Supplied Peter Valentine

Saturday March 26 saw the annual running of Eddington Sprints. This is an historic quarter mile drag race organized by the Vintage Sports Car Club and a few Bendigo car club stalwarts. The day had an entry of 96 that comprised of all types of vehicles from early 1900 roadsters (yes juniors cars have been around for that long) to early seventies group N type cars and a few potent non historic cars in the invitation class.

Several car club members took the opportunity to compete and certainly proved their ability on the day. Our life member and long time competitor Max Jackman  proved that even a five way heart bypass can’t stop him when he brought out his home made special that helped get him going in motorsport all those years ago and gave it a run. I think that max will have to go back to hospital again, but this time to have the grin surgically removed from his face. Only bad experience he had for the day was having to ask a certain member of his pit crew for a jump start on the BMW. Yes Colin you saved his bacon again.

 One of our promising junior members also had his first bitumen and first solo run, Ryan Baker certainly acquitted himself very well and I would say that perhaps next year he may well share his fathers car instead of running the old datto. Speaking of which dad Mark ran the Pontiac all the way to fastest time of day with a high 13 second run. This was good enough to beat a very stunning GT40 replica and The model A roadster of past winner Ray Sprague. The baker family must have had a hectic weekend for they also attended the junior challenge on Sunday.

The event ran smoothly all day  with all cars having practice and three timed runs. Weather was very warm and the caterers did a fast trade with drinks and there was also wine tasting available for non competitors. For any one who has not attended this event I would suggest you pencil it in to your diary for next year, even if you aren’t an historic fan there is something to excite everyone. The best part is the bench race/spit roast down on the river banks  at the Roberts house after the event. This is an eye opener in itself for the contents of their shed as son Keith does restoration work on historic race cars and the quality of work that comes out of his shed is mind blowing.

 Attached are some photos of Ray Sprague’s Model A hot rod, the stunning and quick (but not quick enough) GT40 Replica  and three old farts reminiscing about the good old days over the partly restored JAP powered special that I am led to believe was originally built by Warren Pentland's father.