Folks Of Interest Cheating to win - entertaining video.

When we raced I was an instrumental part in design and build on the car, organizing the pit crew, prepping, strategy, etc. I knew that car inside and out. Our driver could consistently get 20% faster lap times than me on an empty track, and stomp me into a puddle on a track filled with cars. He just cruised around like he was sitting on his couch... and won championships. Darn straight the driver matters.

 

Hey, Nosterbor, I notice you are from South West Missouri, and you talk about a guy that “ cruised around the track like he was sitting on his couch” he wasn’t driving with one hand, and smoking a cigarette at the time was he, with a cigarette lighter in the car. And from Springfield?






Bones

 

Nope. Scott Johnson is the car owner/driver I am talking about. We raced at Bolivar and Lebanon back in the asphalt days. I had a fairly short stock car racing stint. Too much cash and too much track drama. It was good fun watching Scott do his thing though, especially low bucking it like we did. He raced for several years, but hung it up just before they went to dirt in Lebanon.

 

Ok, the way you described Scott, it reminded me of Larry Phillips. He made it look easy. I worked at Thunderbird fir several years as a Firefighter. I stayed in turn two and got the birds eye of all drivers and cars. He was the smoothest I ever saw..... and smoked a cigarette while doing it!
I too was involved building cars and racing in 1979, was uninvolved by 1980, for the same reasons you stated!






Bones

 

as told to me by Ray himself: he designed a shock for the 24 car that would hold the car down. On the track, as the car hit the bumps the shock would compress but would retract so slowly it kept the car low to reduce the drag. at the end of the race the car would rise back up by the time it went through inspection, until, after one race a camera man jumped on the back of the car to get a photo right before the tech inspection. the car failed height by an inch. Ray said there must be something wrong with your tester and asked to see the head inspector. by the time the head guy showed up the car raised back up and p***ed. this caused the inspectors to have Ray take the shocks apart for them to inspect. they were looking for some kind of electric devise and found none. after studying photos of the Car in the pits compared to photos of the car during the race they could see the car was lower but the space between the tire and fender. the next year they p***ed a rule that the shocks could not hold the car down.

 

My dad and his pal have told me stories of watching Dale Armstrong clobber everyone at Calgary International Raceway in the early 60's. Running a '55 with a 'stock' 409 in it. Um, yeah. Rumours then of hidden nitrous.

 

Not exactly cheating, but, in our cl*** back in the day to eliminate high dollar engines at Thunderbird we had a “ claim it” on your engine anybody in the top 4 or 5 finishers could claim the winners engine for x number of dollars. Well we finished first a lot of times and while our engine wasn’t high dollar , I still didn’t want to lose a good running engine.
So... an old fire extinguisher filled with used engine oil and pressurized with a valve and cleaverly routed lines to look like fire suppression, but were actually plumbed into the headers. Well on about the last lap if it looked like we were going to win, our driver would open that valve letting a little oil into a hot header produced smoke out of the header. Convincing everyone we blew our engine! Never got one of our engines claimed!






Bones

 

Being a Fireman, the inspectors didn’t question our seemingly excess fire extinguishers on board. As we always had two mounted systems and a carried hand held.
We built a halo around and mostly in front of the engine, for what appeared to everyone as an onboard fire suppression system, p***ed inspection. But we would fill the ten pound extinguisher with as much oxygen as we could get in it from our cutting torch. If our driver needed a little boost at the finish line he’d open the valve and the oxygen would flow out into the atmosphere around the engine giving us a little more power. Kind of a “ Hillbilly “ nitrous system!






Bones

 

I raced against one guy who was fast, we had no gasoline rule and used anything from pump 93 octane to aviation gas to CAM2 at the track. My brother ran into a chemist where he works and eventually they discussed racing. The guy said he used to supply the additives that made that one guy so fast we raced against.

 

A DIRT story, may have been one of the Ricci brothers. They always had people stopping by their shop, some were trying to gain anything they could to go faster. They had a car in the shop and were installing pairs of shocks instead of one shock. So these guys go home and start installing an extra shock where they saw the Ricci's install theirs. Only thing, the 2nd shock on the Ricci car was dead. They wound up going slower with an over-shocked car.

 

Larry's last couple of years of local racing were during my first couple at the Lebanon, MO track. He was a legend, and an incredible driver. At the time Jamie McMurray was a rising 16 year old star, and they duked it out every weekend in the late models. The tech barn would get real interesting at times when you got both of their egos in there. I fully expected Jamie to go far in racing, but didn't expect him to land in a cup car at the time. It's a small world.

 

Yep, loved to watch Larry race. He made it look easy. He would come crusing by, not even making a lot of noise, then here came the rest of them....looking like and sounding like they were working their heads off! His son is excellent driver/ racer also!






Bones

 

You don't race cars, you race the rule book.
-Smokey Yunick

 

Rules are funny things. They need to be kept as simple as possible. They have to be enforceable and enforced evenly. We always felt that if they weren't enforcing a rule or checking it, then it wasn't a rule. Of course if you made them mad, it left you wide open with no defense. As others have mentioned the unwritten rule was "don't stink up the show".

 

It was fun to dissect the rules. We called it reading between the lines or exploiting the grey areas. If we wanted to hide something, we'd give the tech guys a red herring to look at. They'd have a canary over something obvious and stop looking. We'd fix what they found and go racing.

 

I really enjoy this type of thread, I have my thoughts on this subject from my personal experiences. Racing is "Fun, Relaxing and Economical" A good friend of mine's favorite comment, When all the crying, complaining, whimpering between the losers about why/how they got beat again. Cheating is usually the first comment,(generally, not the case) then the whining about the $$$, the have nots always jealous of the haves. Racing is a Big Boy Hobby/Sport, So put on your Big Boy pants and go to work, work hard, be smart/get smart, round up the funding necessary $$$, get away from the losers and their BS/Excuses, I was brought up on "There are No excuses, Make it happen" In my Many years of racing I never met a winner that didn't follow these simple guidelines. Remember ! Birds of a Feather, Flock Together.

 

About working with rules it's been said (originally by Smokey?) to walk up to the line, put your toes on it, and cast the longest shadow you can over it..........

Ed