Seems like every time I reach way back, like I did for last week’s column about the first K&K team at Daytona in 1966, the phone starts ringing and it’s somebody I haven’t heard from for a few years. Yes, it happened again last week. “Just who are you in that photo of the 1966 …
Got some emails last week asking if we ever did any while I was with Harry Hyde and the K&K team in 1966. I never said we didn’t. “Competitive engineering,” a nice name for cheating. At Atlanta, there was something of a dust cloud on the backstretch during the pace lap when everyone who had …
Last Sunday’s debacle at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway brought the subject for this week’s dissertation to mind. In one of the blogs online and also on the Indianapolis Star website, several people asked where the term “competition caution” came from, since it obviously had nothing to do with competition, at least in that case. I …
Back in the days when I was a starter for the American Speed Association, one of my favorite events was what began as the Dri-Powr 400 at Winchester, Ind. For those of you who have never been there, Winchester Speedway was one of the three high-banked half-mile tracks designed by Frank Funk. The other two …
I said last week I’d talk about Bob Daniels in a future column. This being Brickyard week, it seems like a good time. Actually, at IRP we used to call it “Kroger Week.” I met Bob Daniels when I was flagging for ASA and working full-time as a weekly newspaper editor in southern Indiana. He, …
Has it really been eight years since we lost Kenny Irwin Jr.? He’s another one of those “kids” I had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know as I spent 15 years at what was then (and will probably always be to me) Indianapolis Raceway Park. The late Bob Daniels (another of those promoters …
In all the years I’ve been involved in this motorsports business, I’ve worked with some outstanding promoters. Three of them – Bob Daniels, Earl Baltes, and Andy Vertrees – were named Promoters of the Year. There were two others that should have been – both are gone now, and I miss them. One was Milt …
I mentioned the USAC sprint cars at Salem last week on the way to telling that story about Roger McCluskey, and it brought this recollection to mind. It was in 1960 that Parnelli Jones came east with the Fike Plumbing Special out of Phoenix which was powered by a small-block Chevy, and began kicking the …
Roger McCluskey, a former USAC champion and the organization’s director of competition in his later years, was one of my favorite people. Even when I was just attending USAC races and he was racing, I really liked the guy. I really got to know him and got to be friends with him in my years …
In the summer of 1967, I had a summer of racing that was the envy of my middle-school buddies and still, after all these years, at the forefront of my childhood memories. That is the year that the Thompsons – “Big” Tommy and “Little” Tommy – attempted to set the USAC racing world on its …
Quite often somebody or other is asking me what was the most memorable race I ever flagged. After 30 years in the flagstand, it’s hard to isolate one race, but there is one I’ll never forget – actually two, but they were tied together. In ASA’s first appearance at Michigan International Speedway, I was in …
They hold a race on Memorial Day weekend every year at what is now O’Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis (nee Indianapolis Raceway Park) called the Night Before the 500. It’s a United States Auto Club Midget Series race, and this year’s renewal will be the 63rd edition – with this year’s version sponsored by Toyota. …
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