Features VINTAGE SPRINT CAR PIC THREAD, 1965 and older only please.

Way off topic I know, but I think it had more to do with the type of car than the particular suspension. In the 70s, the genius's in charge of USAC seemed to do everything they could to stifle any kind of a R/E shorttrack develpment program while having embraced R/E's in Champ cars for many years. Never could figure that out. If a driver wanted to gain R/E experience he had to do it on his own at different venues. A couple of cases in point:

 

Continued OT..but it opened an old wound. Might have posted this before. Our little rotary powered rear engine fully independent car was banned in one race by usac. I havent seen it since the early 70's, seems like it went Michigan since this shot was taken after it was sold.

 

Unfortunately, I just confirmed this with Darlington Raceway.

 

Red Caruthers built his own cars, his cars were called LTC's Red had the first VW in a Midget, Red's cars were parallel bar cars, Edmunds were cross bar. my dad Doug Caruthers had the second and the chassis was an Edmunds. The first USAC race Bobby and Red won was at Lost Creek Kentucky, I don't remember ever going back to that track since then[/QUOTE]


Roy.

Thanks for correcting my misinformation regarding Red's car.

Mike.

 

Yeah, rear engines, that's the way to go!!! Lets speak in a British accent and refer to A.J. Watson's roadsters as "Great lumps of junk", like Colin Chapman did in the early 60's at Indy, how cool is that!! American engineering sucks. While we are at it, lets go watch these guys every Saturday night at the local bull ring...how fun will that be!

How about that crowd at New Hampshire this past weekend? There were more people at Knoxville...to see winged sprint cars.

Yeah, this kind of action is so....backward, and what else? on dirt... how low tech.

Here we are today, ho hum, so boring...WTF! no independent suspension.... cave men.
I'm not saying we need wire wheels, and no roll bars, and t-shirts, but come on guys, what is wrong with good old American dirt track (or short paved ovals) open wheel oval track racing? I would not go across the street to watch rear engine cars race... for free admission. Glad I did not drive from Denver to L.A. all those times, to pull up to the gates at Ascot to see rear engine cars. How about all you Winchester fans, would you really rather have watched rear engine cars all these years? Guess I'm just old fashioned, and kind of crabby. Even if our guys train in RE cars, the guys from other countries, with the cash, will buy the rides. In the late 70's in Denver they ran Formula Fords at Englewood Speedway (1/3 paved), and Lakeside Speedway (1/5 paved), for a couple seasons. They ran as a support division with the RMMRA midgets, boy did they suck. You could not see the driver, and you could time them with a hour glass...but hey, they were rear engined!!!!

 

Isn't Jerry Hansen the father of Courtney Hansen,of the TV show "Overhaulin'"??? John S.

 

Check this out...kind of interesting.
http://blog.indycar.com/2011/08/12/tomas-scheckter-sideways-in-the-dirt/

 

I agree with you 100%. I was at the "race" in St.Paul when Hanson smoked everybody. From where I sat , the booing was very loud. IMHO there can never be a rear engined sprintcar, hell, I even hate wings. Beside's they were some ugly sob's too.

 

Thanks for sharing that. Tomas is the son of a legend and a damned quick car wrangler himself. His good finishes in his rare starts tells me that some team owner needs to hire him FT. At Louden last week, he passed nine cars on the first lap! Love to see him runs some USAC Sprint races and invite his Indycar and F1 friends to tag along...

 

Brian26, How about posting don Edmunds video on the cageless midget site. I am not computer savvy,I am sure viewers will love it. Thanks ,Speedy.

 

Mitch, I don't think anyone here(least of all me) is really advocating R/E cars but the reality of it all is what it is. There really has never been a good training ground for professional U.S. short track drivers that would give them the R/E experiance that could give them a better shot at the Indy cars. Kinda like if MLB farm teams only played softball.

 

Exactly... A few guys missed the point. We used to watch AJ, Al Unser,GaryB, etc...run the dirt, and follow them to Indy the next week. Now our open wheel stars end up in taxis and push trucks. Sorry to say there's no remedy in sight.

 

Rootie, you're right, I know it is what it is. Everybody on this thread is pretty much on the "same page", but I have had conversations with midget and sprint car people that really do feel that those cars should have gone rear engine years ago. With no regard to cost, fan support, loss of all dirt track racing, etc. they have some sort of "anti-tradition" complex. Like I said, I am old fashioned....and crabby.

 

American (US born) drivers, front engined cars, filling up at the very least- half the field, would take Indy back to the pinnacle it needs to be at.

From what I've seen, in my own stupid opinion, everything at Indy built upwards to 1987 (the most past , present, and future wins in the 500). After 1987 there was a slow gradual downard spiral in "the need" to watch the Indy 500.

Many of the older drivers knew what it was like to drive on dirt in a front engined car, their generation had dominated the win columns for two decades, and their fans still wanted to see them make another trip to the 500. AJ Foyt in my case. Since it had been tradition to watch the Indy 500 with those closest to you, the show went on. Not so strong in it's pull anymore, and I 'hate' that.

There are empty spots in the stands, when there should be a waiting list on tickets

There are cigarette lighters, jackets,playing cards, earrings,t-shirts etc etc etc next the cash register at convenience stores with nascar colors and logos----They sell better than Indy Car stuff, so it's a business decision to go with what sells.

An American Indy Car driver does well these days, maybe wins the 500--then they go to NASCAR for the money! It should be the other way around.


I heard a great quote the other day- "You have to play to win, but you also have to win to play."


You cannot argue with a great business model, but you CAN make an effort to make a better business model. Empty seats at the 500 indicate what should be a red-alert situation.

 

If you really care to know, I believe this is where big time racing changed and eventually found that people were okay with no new track records. Until this moment, everything was about going faster than ever before.

 

Nascar goes to restrictor plates on the large tracks, the races get closer- the Golden Age arrives. No more 200mph+ track records, and fewer airborne cars. For a while racing in those places is safer, closer, and good marketing brings in fans more than ever. SO MUCH in fact, new tracks get built and then it eventually comes down to winners and losers as to who wins a date.

They retained their US Born drivers,and the familiar front engined , real wheel drive experience we have all grown up with and carried on ---the only thing they had to give up was 200mph+ track records at Daytona and Talledega, that's it! Everything else was traded out for a more lucrative option. That led to a long term slow downslide in historical flavor, and when the lost Dale Sr., it got worse. But they made millions! Still making moolah to this very day.

------------

Indy Car racing lets it's US Born drivers slowly get booted out for the more well funded foriegn drivers, ---and nobody gets it?!



What has really happened-

An eclectic minority had decided to go solidly with a formula that would have a long term negative effect in terms of drawing power. Which led to the need for more funding that would have to come from a fickle outside of the US interest, which led to lessor known drivers who could bring in bigger bucks. Buying a place in history , yet low on appeal to remember.

No matter how many hundreds of millions of dollars anyone will pump into the Speedway, they cannot MAKE us love it like we did years ago.

We are the FANS. Remember us? Yeah us! You know the people who the corporations sell too? We're the same people the big companies play to in the Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals etc.

I miss the Indianapolis 500 when it was Great, and I am not ashamed to admit it. If grassroots, saturday night, local auto racing had endorsed rear engined cars for themselves, things would be different. I am 43 years old, I can recite 'every single winning drivers name from 1950 to 1996', in some cases even tell a few stories about those years. I have never been to the 500 in person, but it means that much to me. I get real choppy on the years after 1996 as to who won. To an extent, I try to speak for the fans I know.

 

I found this today while rearranging one of the kitchen cabinets,It was at a pile of plates that mom used for the holidays and special occasions.As A kid I used to take this and a couple of jackets,that I posted a couple of pics of earlier in the thread, into the pits and have the drivers sign them back when it was easier to have them sign things instead of the set autograph sessions they have nowadays ......Rich

 

Next sunday august 28 noon to 6 pm Flemington Fairgrounds 5 miles south of Flemington Circle on Rt 31 to rt 179 south They are looking for anyone who ran open cockpit cars at Flemington Speedway.

 

Hey Billy,It's next sunday, this sundays the 21st........

 

I got it now head cold brain not working well

 

At 16 years old I sent a letter to National speed sport news hoping USAC would ban rear engine sprints and midgets. Where would our sport be today if they hadn't. Over priced factory built sprints and midgets driven by a bunch of guys whose names we couldn't pronounce and races we wouldn't walk across the street to watch.

 

Why does everyone assume the rear engine cars would have dominated or been more expensive? During the 1970s Bob Dretzka ran a home built rear engined V4 outboard powered car in the Badger midget club. It won the occasional feature but was no where near a dominating car. All it ever did was put paying fans in the seats. Bob had far less money in that car than other front runners.

I started building a RE VW powered car in my apartment house basement around that time but ran out of talent & money. My friend Gregg Kishline built a RE VW that he raced at Joliet stadium in the late 1970s. It sits on his patio awaiting restoration. After RE cars were banned he and the Turners started a monocoque midget roadster with independent suspension. It sits 80% complete because offset chassis and independent suspension were banned -for cost reasons.

What a joke: cost reasons. No one banned $40,000 midget motors that need freshening every 5 races. No one banned gumball tires that won't last more than one feature. The cost of equipment isn't the problem any more; it is the cost of maintaining the stuff that chases people away.

Variety brought people to the ticket window. A spec series chases the knowledgable fan away and replaces them with the fad follower. Spec cars don't save money in the long term because racers always look for an edge. If that edge involves spending $3000 a night on tires & motor repairs in pursuit of a $1000 winners check they can't stay around long.

Me, I'm happy with my vintage cars and our sportsman midget club.

Chuck Schultz
Winfield, Illinois

 

I bemoan the "good old days" too, but they're gone. Maybe instead of allowing rear-engine cars in the support divisions, USAC should've banned them in Champ Car racing. But they didn't. It sucks that most of the short track talent in the country is siphoned off to race taxi cabs, but on the other hand, A.J., Parnelli, Bobby, Big Al, Mario, Gordo, J.R., Lloyd and others managed to do OK in anything they drove, front, rear, or even side-engined. Talent will rise to the top, if given the chance. That IMHO, is the real key. Money is the biggest problem, and you're starting to see foreign drivers in NASCAR too. The latest winner in Cup is Marcos Ambrose, another one of them dang Aussies. Montoya has a choice ride with Gannassi . When will it end? When the Earth is a snowball hurtling though space.

Oh, by the way, if "variety brought people to the ticket window", why were the 500's we all long for the return of populated with 31 Offys and 2 Novis? I know, there were some different chassis makers, but I'm making a point here.
Competition is what draws me in. Elbows up, wheel-to-wheel, 3 lead changes a lap. Rathman & Ward. A.J. & P.J.. Heck, even Gordo & the Rocket. THAT's what I'm talkin about. Nice shot of my man Ned in the Alleman Chev, BTW.

 

I wonder..........How quickly could an Oswego type super go at Indy???.

 

Pretty damn quick... down the straightaways. Getting them whoa'd up for the turns would kill their lap times I suspect. Even though the're comparable to modern Indy cars in h.p./weight, the Indy cars are so tweaked out aero-wise they would drive around them and leave them in the dust, I'm afraid.

 

It makes you wonder...If we went back in time and banned all the aero at the point it shot out of control and gave us this alternate reality...Where would we be ? Hmmm.....

 

There is not one thing that is affecting the decrease in intrest of Indy car racing but a litinay of causes. time has passed when you could just put the name Indy cars or indy drivers out there & draw a crowd. Since the mid 1960s the cost of running in the indy car series has depended on the ability of the participants (owners/drivers/sponsors) to fund the racing & as that escalated there was less & less people inclined to put money into a shrinking intrest endevour & having a racing series in primairly north amaerica with european cars,engines from everywhere but noth america, & drivers who either didnt have the money or the talent to go to F1 seems a fools errand & evidentally so does the public.

 

Good point.

 

Well, you guys hit one of my "buttons" - AERO. I believe costs, speed, equality, etc. can all be controlled via aero, or lack of it. Forget restrictor plates, put a 4 X 8 sheet of plywood across the nose of one of those taxi cabs (oh yea, with a hole for radiator air) and see how fast they would or could go. Indy cars are no different without aero a driver would have to drive the car (a unique thought) and a good driver knows how fast he can go before going over the edge, with or without aero, or at least most of them do.

Back in the good old days there was no aero, and the cars were cheaper to build, the drivers had to drive, creativity was a key part of racing, and the stock cars looked like stock cars (and Indy Cars were better looking).

As for safety without aero? With today's advances in safety e.g. belts, harnesses, fuel cells, HANs devices, arm restrights, full helmets, chassis and roll bar design, etc. I believe areo has little affect on safety. Think of how many of our favorite open wheel and stock car drivers who lost their lives racing, back in the day, would be with us today with today's safety advances in equpment and design.

As for Mr. Edmunds video, he was talking about independent suspension, not aero. Yes he tried a wing and it didn't work, wings would have been easy to ban. I believe Mr. Edmunds also built several rear engine midgets, that to my knowledge were not all that successful, Again his discusson was about suspension, not engine placement or aero.

Independent suspension on dirt??? Off road cars/trucks have a ton of independent suspension and they seem to get around on the dirt. You could always stiffen and loosen corner suspension to make the car perform like a solid axle car.

But...we can't go back in time.

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Blacki-Suede