KEEPING UP... Busy, busy busy (Part 166k)

KEEPING UP… Busy, busy, busy (Part 166k)

If you go back to the very last paragraph of my post (Part 166h) you can see I was concerned about having 45 cars on the track at one time. Having just witnessed the carnage (only nine cars out of 25 were able to finish a 20 lap race) I was expecting to see/hear a loud crash as the cars disappeared into the first turn. (That’s a misnomer since the track was pretty much one continuous turn) The fast cars had been navigating the track in 33 seconds but I’ll tell you it seemed like a lot more time had passed before the cars made it back to the start/finish line. At 100+ miles per hour it didn’t take them long to roar past and then to disappear again. I’m not sure but I’m going to guess that it was on about the fifth lap that we saw the starter, who was located right across the track from us, throw the yellow ‘caution’ flag indicating that there was trouble on the track. We all waited, anxiously, for the cars to go slowly by. With much relief we saw Cliffy and counted him in about 25th place. The main thing was that we were still running.

A note of information here… Back in those days (and up to 2006) scoring was done by hand with one person assigned to each car. Beth was our scorer and was seated right across from our pit location along with all the other scorers. Alan took our blackboard and wrote the car number on it along with a question mark and held it up hoping she’d see it. It took a few laps but then we saw her wave with her thumb up. It was certainly a big help.

The track had a rule that any cars involved in an ‘incident’ and had to be towed back to the pits would not be allowed to return to the race. To have control of that aspect they had a designated ‘impound’ area where the wreckers would quickly deposit the cars and then return to assist in the clean up be it a wreck or blown motor. From where were were we couldn’t see the impound area so had no idea who was involved but Alan had determined that the cars had been from the back end of the field. I have no idea how many laps ran off before the green flag flew again but it was another case of holding your breath until the cars came past. By the time the race reached around 40 laps there had been two other yellow flag periods with one of them involving cars that had been ahead of us. That helped us move up in the running order to 18th. When the cars came by at the slower speed I was able to confirm not only our position but that of C J as well. He’d started 14th and was running in the top 10. However, one thing I’d learned about restarts was that it was often chaotic and this one certainly met that description. We didn’t have instant replays in those days and when, after the race was over, I asked what had happened I got a different answer from each person that I spoke to. The sum and substance was that one of the cars in the lead pack went out of control and hit a number of other cars taking them out of the race altogether.

After that was all sorted out we found ourselves running in 15th place. That was pretty heady stuff and we were really excited. The restart went well with no collisions and there were a number of laps run off without incident. Cliffy had fallen a bit behind the car in front of him but had opened up a bit of a lead on the car right behind him. It looked like a few laps of easy running coming up for us. But then… the yellow flag appeared again. We stood there anxiously awaiting to see our car but it didn’t come. The cars that had been both in front of and behind Cliffy went by but not our car.

All the loudspeakers with the announcers observations were facing towards the grandstands. With the noise of the motors those of us in the pits heard nothing of what was said. Alan wrote a big question mark on the blackboard and was waving it in the general direction of the area where Beth and the other scorers were seated. We could see her just put both her hands up signaling she didn’t know anything either. At that point Alan, without saying anything, took off on a dead run towards the impound area. The rest of us didn’t know what to do. As I’d mentioned, we were totally unprepared for any contingency. When we saw the cars starting to get in line for the next restart it became obvious we weren’t going to see Cliffy and we headed for the impound area ourselves.

My first glimpse of the car showed no outward damage and I wondered why we were placed there. I could see a number of damaged cars with parts strewn about. Getting closer to the car I could see the hood was off and Cliffy and Alan just staring at the motor. My first thought was that it had blown up. Cliffy had the look of disgust written all over his face as he stood there with his arms crossed over his chest. Dick was probably his closest friend and he was the one to ask what had happened. All Cliffy did was point to the carburetor. It was Alan who ‘interpreted’ the action for the rest of us. The return spring for the accelerator pedal had broken.

As far as damage to the car was concerned it was minor. Alan filled us in on just what had happened. When the track was a complete circle the driver would never really lift his foot off the gas pedal unless there was something ahead that had to be avoided. With the paving of the track and the addition of the short straight away it created a different situation. If the driver didn’t lift his foot as he headed onto the straight portion, the car would drift right out to the guard rail. When Cliffy got to that point on the track he lifted his foot but the car kept going, full speed and on into the guard rail. It was only a glancing blow but he had to do something before reaching the end of the little straight portion. So, he flipped the ignition switch to the off position and tromped on the brakes. The cars were set up to turn left and that included the brakes. They were set with a left bias meaning that if you did what Cliffy did the car would turn left even with the steering wheel headed straight. So… what happened was that the car did start to slow down but it also made a big sweeping left hand turn with the back end coming around to make the car face in the opposite direction. And… when it did it slid into the infield. Because he couldn’t start and control the engine he had to be towed into the impound area. It was determined that the glancing blow to the guard rail hadn’t done any major damage and with an adjustment to the tie rod ends and installation of another spring on the carburetor we could drive the car. But, it wasn’t that simple. While we were gathered around the car there had been another big wreck on the track and in spite of our pleas to the drivers of the wreckers they proceed to just dump the wrecked cars in front of us blocking us in.

This was taken right after Cliffy glanced off the outside guard rail.

This was taken right after Cliffy had spun into the infield. Two points I'd like to make here... 1) Note the printing right above the windshield "Excedrin Headache #21" I'd added that back while we were having the problems with the cylinder heads. It was a time when Excedrin was running a series of ads with that sort of theme. I can't be sure that that was the reason but this picture was sent out on the AP wire services to papers all over the US and was picked up by some. One was in Reno Nevada where an old childhood friend lived and knew I was still involved in racing. The picture generated a call from him and renewed an almost forgotten relationship. The picture was also used in many racing papers as well as two magazines that focused on stock car racing.

None of us but Buster was interested in watching the rest of the race. Cliffy and Dick made the repairs to the steering components on the car while the rest of us went about picking up all our equipment from the pit area and getting it back to the hauler. When I’d driven it from the raceday pits to the infield I’d been directed to a specific area where the other haulers and trucks with trailers were to be parked. When we got there we all had the same question… would we ever get out? We were blocked in three deep. The one good thing was that from the bed of the hauler we could see most of the backstretch so watched the end of the race from there. Then the ‘fun’ began. NOT!

To be continued...