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As many as 250 cars, including swarms of Minis, fill the field at the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Bowmanville, Ont., on sunny Sundays for the Vintage Grand Prix.Radu M. Repanovici

Shoeless Joe Jackson and his 1920 Chicago White Sox teammates materialize from thin air in W.P. Kinsella’s fantastic novel and the movie that followed, Field of Dreams. Former race organizer Bob DeShane’s version has high-revving engines in the place of Kinsella’s crack of hardwood against horsehide, yet the premise remains the same: Sometimes a fan really can step back in time.

For many car buffs, that step begins north of Bowmanville, Ont., where thousands will congregate at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park this Father’s Day weekend to witness beautifully restored vehicles take to the track on the facility’s Grand Prix circuit. All those who arrive in classic, exotic or simply older cars for the Vintage Grand Prix on June 17 need only park in the field inside Turns 8-9. From there, they’ll be ushered onto the racetrack to lap the course, perhaps in memory of James Hunt, Bruce McLaren or Dan Gurney – departed legends who thrilled huge crowds when Mosport still hosted Formula One world championship races.

In the here and now, Formula 5000 headlines this year’s Vintage Grand Prix, with bellowing Chevrolet V-8s powering open-wheeled Lola and McLaren cars. Classic British sports cars are co-featured with all-MG races and a MG-Triumph confrontation.

Admission is $20 for everyone in a classic/old/exotic car on Sunday – versus $20 a person in ordinary vehicles. Driving the 2.459-mile circuit adds another $10.

As many as 250 cars have filled the field on sunny Sundays since DeShane introduced the Field of Dreams promotion in 2005 to attract new fans. Some enjoy a picnic, most talk cars and everybody climbs the hill at some point to watch swarms of Minis and Mustangs buzzing into the final turn before the checkered flag.

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A red MGA speeds down the track ahead of a yellow MGB at the Vintage Grand Prix.Radu Repanovici

This year’s Grand Marshal is race legend Brian Redman, who at the age of 22 worked for the Patent Wringer Company delivering mops in his native England. He supercharged his Morris Minor Traveller, ostensibly to reduce delivery times, but soon after he was racing it at Rufforth Circuit. He had the will, Redman once told Motor Sport magazine, and the way was as simple as removing the mops.

The keenest fans may find their way from the field to the paddock when the three-time F5000 champion Redman – who was also runner-up to Mario Andretti by 0.620 of a second at Mosport in 1975 – reminisces on his racing glory days in a “Legends of Motorsport” panel with Eppie Wietzes, the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Famer who also started racing in a Morris Minor.

For the record, Wietzes turned 80 in May; Redman is 81. Very likely to come up in their conversation will be the inaugural Long Beach Grand Prix in 1975. It was a Formula 5000 race before Formula One and Indy car. Redman won the race and Wietzes came in third.

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Attendees check out a Daimler SP250, a British sports car with a V-8 engine and fibreglass body.Radu M. Repanovici

Mosport itself followed Kinsellian principle: Build it and they will come. Sixty years ago this summer, the British Empire Motor Club bought an option for 450 acres of rolling hills north of Bowmanville. By the late fifties, sports-car racing had already blossomed on Ontario airports beginning with Edenvale in 1950, but BEMC members envisioned a true road-racing circuit comparable to Italy’s famed Monza course.

And so, they built it. Stirling Moss, the fastest racer of his generation, came to Mosport and drew an estimated 40,000 people – at the time believed to be the largest crowd in the history of Canadian sport – and won the Player’s 200. Fans who were there can still recall a vision of Moss’s pea-green Lotus 19, his head characteristically cocked back while dissecting a corner.

Race fan Don Lutes and wife Briedge plan to arrive Sunday in their 1983 Mazda RX-7 to relish and remember the good old days. “Mark Donohue was racing Penske’s Porsche 917 in the 1973 Can-Am, my first time at Mosport,” says Lutes, now retired and living in Lindsay, Ont.

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An orange MGB races around the track at the Vintage Grand Prix.Radu M. Repanovici

“Vintage probably appeals to me more now than anything else – I enjoy the camaraderie. You can walk up to a driver and have a conversation. And whereas at a typical car show, you spend the afternoon talking, here you get to drive the track.”

And getting to drive the same course as bona-fide race legends is the main draw for Rob Holtby, who plans to hit the track in his 1973 Triumph GT6 (his vintage Camaro is having some work done).

“It used to be three laps,” says Holtby, an Uxbridge pastor and former custom-home builder. “It’s really too bad they cut it back to two, because there’s just so much to take in on the Grand Prix circuit. You’re taking in how the track dives and twists, you’re waving at people. It’s just great.”

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