The U.S. Vintage Grand Prix weekend launched in full earnest Friday with the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Festival. The festival is an annual event celebrating the advent of America’s first major post-World War II road race beginning Oct. 2, 1948. Founded by the late Cameron Argetsinger, the event was originally held over 6.6 miles of undulating public roads with the backdrop of thick stands of trees boasting the blazing leaves of early autumn.

The charm of those initial contests was apparent with various marques of exotic racecars transforming a peaceful village of barely 3,000 into a raucous, unbridled scramble to get home first. Charming, yes, but equally evident was the danger not just to the participants who embraced risk, but also to the thousands of onlookers who lined the course, many times with mere hay bales between them and speeding cars on the edge. The construction in 1956 of what is now Watkins Glen International put an end to the racing on public roads and provided a venue that not only supported Formula 1 from 1961 to 1980 but also has expanded to host virtually all major American racing series.

“I try to explain the magic of those first races to people,” says Jim Scaptura, who manages the Walk of Fame for the festival committee and was 12 years old when he witnessed the first race. “I just don’t think people can understand unless they were there. The cars, the drivers, they were out in the town among the people. Briggs Cunningham, the Collier brothers, John Fitch walked right beside me. There were Bugattis, Alfas, Jaguars and, of course, lots of MGs. It was really magic.”

The festival kick-off was a Thursday night fundraiser reception at the International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC) hosted by Sportscar Vintage Racing Association (SVRA) CEO Tony Parella. The feature attraction of the evening was the unveiling of this year’s Festival Grand Marshal Roberto Guerrero’s name on the community’s Walk of Fame. Along with A.J. Foyt and several others, Roberto’s name is just outside the IMRRC entrance.

“I’m still getting used to the idea that my name is going alongside A.J. and so many other champions,” Guerrero (pictured, with Parella) said. “Really, all I can say is that I am extremely honored and honestly humbled. This means so much to me to be remembered.”

As grand marshal Guerrero gave the ceremonial command to start engines for the “Grand Prix Re-enactment,” a two-lap tour of the original course by SVRA cars from the vintage of those early days. This, along with two “Grand Prix Tribute Tours,” by SVRA and Historic Trans Am racers of more recent vintage, helped illustrate the hard-to-imagine setting Scaptura says he struggles to describe.

{igallery id=4541|cid=558|pid=2|type=category|children=0|addlinks=0|tags=|limit=0}The expanse of Franklin Street at the heart of Watkins Glen was clogged with the thick foot traffic of onlookers the entire afternoon and into the evening. The setting as the cars sat on grid for the starter’s command included thousands of people clustering along the edge of the road much as spectators must have back in the day when drivers like Cunningham and Fitch drove their machines at the brink of control. The cars were lined up at the exact point of start-finish from the original race, complete with an historic marker at the side of the road (pictured below).

There were tours taking laps of the old course – marked by hay bales, of course – throughout the afternoon. One featured an exquisite gathering of cars from the day’s Concours d’Elegance while other participants were self-nominated but approved by event organizers. The crescendo tours were the re-enactment and tributes by the SVRA racers who descended upon the heart of The Glen village shortly before 5 p.m. to display before refiring their engines at Guerrero’s command just after 6 o’clock.

Again, there was just enough imagery to spark an active imagination of what it must have meant to those witnessing the events of 1948. The streets were clogged in the manner of Mardi Gras, but here the eye candy was not other people in outrageous costumes but some of the choice cars of SVRA and the strictly authentic racers of the Historic Trans Am group.

Some of the cars that were parked curbside as if they were your daily driver are worth millions of dollars and owners graciously presented them without restriction. Parked there among a couple of hundred valuable and significant racecars was Mark Donohue’s 1968 Roger Penske Sunoco Camaro Trans Am racer, recently on display at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum.

All these machines were devoured by thousands of respectful eyeballs. That’s the overwhelming feature of The Glen community – the readily evident racing culture, the car culture. Here fans are more than curious; they are knowledgeable. Basic facts fail to amaze them because, for the most part, they know the history.

Conversations overheard among the onlookers strolling car-to-car included accurate details of their records and mechanical specs. Then again, perhaps none of that should be a surprise from a village whose local brewery has a picture of racing pioneer Bob Burman, a veteran of the first five Indianapolis 500s and a former world Land Speed Record holder, on the label of its pale ale.