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When everyone woke up on Sunday
morning, the weather forecast was not
good. Rain was predicted for the area
but when it would arrive was not pre-
cisely predicted. “
Sometime in the af-
ternoon
” was all the forecasters could
say. Everyone hoped it would arrive
later rather than sooner. Another
minor glitch was that unmuffled cars
could not be started until noon. This
was in deference to a small church’s lo-
cation near the track. Nobody at the
track had brought this up during our
advanced planning meetings and we
had already printed up schedules. Part
of the ability to run a convention is to
be able to deal with unforseen situa-
tions like this on the fly. We didn’t see
much of a problem rejiggering the
schedule. It permitted us to hold the
popular vote car show in the morning
with no competition from the open
track or vintage race. The result was a
lot of race cars in the car show that
aren’t usually parked.
When 12 noon rolled around it was
hard to tell if the rain would hold off.
We asked Carroll Shelby to do the
honors of driving the pace vehicle and
the F-150 Lightning he was driving
was ideal. He led 18 GT350s around a
warm-up lap and by the time he came
in and the green flag was dropped the
rain began, so the black flag came out
and the race was, regrettably, termi-
nated. The rain got heavier and heav-
ier, so there was no question about
cancelling the other two vintage races.
And like that, SAAC-26 ended as there
was no reason to remain at the track.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Fall 2016 80