LotuSport reunion Road Atlanta 10/20 - 10/23

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Atlanta Historic Races!

Originally from a post by Brian Skeoch

On Saturday 10/22 Doc Bundy and David Murry will be belted in the X180R #10 car for a 1 hr endurance race at Road Atlanta during the weekends SVRA fall finale. It will be the first time that 2 of the X180R's have been on Road Atlanta at the same time in almost 15 years.

Doc & David will be in Christine, the #10 car

Bert Levy and Ken Fitzgerald will be in Eleanor the #12 car.

The weekend will be great and full of fun activities and guests from the Lotus community from all over. Jeff and Jay will be here from JAE, Dave Simkin and Harry Appleby will be here from CA, ex-CEO Arnie Johnson will be attending along with Kirt Wightman and Joe Grassi. Joe used to work on these cars as did Simkin.

The Lotus Limited South East will also provide an Event award to the Lotus car that represents the " Best of show " category for the weekend so everyone wanting to attend, please try and drive your Lotus.

SVRA has a TON of Lotus race cars already entered for the weekend of Vintage racing. Everything from Lotus 47's, to Lotus 11's and Lotus 9's.. There will also be several 7's on hand. SVRA is even thinking about giving Lotus part of the paddock which will be Lotus only.

On Friday 10/21 Kirt Wightman will be giving us all a tour of the Hypersport race shop which includes a tour of both facilities. The first shop houses the Daytona Prototype that currently runs in the Rolex Series. We will also get a tour of their transporter and other shops within the race facility. From there we will go to the engineering shop which houses some race car engineering proving grounds, R & D and all of Kirts toys and tools. Kirt has been doing a lot of great work and we will all get to see his work shop. Kirt will even have his " chassis " dyno up and running so if anyone wants to see what their chassis does, put it on the dyno and Kirt will help with suggested changes, or if you are lucky tell you your chassis is working fine.

From there we will go down the street for a late lunch at Roger Cates place. If you recall, Roger and Doc formed Cates Bundy Racing several years ago and Rogers place has some great photo's of those days on his walls. Its also a great place for lunch and they make the best burgers around.

Roger owns the former Alex Zenardi Lemans running Esprit. This car has been in many Lotus books and if your memory is good you will remember the Yellow Esprit with red wheels and a big black Naca duct on the roof. That's Rogers car. It has been disassembled for restoration by Kirt Wightman and maybe it will be around for us to see. This car was a 4 cylinder S4S type I think, but I believe it was pumping out several and I mean several hundred horses.

If you aren't interested in these items, you can always hang out at the track and watch the Yesteryear Motorsports team work away at both X180R's and watch them during the sprint races. Your tickets will get you down into the paddock where all the action is. Tickets are pretty reasonable and you can get them at the gate.

I am also working on getting us a tour at BBS Wheels which is just up the street from the track.

Keep 10/20 through 10/23 open on your calendars.. Its gonna be fun.

Tentative Schedule

Thursday Gates open early at the track to begin testing, practice which will go all day

Friday - gates open early, begin sprint qualification races in the morning and afternoon.

Friday 2-3PM - Tour Hypersport Engineering facilities and Hypersport racing. 2 locations, 30 minutes from track

Friday PM - lunch at Roger Cates place just down the road from Kirts.

Friday afternoon more qualification races, both cars .

Friday night - (Lotus team meeting already scheduled) open to everyone else. Possibly go kart racing at Kirts place.

Saturday morning practice at the track

Saturday lunch - Lotus Limited South East presents car club corral with guest judge (probably Arnie) and award for best of show.

1 hr IMSA Enduro featuring Bundy and Murry & Ken and Bert . Saturday

afternoon or Friday afternoon ( SVRA to confirm ) we will know in 2

weeks.

Saturday evening open.

Sunday more sprint races. Close up shop.

Notes from Karl-Franz

A usual, several of us FLOGgers (Florida Lotus Owners Group) will be there that weekend to enjoy the events. It will be like old times; especially with our friends Arnie, Doc, Dave S. Jeff, Jay, and Harry present.

The plan is to drive up to the Florida-Georgia border and stay at a motel overnight (Dan, you will have to arrange this).

Early Friday morning we will make the rest of the drive to Atlanta. This plan has a couple of benefits:

1) it breaks up the long drive in two which gives us old folks with sore backs a time to recuperate and

2) it potentially puts us in Atlanta earlier so that we may enjoy more of that day.

Those of you in the Jaxonville area can maybe leave a bit earlier on Friday so we can all hook up for our traditional breakfast at the Lake Park Cracker Barrel.

We will be staying in the Gwinnett Marriott as usual.

Please join us for a very fun weekend.

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Hi Folks,

If you will be joining us for our trip to Atlanta for the Fall Historics, you need to make your hotel reservations soon. Here is the info:

Atlanta Marriott Gwinnett Place

1775 Pleasant Hill Road

Duluth, GA 30096

1 770 923-1775

Checkin: October 21, 2005 (Friday)

Checkout: October 23, 2005 (Sunday)

Length of Stay: 2 nights

Room Rate: $85/ night

You can make your reservations online at www.marriott.com

For those of us leaving Thursday night and staying at the FL-GA border: when Dan Adragna figures out where we are staying overnite (hint-hint), I will pass that info along.

Also, please bear in mind that the tour of Hypersport is Friday from 2-3:00PM so we must get to Atlanta before then.