Full fields, including several “must-see” entries, plus a Special Run Group for historic Sports 2000 competitors and a Blue Marble Cocktails Radical Cup race, highlight this weekend’s Historic Sportscar Racing Fall Historics at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. With a full slate of HSR sprint, endurance and feature races, the Fall Classic kicks-off a three-race stretch of popular events closing out the 2021 HSR racing season.
A guaranteed crowd pleaser is the immaculate 1977 No. 1 Martini-themed Porsche 935 of Dr. Mike Smith that made its HSR debut last December in the season-ending Classic Sebring 12 Hour. Smith has wowed HSR fans and competitors alike for years with his Jägermeister and Blue Coral 935 K3 Porsches, but his latest 935 represents the earlier factory years of Porsche’s Group 5 dominator.
Jacky Ickx, who will be inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America (MSHFA) this Monday night in Detroit, and longtime HSR friend and competitor Jochen Mass, co-drove the first 935 in the 1977 24 Hours of Daytona but didn’t make it to the finish of the grueling race after putting the car on the pole.
Another Porsche entry this weekend pays tribute to a car not as well known as the Martini-hued 935s but with an impressive endurance racing legacy of its own. A Porsche 914-6 GT was first entered in the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans where co-drivers Claude Ballot-Léna and Guy Chasseuil shook off torrential rain throughout the race and their competition to secure the GT class win and an amazing sixth-place overall finish. Although Porsche’s first-ever outright victory at Le Mans with the No. 23 Porsche 917K of Richard Attwood and Hans Herrmann overshadowed the little two-liter Porsche’s winning performance, the achievement of the No. 40 914/6 GT remains popular with competitors and fans over 50 years later.
Randy Cassling and his longtime competition partner CARS (Classic Auto Restoration Services), an automotive and race shop located in Omaha, Nebraska, debut a No. 40 Porsche 914/6 this weekend that is the spitting image of the 1970 Le Mans GT-class winner.
Photo: HSR
The packed HSR schedule of Atlanta Fall Historics events includes two B.R.M. Chronographes Enduro Challenges and the WeatherTech Sprints races for all run groups in the standard Saturday/Sunday doubleheader format.
The Feature Race lineup includes Friday’s weekend-opening SascoSports International/American Challenge sprint and Sunday’s HSR Stoner Car Care Global GT and HSR Classic RS Cup races.
The one-hour B.R.M. Enduros are home to specific and period-matching groups of race cars. Saturday’s end-of-the-day Vintage and GT Classic (GTC) race features a variety of cars from the 1960s and ’70s while Sunday morning’s Historic, Prototype and GT Modern (GTM) B.R.M. race is home to race cars from primarily this century.
Friday’s Sasco Sports race is a production-car showcase of big-bore American iron going head-to-head with top sports cars from Europe and beyond. The flat-out sprint has competitors racing for the overall win in addition to top-three honors in the International, American and Porsche classes.
The popular HSR Stoner Car Care Global GT and HSR Classic RS Cup series share the track in a dual-feature sprint race Saturday morning. Global GT showcases contemporary but retired GT racing machines while the Classic RS Cup rekindles the thrill of the original 1970’s International Race of Champions (IROC) Porsche series.
The Fall Historics is the final race for competitors before the seventh running of the HSR Classic Daytona presented by IMSA, the classic 24-hour race at Daytona International Speedway (DIS), October 27 – 31.
The HSR Classic Daytona once again will be followed in 2021 by its “HSR Classics” sister event, the HSR Classic 12 Hour at Sebring, Pistons and Props, presented by the Alan Jay Automotive Network. The sixth-annual running of the HSR Classic Sebring 12 Hour closes out the 2021 HSR racing season on the legendary Sebring airport circuit, December 1 – 5.
The HSR Classics events at Daytona and Sebring share the card each weekend, respectively, with the Daytona Historics and Sebring Historics races that will see all season-long HSR championships decided on two of the most iconic circuits in the country.
Spectator tickets for this weekend’s HSR Fall Historics are available for purchase at the driver and crew registration building at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. Tickets for the HSR Classic Daytona 24 and the HSR Classic 12 Hour are available now at www.HSRTickets.com.
