NORWICH – The Northeast Classic Car Museum announced plans on Tuesday for the 2018 Hemmings Motor News Great Race, which will make a lunch stop at the car museum on Sunday, June 24.

Northeast Classic Car Museum Executive Director Robert Jeffrey introduced four Great Race participants at the event – both past participants and present – who answered questions about the renowned antique car rally.

Jeffrey said, “The Northeast Classic Car Museum is honored and excited to be hosting a lunch stop for the 2018 Hemmings Motor News Great Race.” The last time the Great Race ventured through Norwich was in 2000, when the race made a 15-minute pit-stop in the city, according to Jeffrey.

Jeffrey said participants in the Great Race and its surrounding entourage will roll into Norwich around 12:15 on June 24, and will remain for one hour before once again hitting the road. Before the racers arrive, a ceremony will commence at the museum at noon. The public is invited to attend and see the antique cars in the race, most of which were built before World War II.

Past Great Race participant Elliott Reitz provided insight as to what being in the Great Race is like. “Being in the Great Race is like nothing else you could ever do...It’s like belonging to a traveling circus. That’s about what it’s like. You never quite get your feet on the ground, or quite remember everywhere you’ve been, but the sights and the scenes and the things that happen to you are lifetime memories.”

The 2018 Great Race will start in Buffalo and span 2,300 miles across four states and two Canadian provinces to Nova Scotia. Reitz and other participants on the panel Tuesday, Frank Whitney, Jim Feeney, and Steve Tourje, talked about the challenges of excelling in the race, which is not a speed race, but rather a contest of precision of time, speed, and distance.