Scott Joy did double duty during Historic Festival 44 at Lime Rock Park, driving the No. 17 Camaro in Historic Trans Am, one of the featured race groups (Group 5), and the No. 48 Datsun 510 in Group 1 for the Under 2.5 liter Trans Am class.

 

Literally growing up in racing, Scott is the 27-year-old son of Hall of Fame television and radio commentator Mike Joy (whose numerous credits include a year working as general manager of LRP). Scott began racing at age 10, then worked his way up the ladder, racing competitively until he was 22 years old, going through Bandoleros, Legends Cars, Spec BMW 3 Series, BMW Club, NASA and SCCA.

 

At some point, though, he realized he wasn’t having fun anymore.

 

“I used to go to the race track, when I was driving competitively, searching for that one-tenth of a second, and I would get ticked off,” Scott said. “You’d tow six hours and then the car just wouldn’t handle. I just wasn’t having any fun. My dad already knew it, but it kind of dawned on me that when we’d go to the race track, we should be having fun. This is something that we love to do. It’s a passion of ours.

 

“Vintage racing fits that mold perfectly,” Scott continued. “We’ve got a lot of our friends here, plus fantastic cars and great competition. We like to run close and put on a show.

 

“I grew up with these [Historic Trans Am] cars, with these drivers. My dad started racing in Historic Trans Am in 2010. When I was 11 years old, going to the track with him, I thought it was the coolest thing. The biggest, loudest, most colorful, iconic cars in the paddock wherever we went. So, fast forward 12-13 years later, we finally decided we wanted to have our own car and we wanted to do this together. The plan was to buy a Camaro and share one car; I was going to drive Saturdays, and he would drive Sundays. It happened that another Camaro came up at the same time, and we ended up buying both of them.

 

“Vintage racing is particularly special because it’s about the cars; it’s about the atmosphere; it’s about the fans; the experience. That car, on any given day, is as fast as it’s going to be.

 

“It’s also special to race at Lime Rock Park. It’s my father’s home track and he’s driven thousands of miles here, and he enjoys it as much as I do. This is his happy place – when he gets in a car here he feels 21 again. When he was going up, this place was the pinnacle of racing.

 

“I really didn’t get to meet a lot of the legendary guys back in the day,” Scott explained. “I met Parnelli. Dan Gurney signed a picture of me sitting in his ‘Cuda. But I obviously wasn’t around when those cars were racing and to see those drivers. We’re in an important transition period. Many of the original drivers aren’t around anymore. We’re getting a younger crowd, but many of the original generation weren’t here to see it. So, it’s important that we keep these cars at the track, and remember the drivers and the heroic efforts that they did in the day. We continue to educate people, and continue to have fun and have good faith in driving these race cars hard.

 

“Historic Trans Am has all the original cars as they raced in the day. We don’t have any clones, and they are all prepared to the rules and SCCA specifications of the time. We don’t have any of the newer, fancy parts or motors. If you see Parnelli Jones’ name on the roof, that is the car that he drove. That’s pretty special.

 

“There are a lot of great cars here – iconic cars that would be really special to drive someday.”

 

That history was on full display during Historic Festival 44, where 20 original Historic Trans Am cars competed throughout the weekend. The field included cars once driven by some of the biggest names of the Trans Am era, including Dan Gurney, George Follmer, Parnelli Jones, Jerry Titus, Sam Posey and Mark Donohue.

 

As the generation that originally raced these cars grows smaller, events like Historic Festival become more important than ever, keeping the cars on track, preserving the stories behind them and introducing both to a new generation.