either cars or bikes. The Mile just keeps getting bigger; not longer, just bigger. Registration filled up in 4-1/2 hours this time around. The mile has been growing so much, Jay and Shannon, the event organizers, have moved on from their NASATX director duties so they can concentrate on the mile.
A HUGE crowd showed up Saturday to watch the goings on. We guess more than 2000 spectators were on-hand at the mile on Saturday. I would know. I was one of the people working the gate. I got so dazed, instead of telling people they needed to sign a liability release form, I was asking them to sign reliability leases. Friday and Sunday were not near as busy with the spectators.
The notable crash this time was the Hinson Motorsports Corvette Crash. You can find pictures and a description at
thedailyhoon.com In the pictures, note the Texas Mile photographer, Kat, standing in the field. I asked her if she got any good pictures of the wreck and she said, "the best pictures you'll never see." I guess the Texas Mile people don't want to publish pictures of their racers crashing.
The driver walked away, but they flew him to a hospital anyway. One of the crew found the car's OnStar button out in the field when they were picking up debris. He pushed the button to report the accident, but didn't get any response. I guess OnStar's not all it's cracked up to be.
On to the pics:
The timing crew worked out of a nice air-conditioned trailer this time. They called it the VIP suites. The lowly timing slip runners had to swelter outside as the timing crew just pushed the slips through a crack in the window to be delivered to the drivers.
Shannon, the Texas Mile director, was her usual cheery self (most of the time). When my wife, Mary, went to get lunch from the vendors on Saturday, she found Shannon there, without a lunch ticket, trying to talk the girl into giving her a meal. Didn't happen until the girl's boss told her Shannon was the one running the show. Shannon was even smiling when she told me about it.
One of my favorite bikes there was the SV650S ridden by Dennis Nadeau. It is his track day bike and he made pass after pass on it, usually around 125 mph, sometimes a bit faster. I liked it because my previous bike was an SV650. I had a lot of great times on that bike.
I had to ask the driver what model Ferrari this was. He said it's a California. V8 engine, hardtop convertible, dual-clutch transmission. MSRP $210,000. I don't remember his speeds, but he made a lot of passes with it.
There was a television crew on hand, doing a documentary on "
Big Red," an old-school Chevy Camaro driven by Richard Gottlieb. They had several TV cameras at the track and had rented a big cherry picker to get them up in the air. A good writeup on the car is on the
HotRod site.
Again, I don't know what speeds it ran. Keep an eye on the
Texas Mile site for the results.