Eden Prairie man to compete in vintage vehicle endurance race

The Great Race isn’t about speed, at least not in the traditional sense. Instead, the 130 participating vehicles – none manufactured after 1974 – compete to match ideal times along the length of the nine-day event. 

Craig Amundson of Eden Prairie is about to participate in his fourth Hemmings Motor News Great Race National Event, presented by Coker Tire. Amundson is one of the drivers who will start the race from the Back to the ‘50s Weekend at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds on Saturday, June 21. He’ll be driving Emily, a 1973 BMW 2002. His son-in-law, Jeff Mischke of Hopkins, will serve as navigator.

While they know this year’s race will take them from St. Paul to Irmo, South Carolina, they don’t know the exact route they’ll take to get there. “The course designers are pretty spectacular in the kind of courses they put together,” Amundson said. 

Racers travel along hard-surfaced public roadways, often less-traveled routes, never exceeding 50 mph. They follow a paper printout of navigational instructions for each day, which lists landmarks such as stop signs, T-intersections and railroad crossings. 

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“What they don’t tell you is what the distance is between” those landmarks, Mischke said. When looking for the next point, “You don’t know if that’s going to be right around the corner, or if you’re going to drive 10 miles,” he noted. No maps or phones are allowed inside the racing vehicles.

Goal is to match race legs’ ideal time, down to the second

Speeds are also listed. For example, Amundson said, if a stop sign is included as one of the navigational spots, “The instructions will almost always say, ‘Come to the stop sign, stop for 15 seconds, then go out at 40 mph.’ But the way the times are put together, it assumes that I’m going 30 all the way to the stop sign, and I’m immediately going 40 when I leave the stop sign.” 

To account for acceleration and deceleration times, a vehicle ahead at the stop sign, and other factors, Amundson and Mischke have a complex series of tables, calculated using spreadsheets, that guide them in making speed and time adjustments. 

“If we’re expected to leave at 8.9 seconds, and I keep the stopwatch running, and we don’t end up leaving until 13.9 seconds, then I know that we’re going to be five seconds too late to the checkpoint,” Mischke said. 

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Timing checkpoints occur at the end of each leg, or series of navigational instructions. Each day, or stage, of the race has multiple legs. “Let’s say we’ve been going for 20 minutes. We pass the timing checkpoint, and there’s a perfect time, let’s say it’s 20 minutes and 14 seconds, and we come in and it’s 20 minutes and 13 seconds. So we’re one second off, so our score is 1,” Amundson explained. 

The goal is a zero deviation from the ideal time, with the race’s overall winner having the lowest score. 

Calculations begin anew for each fresh leg. A zero-second deviation on a race leg is called an ace, and is rewarded with a sticker. “It’s always nice to get a few aces,” Amundson said.

Vintage vehicles required

Amundson originally got interested in the Great Race after hearing a former colleague talk about it. He purchased the 1973 BMW to have a qualifying vehicle. 

“It turns out this car had a reputation,” Amundson said. Named “Emily,” the vehicle was restored by Paul Wegweiser of Pittsburgh and is well-known among BMW fans and clubs. She’s even had dedicated visitors at the traveling car show that results when race participants place their vehicles on display in the evening of their overnight stops.

Emily’s relative youth, however, can be a disadvantage: race vehicles older than 1950 get points credit. “The older it is, the more credit you get,” Amundson said. Vehicles must also be correct to their period, with a few allowed exceptions, including modern brakes. 

Emily didn’t need structural or mechanical work when Amundson bought her, just “freshening up.” “Our concern has been mostly making sure that it’s capable to go a couple thousand miles in this race and not conk out on us,” he said. 

Each team is allowed a two-person crew, who meet them each morning and evening, and to bring along necessary parts for their vehicles. Amundson’s crew consists of his son Brian Amundson, of Eden Prairie, and son-in-law Kyle Schroeder of Hutchinson.

“I carry things that would be useful to fix stuff that would make us dead in the water,” Amundson said, including an extra fuel pump, water pump, and distributor parts. “Some of the people driving Model As and things like that have to work pretty hard to make sure they don’t overheat,” Amundson said. 

This year, he did fix the heater box under the dashboard to stop blowing hot air even in high temperatures. Emily is not air conditioned. “It’s a pretty simple car. I mean, it’s standard transmission. There are no computers in it, anything like that. It’s a 1973 style of vehicle,” Amundson said. 

‘A different kind of driving’

Modern electronics also aren’t allowed in the vehicle during the race. “You can have one analog speedometer, one analog clock, and one stopwatch – nothing else,” Amundson said.

The Great Race, Amundson said, requires “a different kind of driving. So, normal driving, you look at the road and check your speedometer. This one, you look at the speedometer and check the road. And it took me a while to learn that.”

Amundson and Mischke have practiced at a T-intersection north of Alexandria, Minnesota, where they measured the roadway 1,000 feet in each direction and then drove it multiple times to calculate their timing. Meeting the requirements of speed, timing, and navigation are all important factors in the race. 

“Part of it’s the precision of the navigation, tracking all those variables,” Amundson said. “You know: what do you do if you get stuck behind a tractor with a hay baler on the back? Stuff like that. I’d say the precision is in driving, attention to detail, and navigating and not getting lost.”

Mischke mentioned that the first place vehicle at a recent spring rally signaled the location of a tricky turn to keep the Emily team from getting lost. “I think the thing that hits me is just how friendly everybody is, both within the race and in the towns you go through,” Amundson said. 

Most overnight towns turn the stops into a celebration, offering food tents and more. “You get a chance to visit, you meet people’s families,” Amundson said. 

His own family, wife Kris and daughter Jen Mischke, recently competed as rookies in the Great Race Spring Rally, which allows modern vehicles. Competing in a Volvo with an analog speedometer, and the other instruments taped over, they came in at third place. 

Craig Amundson has participated in rallies and other events associated with the Great Race, but it’s the main event that’s the draw for him. “I don’t live and die cars, except for that one,” he said, referring to Emily. 

While Amundson and Mischke have been in first place on Day 2 of the race a couple of times, Mischke said their main goals remain the same: “Have the car make it, not get lost, and have fun.” 

Often, they will spend time for a family vacation around the race’s end point, then tow or ship Emily the BMW back to Minnesota. At that point, Amundson said, “I’m tired of sitting in it.”