Folks Of Interest Cheating to win - entertaining video.

We are all familiar with Smokey and some of the other folks who were known to bend the rules to gain an advantage. Here's a video with a panel of racing folks sharing stories of how they were able to do the same.

 

My father remembers one night at Fonda speedway Harry Peek came in with a car that was suspected of being light.
The track didn't have scales so they had to take it down the road to the creamery.
Harry's guys filled the the fluid levels (oil,water) to over flowing, put tools up the headers, if it was heavy it went in the car.
When they got back to the track after making wight an official looked under the car and said "You better take that bottle jack off the transmission, before you go out for the heats."

Harry was out of the nicest guys you could ever meet, so this incident was kind of overlooked.

 

EXCELLENT

 

I suppose many a "innovator" did this and while it worked for my Air Force buddy he never was top qualifier or winner of his cl***.
McConnell AFB, Wichita Kansas, summer of '58. We were in the Engineering Group working duty as fabricators, welders. "Pitt" machined an 1/2 aluminum plate installed under the carb with small holes drilled horizontally from the back side of the into the secondarys, installed small copper tubes in those holes, that we hooked up to the washer bottle with water alcohol. Did test/tune on the road outside the base fence, (rock road for those in Wichita). He got it to work okay, just push the washer ****on, get a boost and be on his way. We had thousands of gallons of W.A., our B-47's used it on take off. Don't know if he got caught at it, I got married and moved off base and stopped going to the on base drags and Pitt never mentioned anything about being caught.

 

I LOVE this stuff. Thank you so much for posting.

 

That was fantastic. Thanks.

 

That was awesome.
r


Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.

 

Thanks, that was great.

 

Thank you for sharing this. Goes to show you that people engaged on an activity are more creative and innovative than the rule makers who tend to be reactionary.

 

Smokey or 'Others' who acid dipped, and made 7/8th scale bodies.

 

Very cool video! Thanks.

 

SBC....know of a JR injected fueler.....you guys know the old canister oil filter on a SBC - they blocked it off and filled it with concrete for the official's weigh in.....back at the pits an empty oil canister was screwed on - which is used as a door stop now days.....not telling who....but they were winners.....and no telling what else........

 

I remember a tale of a guy called Hillbilly Duncan that drag raced an Olds that one bank (the hardest one to tear down) was bored to the max and the other bank was stock. He won a lot of races until he got caught
He was probably not the only one to use that trick in the stock cl***es!!!

 

Great Video, bending the rules has been and still is part of racing from the beginning and will be to the end. There's a reason racing organizations have thick rulebooks that continue to grow every year. Innovation sounds much better than cheating IMO.

 

Interesting fact: people who win at anything by cheating feel just as deserving and just as much pride as those who win by following the rules.
A sad part of human nature.

 

There's only one problem with this video...

It's WAY too short..!
It needs to be about 5 hours long.

Mike

 

That used to piss me off when I did Tractor Pulling..Getting even by not bending the rules was a feat but doable; just took more work..

 

I've heard it called "being extra compe***ive". There are two kinds of racers, the cheaters running up front and the cry babies in the back. (LOL) The cry babies are crying because they know what they are doing and can't believe anybody could be legal and beat them. It hurts to get beat by a cheater, but it is so satisfying to win legally. Stock car racing seems to have a culture of "it ain't cheatin' ifn you don't get caught". I don't have a problem with exploring grey areas or creative interpretations. That's creativity and it leads to clarification. I know when I write a test question, I know exactly what I meant, but occasionally a student comes up with legitimate alternative interpretation. One of the best rules I ever saw was at the end of a set for a street stock cl***. "If it is not specifically allowed, it is expressly prohibited."

 

The person who started me down this road said : "If you want to go racing the first thing you NEED to do is buy a copy of that racing ***ociation's current rule book & study it until you know it better that the person that wrote it. Then put it away for a week, then dig it out & re-read it, but this time ask what each rule means, how does it limit what you want to do, & how to get around it legally if you see a reason to do so. Write these questions down, bring them to me & we will discuss them, both pro & con, until you decide how, & what kind of car you want to build, & where you want to race it! Then, & only then, you are ready to start building a race car : before that you're wasting your time & money because you don't have a plan of how to build your car, or how to talk to the track's tech inspectors when you present the car for your first race!! I always admired John Soares Sr (Who could have very legitimately been on that panel at the top of this column!!) when he went from driving to promoting, ended his Track's Rule Book with his final rule : "If it doesn't say you can, you CAN'T" LOL!

 

He ran Petaluma speedway .

I raced or pitted there in the late 70,s to early 90's
His bending the rules didnt end with racing.

One of his sayings was dont try and BS a BS'r

If you had a street or super stock there that was built to the rules you might as well not show up.

 

If you had a street or super stock there that was built to the rules you might as well not show up.[/QUOTE]

Now that’s sad . . . we run a 1/2mile dirt super stock and is 100% legit. And of course we don’t win.

 

1biggun : I didn't know John Sr. well, but John Jr was my dirt track instructor @ Southard's School in the mid '70s, & Jim(RIP) was also a good friend. Don't know what you're currently doing, but if you're in the area, PM me(I mostly am at Marysville lately, with excursions to Calistoga when they turn the lights on from time to time....)

 

Not sure if this is true, but heard it someplace -

A NASCAR car won a race, and somebody noticed it made fewer pit stops for fuel. In the post race inspection, the gas tank was pulled from the car, to accurately measure its capacity. After ample time had p***ed, the crew was anxious to load the car into the trailer, so a crew member went to retrieve it. No officials were around the car, so he fired it up, and drove to and into the trailer. He hadn't noticed that the gas tank, found to be legal, was setting on the inspector's work bench!

 

This!

When I did my stock car racing stint this is exactly how we approached it. We did not cheat, but pressed every rule to the absolute limit, and could debate the rule book with the Almighty if we had to. We had a very successful run on the asphalt.

 

Racing and rules are a funny combination. Some rule books are written with the understanding the rules tell you what you can do, and other rule books are written with the understanding that the rules tell you what you can't do. Then there is the way the various track view the rule book. Some tracks view the rule book as stated facts drawn in concrete, and other tracks view the rule book as a guide line. The hard tracks are the ones that are indecisive that have rules that are generic. You have to know what the rules mean at the track you want to run at.
Cheating is often defined as a difference in the interpretation of the rule book. The guys that are loosing determine the rule book differently then the guys that are winning. Blatantly breaking the rules was always a different story.

We went to a track once that was putting on really good races. Our interpretation of the rule book was somewhat different then that of most of the guys in our cl***, to say we were slow was an understatement. After talking with a few people, we discovered that the track didn't care how closely the rule book was followed, all they cared about was how close the racing was. If someone showed up and ran away week after week, the car was declared illegal, but the same car running side by side with someone until the last corner was OK, as long as the victory was obviously way different then the rest of the race. it was all about the show to that track. That was a really fun track to run at as long as we could afford it, when money got tight, it wasn't a place to call our home track. Gene

 

SMOKEY once made a point "I might have bent a bunch of rules, but I never cheated : when something was declared illegal, I didn't do that anymore : I'd find another way to go that was still legal, at least until THAT was declared illegal!"

 

Cool video! There was always that one or two guys at every level of racing that we were involved in that had "figured something out" to go faster. It might not have been illegal that night. But as France said, "it will be tomorrow".

 

One of those guys , can’t remember who, made a fuel cell to specs, but there were no specs on the fuel hose. So he ran something like a two inch fuel line to the carb and routed it so that it was rather long, and gained several gallons of fuel. Or something like that, as the story goes......








Bones

 

^^^ Read that about Smokey.

 

“Bending “ the rules, is as much a part of racing as anything else in racing! The way I see it I build the car, if it p***es inspection, it’s legal! But the car is only part of the equation! The driver is the most important thing in winning.

Years back we had a racer, our compe***ion, that won a lot of races. He financed his hobby by building and selling race cars. He would build them just like his, but the buyers couldn’t win with it. So he started selling the car he was driving the next day, still the buyers couldn’t win with it. The accused him of “ messing” with the car the night before! So then he would tell the buyers “ get your trailer ready” and then he would drive right from the scales right onto their trailer ! They still couldn’t win with his car. He would drive around them in his new car he just built! The difference??? The driver!

Last year, we had our money man, a relatively new driver, pulled his legal engine out and gave it to our young, excellent driver, and put in a cheater engine. The very next race, the young man won the race , the money man? Fifth! Difference ?? The driver!






Bones