Alan and Joe headed right for their room in spite of Davo offering them beer. That left me with Leigh and Davo. While he loaded up his pockets with bottles of beer Leigh went to unlock the door. Buster, who was fairly short, was curled up in a fetal position on the love seat as we walked in. Leigh thought it was funny but I didn’t. I went up and kicked the side of the seat. Buster jumped and ended up sliding off and into the space between the seat and the bed. By then Davo had walked in and started laughing at Buster… but he also told him to get up and to get out to the car. I never had to say a word… and I appreciated the support. Buster picked himself up and, after giving me a dirty look, headed for the car with his bag. At that point I was so tired I just pulled some clothes out of my duffel bag to make a pillow and ‘crashed’ on the love seat. My legs went over the end, bent at the knees. I have no idea what Davo and Leigh did or how long they stayed up because as soon as my head hit my makeshift pillow I was asleep.
Cliffy had told us to be back to the track by 8am. I heard someone knocking on the door and looked at my watch. It was past 7:30am and I quickly realized that there was no way we’d make it. Sitting up I could see Leigh asleep under the blanket and Davo, still in his clothes, snoring away. With him being 6’5” tall both his feet were off the end of the bed. I remember trying to get up and found myself stiff and hardly able to move. I had also forgotten there was hardly any room between the bed and the love seat. I was in the process of trying to extract myself from that situation when Leigh suddenly awoke. Joe and Alan were continuing to pound on the door. Before I got turned around and onto my knees I saw Leigh crawling to the end of the bed to answer the door. The sight of her panties butt sure got me awake! She crawled to the end of the bed and jumped off to open the door. Standing, I could only see a bit of her panties and she was obviously wearing one of Davo’s T shirts. When I got free of the bed/love seat a standing it made four of us in a space probably no more than four feet by four feet… cozy for sure. Alan was all business wanting to get to the track. Leigh’s attire didn’t seem to have an effect on him as he assessed the situation with Davo on the bed. He wasted no time in asking Leigh for the keys to Davo’s car but she immediately protested saying that she wasn’t going to spend the day at the motel. She quickly said she’d drive us there and then come back and get Davo. Almost immediately she moved past me and to her clothes piled on her suitcase against the wall. When she bent over to grab her pants I got an eyeful and a great view of her backside. The only light there was in the room at the time was through the Venetian blind that covered the window facing the parking lot. It had seen better days. There was enough light coming through for me to know the panties were a light blue. They had a nice, full crotch and my thoughts went to hoping I’d get a chance later on to take a close look at them. Leigh never put on a blouse just slipping her coat over the T shirt she was wearing. We all piled out of the room and, at the car, found Buster curled up in almost the same fetal position we’d seen him in the night before. Joe gave him a ‘shot’ in his butt and told him to move over He started to complain that he needed to use the toilet. Joe told him to hold it because we were on our way.
At the track we found that Dick and Cliffy had moved the hauler closer to the track and the pit entrance. We were about 15 to 20 minutes late and other than a slight ‘dig’ didn’t get any grief for being late. The schedule for the day was to have a one hour warm up session to get the engines and the gear oil in the transmission and rear end warmed up. It was to be for only an hour and the drivers had been told not to go racing around the track. Anyone who did wouldn’t be allowed to take part in the time trials. They were to start right at noon time and, with the large number of entries the officials were concerned that they wouldn’t be able to run the two consolation races for the cars that didn’t qualify based on their time. The mandatory driver meeting was at 9am and when attending each driver would get to pull a number to see when they were to take time. Alan was hoping for a low number to be out on the track early before the heat of the day made the track slippery. When Cliffy returned he had a big smile on his face and was waving a card with the number 24 on it.(49) The crew reacted as if we’d just won something. It was good thing but there was a lot of things that had to take place before we could really celebrate.
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A few words of explanation concerning the qualification time trials… The race promoters had come up with a ‘gimmick’ designed to draw big crowds to the race. They would sponsor a race at local race tracks from the mid-Atlantic area all the way up the East coast New Hampshire and Vermont. The winner of that race would be guaranteed starting position in the championship race if they could turn a lap at 100 mph or more. There were 20 such ‘preferred’ starters entered. There were 45 starting positions so that reduced the number of cars who could qualify through the time trials to 25. But… a few years earlier, they threw another ‘curve’ at the racers. With about 150 cars registered that meant over 100 would go home without racing. After a lot of complaining by the racers the promotors decided they’d hold two “Last Chance” races with the first two finishers being allowed to take the last four starting positions. I know this doesn’t sound like much but the promotors put up purse money for the two races so there was the opportunity to earn a little money. So… taking four more starting positions took that number down to 21. That’s not a high percentage… 21 cars out of approximately 130 or 16%. With that in mind we all knew we were facing high odds in getting into the race as the first car pulled out onto the track to take time.
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The fifth car to pull out on the track was the existing track record holder. Naturally, almost everybody was paying attention. When the time was announced I can assure you that it took everybody’s breath away… it was over two miles an hour faster that the old record. When they announced the speed… 113+ miles per hour we all just stood there in amazement. He turned the one mile in 31.765 seconds, almost four tenth’s of a second faster than the old record. Timing is taken out to the thousandths and even a tenth of a second is a major jump. In conversations leading up to the race our target was 43 seconds or 106 miles per hour. This guy just went 7 miles an hour faster than that. As we waited our turn we kept hearing times in the low 33 second bracket. Beth was the official recorder and I remember looking over her shoulder just before Cliffy pulled out on the track and was shocked to see that 19 of the 23 cars had gone faster than 34 seconds. When a car pulls onto the track it has to go all the way around to then take the green flag. Then the car makes two complete laps with the best time of the two being the one. Once Cliffy took the green flag I swear I didn’t take a breath until he’d completed the lap… and then I/we waited to hear the time… 33.209 or 108.404 miles per hour. No one could believe it.
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| This is the actual record that Cliffy's wife made that day. |
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