Two-time Indy 500 winner and two-time U.S. National Champion Al Unser Jr. will serve as Grand Marshal for the 20016 running of The Mitty at Road Atlanta on the weekend of April 21-24. After championship successes in Super Vee and single-seat Can-Am competition, Unser broke into Indycars in 1983, won his first Indycar race at Portland the following year and claimed his first Indycar crown in 1990 with the Galles Racing Lola-Chevrolet. In 1992 he nipped Scott Goodyear at the line to win his first Indy 500 driving Rick Galles’ Galmer-Chevy (above), then repeated both feats in 1994, taking a second Indy win and series championship after switching to Penske Racing’s Mercedes-Benz-powered machines.
The featured element of this year’s Mitty will be a 50-year Can-Am Reunion, as that deeply revered SCCA series for essentially unlimited sports racing cars first came to life in 1966, and the Road Atlanta outings will be the first of five such reunions held throughout North America this year.
The second of these anniversary weekends will take place at the Sonoma Historics — where the 50th birthday of the Trans-Am Series will also be marked — on the weekend of June 2-5, and it will be followed by the Sommet des Legendes at Le Circuit Mont Tremblant in St. Jovite, Quebec, home to the very first Can-Am race, scheduled for July 8-10. A week later the faithful will reassemble at Elkhart Lake’s Road America in Wisconsin for the Weather Tech International Challenge with Brian Redman presented by HAWK, and the final Can-Am tribute will be part of this year’s Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Central California on the weekend of August 18-21.
