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The Yanks Weekend & Gary's Picnic at Shakespeare County Raceway now occupies a regular spot in our calendar and is an established club favourite. The laid back atmosphere at the event always makes it an enjoyable weekend and the site and sounds of predominantly V8 powered American machinery harks back to another era on another continent.
Last year we were joined by a few guests and the format seemed to work pretty well so it was more of the same this time round with a few new faces trackside as well as a bunch of people from the Belgian club, Der Autobahn Scrapers (DAS). With the ingredients for a great weekend all in place all that was needed was weather to match and as luck would have it you could have been forgiven for thinking that the track was situated somewhere in California rather than Warwickshire with two whole days of baking sun and blue skies.
  
Friday was the usual chilled out affair with people arriving throughout the day and getting stuff set up though there was a downside to the day for those travelling up from Dover who suffered a delay of ten hours or so negotiating gridlock on the M25. By nine that evening most of the crew were at the track and with a warm Spring evening and a couple of Jupiler's the traffic chaos was soon forgotten.
With no worries about waiting for the track to dry out and with everyone having got through scrutineering with flying colours Saturday morning got off to a flying start with both the Outlaws and guests wanting to get going as soon as possible so no sooner was the track open everyone got their stuff together and headed off to the pairing lanes and it wasn't long before the VW powered cars were heading off up the track in the heat of the sun. The smell of race gas and burnt rubber and the sounds of angry flat 4 and V8 engines makes for a great start to a Saturday morning. With some good numbers first pass everyone came away from the first session pretty happy and a couple of the DAS cars came back down the return lane and straight back into the pairing lanes, something they would continue to do for most of the the rest of the weekend!
Not wishing to waste the opportunity things were mixed up throughout the day with there being both VW versus VW pairings as well as VW versus V8 pairings and with the latter I think it's fair to say that the flat 4 engined cars gave a good account of themselves with the win light showing on the VW side of the track more than a few times though it's fair to say there was some really quick V8 stuff there and they got there fair share of wins too. Whichever way it ended up I think both camps enjoyed themselves and it's great to see such different machines pairing up.
After the racing finished on the Saturday and following a quick (!?!) photo call it was time to chill out and thanks must go to Carol, Helen and everyone else who helped out putting an awesome spread together for everyone. The remainder of the evening provided an opportunity for people to catch up and in a couple of instances pick up some spares courtesy of Pete Englezos and make a few needed repairs.
For the Sunday we had decided to put together an informal ladder and ran some eliminations between ourselves, our UK guests and the DAS guys which resulted in Phil West winning through the weirdest set of circumstances we've seen to date. Phil was confused but happy to take a win on a bye run nonetheless! One thing's for sure with heads-up racing, you really never can tell how it's going to go! Outside of the ladder the DAS crew were once again making use of the track time and were running laps round the Warwickshire country side and putting in some good times. Like Saturday the Sunday saw another great day of action out on the track and it was over way to soon. Thanks to the SCR crew and the the National Association of Street Clubs (NASC) for inviting us and hosting such a great event and thanks too to Jeni Long for use of some of her pictures more of which can be found on her site; Yawning Cat Photography.
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