I watched that 1977 race from right next to the starter stand, as a 15 year old kid. My dad started racing a Yenko Stinger (what you guys see in the picture as a Corvair) in 1976 and has several still today. They were "built" in the 60's by Don Yenko, a famous Chevrolet racer. We were there helping crew for one of the Stingers in the picture.
History: John McComb won in 1975 in a TR6, in 1976 P.L. Newman won in the same car, but only after inheriting the lead from the Yenko Stinger driven by Atlanta local James Reeve when it got a flat tire about halfway through the race. In 1977, Tom Robertson won the race in a Lotus Super 7, beating the factory TR7's of Mueller and Slagle, Brennan and James Reeve in the Yenko Stinger.
A Jensen Healey won DP in 1973 and 1974, prepared by Huffaker Engineering with Lee Mueller driving it. The exact same car won the EP national championship with Bruce Qvale driving it in 1995. Many people forget the Jensen Healey started out in C-Production but was moved to D-production very quickly where it was definitely competitive!
Those were some heady days for SCCA production racing, back in the late 70's and early 80's. The factories were heavily involved. I remember going racing in the Northeast with our Yenko Stinger and having to race against the factory backed TR7 of Ken Slagle, the factory backed 924 of Doc Bundy, and the national championship Lotus Super 7 of Tom Robertson and another Lotus Super 7 driven by Peter LoBianco (who battled wire to wire with Lee Mueller in the Huffaker TR7 in 1979 only to lose by less than a second). Talk about tough competition!
I also got to watch Ken Slagle race his CP TR8 at every NEDIV national it raced. Very cool car, and he raced against the Bob Sharp 280ZX's, I think driven by P.L. Newman at the time. Those were some amazing races to watch. The first CP RX7's were just coming out around then, and I had never heard anything SO LOUD in my life! Cool stuff...
MC
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Mark Coffin
#14 GP BSI Racing/Airborn Coatings/Krispy Kreme/Tristram's Garage VW Scirocco
http://pages.prodigy.net/Scirocco14gp