Klasika

[alberto.ascari]

Meh i ovo je klasika, pošto je bilo pre jebenih predugih i jalovih 13 godina. Još malo pa smo izjednačili rupu Sch/Sch...


Finska braća [emoji846]




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[Radoye]

Jedan mali kuriozitet - prva trka ikada na Hungaroringu, istocnoevropski Formula Ister sampionat, generalna proba za F1 VN Madjarske:

 

 

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[Radoye]

[Duh sa sekirom]

I prođe 26 godina od tog dana, a i dalje ga se celog sećam kao da je danas bilo... 

[Radoye]

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RETRO: Jack Conely’s Milwaukee miracle

 

By Robin Miller | 4 hours ago

 

 

Unless you were in attendance back in June of 1963 at Milwaukee, there is no video or written documentation of Jack Conely’s wildly entertaining IndyCar run in the Rex Mays Classic.

 

A successful super modified racer from Brighton, Mich. who earned the nickname “Brighton Bandit” because he would blow into Oswego or Toledo and steal a big race win, Conely made his IndyCar debut the year before at Milwaukee and shown quite well, qualifying fifth out of 35 cars in his homemade roadster but only last 10 laps before blowing up.

 

In 1963, he had attempted to qualify for the Indianapolis 500 the month but fell three spots shy with his one-off car and a worn-out engine. But he wanted another shot at USAC’s Big Cars so they took Harry Dunn’s homemade Offy to the Milwaukee Mile.

 

Back then the 18th fastest qualifiers automatically made the show and the other four starters advancing from the “hooligan” race comprised the starting line-up. That day Indy winner Parnelli Jones blew up in practice and was a spectator while Johnny Boyd and Jim Hurtubise owned the front row.

A total of 33 cars meant that 15 would be in the 20-lap “suitcase” race to decide the grid.

 

Bobby Grim Jr. was 13 at the time and in the grandstands watching his dad qualify 15th but got to witness quite a show.

 

“Conely was in this one-of-a-kind car and nobody expected much, but he took off and was leading the hooligan when he spun out,” recalled Grim. “So he had to go to the rear of the pack and in about six laps he was leading again when he spun out again.

 

“They restarted and here he comes, storming through the pack, and taking the lead again — the fans were going berserk. Of course he looped it, and then fought his way back to second place to make the feature and got a standing ovation. It’s still one of the loudest reactions I’ve ever heard.”

 

In the feature race, Conely charged from 22nd to finish ninth, one lap behind winner Rodger Ward. He made two more starts at Milwaukee in that old roadster but never came close to duplicating his success. Conely was lined up to try Indy again in 1966 before being DQ’d for running an outlaw race.

 

A veteran of the Korean War who also was known for his engine expertise, Conely opened free housing for cancer patients in addition to running his speed shop until his death in 2017 at the age of 87. He won over 500 features and was elected into the Michigan Motorsports Hall of Fame, but that day in Milwaukee ranked as one of his finest.

 

 

[Dzoni_m]

Senna na Hungaroringu 1986. Pozajmio Ladu da upozna stazu.


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[Radoye]

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RETRO: Jan Opperman’s Bump Day brilliance

 

By Robin Miller | 1 hour ago

 

 

Jan Opperman did a lot of amazing things in sprints, midgets and dirt cars but his performance at Indianapolis in May of 1976 was just confirmation of his badass calling.

 

Driving an old Eagle for Don Mergard, Opp had nursed it into the field but when qualifying opened on the fourth and final day, he was immediately bumped.

 

“He was pretty down and said, ‘Let’s go to Findlay, I can make $1,000 there tonight if I win the sprint feature,” recalls Tim Coffeen, a longtime IndyCar mechanic and former sprint car driver who helped Opperman in the early ’70s when he was establishing his reputation.

 

But Terry Otero, his chief mechanic on the Speedway Motors #4X sprinter, told him, “We`re not going to Findlay — you deserve to be in the Indy 500 and we’re going to find you a ride.”

 

A couple hours later, Dick Routh approached Opperman and asked if he wanted to try out his car, which was an older VPJ Eagle. Earlier, USAC had refused Gary Allbritain, Routh’s original driver, a rookie test because he had had crashed Routh’s car at both Phoenix and Trenton. Steve Krisiloff drove it, then got out and went to Bill Finley. Jerry Karl ran a bunch of laps and wasn’t up to speed.

 

The first thing Jan did was go find Ted Swiontek (pictured in glasses, next to Opperman above), a great sprint car mechanic from Pennsylvania who had been working on Indy cars as well in the early 1970s. Jan went out, ran a couple of laps and told Ted the car was really nervous from the middle of the corner out and the car lacked straightaway speed.

 

“Ted, along with Routh’s chief mechanic, Todd Gibson, (who was also a helluva race driver) removed the shocks and found the bump rubbers were bottoming out on the left side before the right. They changed the bump rubbers and Art Lamey of Champion inspected the Offy’s spark plugs. Art suggested new plugs and richening up the fuel mixture on the engine.

 

“Jan suddenly jumps up to 179mph, just shy of bumping speed, but wants new tires as the current set had a bunch of laps on them. The crew gets new tires mounted, Opp scrubbed ’em in and they pushed the car in line to qualify. But a qualifying line had formed and it looks to be too little, too late. Chris Economacki thrusts a microphone in Opp’s face and asks him, “What does it feel like to miss the show?”

 

But Billy Engelhart is a good sport and pulls in after two laps too slow and Jan pulls away just as the 6 o’clock gun goes off. He kills the engine on the way out of the pits but gets it fired and then drives into the starting line-up with a clutch run that bumps Eldon Rasmussen.

 

So with a total of 10 hot laps, some grassroots logic from Swiontek, Gibson and Otero and Jan’s undeniable talent, this little team made the show in what can best be described as the annual drama of Bump Day in the ’60s and ’70s.

 

It’s why Indianapolis held such a grip on people and why being one of the fastest 33 qualifiers back then was such a big deal.

 

Later that summer Opp went on a tear in USAC — winning Dayton, IRP, Little Springfield, Eldora, Ascot, leading Springfield and finishing sixth at Ontario before being critically injured at the Hoosier Hundred.

 

He never again sat in an Indy car and his career never recovered from his injuries but his performance under fire in May of 1976 only added to his legacy.

 

 

[zoran59]

Lep dokumentarac, zanimljiva prica:

 

 

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MILLER: Heroes of Bump Day

Images courtesy of Greg Littleton

 

By Robin Miller | 3 hours ago

 

 

This should be qualifying weekend at Indianapolis, so to honor this dramatic part of American motorsports history, here are three ballsy stories of Bump Days gone by that illustrate what a driver was willing to do under the gun. And thanks to Greg Littleton’s book The Race to Make The Race for bringing them to my attention.

 

In 1954, likable Bob Scott thought he had his third-straight starting line-up made until he was bumped with 90 minutes to go. So he began looking for something to drive, and wound up with the Ray Brady Special.

 

Earlier in the month this car had been described as a “Model T” by Ernie McCoy before he got out of it, and there wasn’t a big line waiting to hop in it. But Scott, despite never having sat in the car, was game and pulled away at 5:51 p.m. to try and do the impossible.

 

The bump speed was 137.673mph (Frank Armi) and Scott’s first flyer was an “astounding” 138.419 mph (according to The Indianapolis Times). His second lap was even faster at 139.018mph and Bob Sweikert ran out to the pit wall to cheer on his pal. Lap 3 was down to 136.778mph, but his average speed was still plenty fast enough.

 

Scott supposedly saw Sweikert with his hands clasped over his head in a victory salute as he completed Lap 3 and the crew jumping up and down while the grandstands were standing and screaming.

 

But then came the unthinkable. Instead of finishing his run, Scott slowed and pulled into the pits, mistakenly thinking his third lap had been his fourth. Armi had been spared, but the 25-year-old Californian was inconsolable for the next two hours as he wept openly in his garage about his mistake and apologized 100 times to his crew.

 

It turned out to be his last hurrah at IMS, because he was killed two months later when Indy cars raced at Darlington.

 

A similar scenario developed in 1957, when Chuck Weyant was bumped with 25 minutes remaining in time trials. Weyant had changed into his street clothes and was preparing to head back to Springfield, Ill., when a friend ran into his garage and told him that Pete Salemi’s Central Excavating Special was near the head of the qualifying line with no driver.

 

So Weyant sprinted out to the pits, and after introducing himself to crew chief Andy Dunlop, climbed into the four-year-old car he’d never turned a lap in and roared off to tempt fate at 5:50 p.m.

 

Rookie George Amick was on the bubble at 139.443mph but got his heart ripped out when Weyant (pictured above celebrating afterward) strung together an amazingly fast and consistent run of four laps at 141mph!

 

“We changed the gear, poured in a little nitro and prayed,” said Dunlop to The Indianapolis News.

 

Added Weyant: “I drove it down in the corners pretty deep and it felt good so I kept my foot in it.”

 

 

His crew makes plain what they thought of Jim Hurtubise’s Bump Day heroics in a completely unfamiliar car in 1962. Image courtesy of Greg Littleton

By the time 1962 rolled around, Jim Hurtubise had become one of the fastest, most fearless and popular racers at the Speedway after shattering the track record as a rookie in 1960 and then leading the first 33 laps of the 1961 race from the outside of Row 1.

 

Herk was back in the Demler Special in ’62 but the month had been a disaster as he crashed heavily twice –  the second time on the third day of qualifying – and wiped out the car. Because of his status, teams that hadn’t made the show were offering him $1,000 to jump in their car for the final day of time trials, and he accepted Joe Hunt’s offer.

 

At 4:30, Hurtubise went out and ran a damn good warm-up lap of 147mph, but didn’t take the green and pulled in because he didn’t like how the car felt and wanted to make a couple of adjustments. But he didn’t calculate the long line of cars in the qualifying line, and suddenly realized he wouldn’t have enough time to go back out in Hunt’s No. 47.

 

So, he started car hunting and chose Jim Robbins’ roadster, an original A.J. Watson creation modified by Floyd Trevis. He’d had zero laps in No. 97, but  his buddy Parnelli Jones leaned in and gave him some encouragement before Herk took to the track with 15 minutes remaining.

 

The whole Speedway (with the understandable exception of Ronnie Duman, his crew and family, since he was on the bubble at 145.908mph) was rooting for the kid from North Tonawanda, N.Y., to do something special, and he didn’t disappoint. His four-lap average of 146.963mph turned out to be the 15th fastest of the 33 qualifiers.

 

“I feel like a race driver again,” he told Jep Cadou of The Indianapolis Star after his run. “It’s been a long month and I need a beer.”

 

Of course, those were the days when a race driver’s whole year usually depended on making the show at Indy. The 40 percent he could earn from the purse outweighed any logic or fear of going out to qualify with no practice in a strange car and the clock ticking.

 

It was the risk of their profession, and they were more than willing to take them.

 

 

[Radoye]

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Vukovich Blazed Path to Unmatched Glory in Short Indy Career

May 12, 2020 | By Bob Gates

 

 

"I still wake up in the middle of the night, thinking about what might've been," laments Jim Travers.
 

Travers was the chief mechanic, friend and confidant of the man many consider the best Indianapolis 500 driver of all time: the pensive, phenomenally talented, enigmatic Bill Vukovich.
 

Vuky is highly regarded for good reason. In a four-race span, he dominated Indianapolis like no driver before or since. He's one of only five drivers in Indianapolis Motor Speedway history to win consecutive Indianapolis 500-Mile Races. He led an incredible 72 percent of the laps he drove. More than six decades after his death, his 485 leading laps keeps him in the top eight in total laps led, and he remains the only driver to have led the most laps in three consecutive races.
 

It's a spectacular, enviable record. But what yet haunts Travers is that it easily could have been better. Only a couple of wicked, fateful twists kept Vukovich from becoming Indianapolis's first four-time winner, or, at the very least, the first consecutive three-time winner.
 

Vukovich's Indianapolis prowess caught the attention of Travers and his mechanical partner, Frank Coon, in 1951, Vukovich's rookie year. Starting 20th, Vukovich pushed his uncompetitive car into the top 10 before it broke.
 

"Vuky impressed a lot of people that year," Travers said. "Frank and I decided we'd better grab him before someone else did."
 

Travers and Coon worked for wealthy Los Angeles oilman Howard Keck, who agreed that Vukovich should replace their retiring driver, three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Mauri Rose. 
 

Keck also insisted on a new car. To that end, he sent Coon to Italy to coordinate the purchase of a new Ferrari and Travers to car builder Frank Kurtis, where he oversaw the construction of a car of radical design.
 

Both cars arrived late at the Speedway. After thrashing with both for days, it was decided to focus only on the little, gray Kurtis speedster that Vukovich had dubbed "The Roadster."
 

The original roadster design eventually evolved into the predominant Indianapolis car, winning 12 consecutive “500's,” but in 1952 many dismissed it. There were so many development problems that it wasn't even ready until the second weekend of qualifying. 
 

But by then, “Vuky had it going like Jack the Bear," Travers said.
 

Vukovich qualified eighth, establishing a one-lap track record en route.
 

On Race Day, Vukovich quickly jumped into the lead and, other than for pit stops, never let it go. He led 150 laps and was well on his way to his first “500” victory when he slammed the Turn 3 wall just eight laps from the checkered flag. A faulty steering arm, overlooked in the hurried construction process, had failed. Troy Ruttman cruised to the win.
 

Vukovich, not one for lengthy interactions with the press, was livid.
 

“That Ruttman never won an easier one," he snapped, "but you can be damn sure it won't happen next year."

 

It didn't.

 

(Bill Vukovich, with Wilbur Shaw to his left, celebrates in Victory Circle after winning the 1953 Indianapolis 500.)

 

The car, meticulously rebuilt for 1953, proved exceptionally fast. Not unexpected, Vukovich grabbed the vaunted pole position. But not without captivating drama, either.
 

Pole Day was rained out, and intermittent showers interrupted the second qualifying day until late afternoon. As Vukovich anxiously waited while a half-dozen cars qualified, rain again threatened.
 

"When we pushed Vuky out, it was sprinkling," Travers said. “I could see drops of rain in the standing water, and every time one hit, my heart wrenched." 
 

Aware of the urgency, Vukovich took only one quick warm-up lap and was on it. His first three laps were quick. The pole would be his if he could outrun the rain on his final circuit. 
 

Powering down the backstretch, ominous, black clouds roiled over the Speedway. Pealing thunder nearly drowned the roar of his engine. Raindrops peppered his windscreen. He had to make a split-second decision. Go for the pole or back off. 

 

Ever confident in his skill, he went for it.
 

Hard into Turn 4. Suddenly, a downpour. The car slid wide, but Vukovich caught it and slithered to the checkered flag slinging rooster tails of water so high they nearly obliterated the car. Improbable as it sounds, he won the pole in the rain.
 

At the drop of the green flag on race morning, Vukovich jumped to a huge lead down the frontstretch. Afterward he told Travers, "I looked back going into Turn 1, and the SOB's didn't want to race!" 
 

On a day when scorching heat took the life of one driver and left many begging for relief, Vukovich simply poured a cup of water down his back, drank another during his pit stops and drove on.
 

Tough. Hard. Relentless. He obliterated his competition, leading 195 of the 200 laps to capture his first “500.”
 

1954 proved as difficult as 1953 was easy. The team struggled with engine problems all month, forcing Vukovich to qualify back in 19th spot. Still, few dared to bet against him. Jack McGrath, perennial front row starter and routine race favorite, said, "As long as Vuky is in this race, I'll never win."
 

McGrath's words rang true. By the halfway mark, Vukovich was in command. He never looked back, taking the win a full lap ahead of runner-up Jimmy Bryan. 
 

May 1955 arrived with a microscopic focus on the introverted Vukovich. His bid to win three consecutive “500's” attracted attention far beyond sports coverage. Even the mainstream media picked up on the "jinx" that supposedly was attached to the Indianapolis hat trick. Wilbur Shaw had crashed while pursuing three consecutive wins, in 1941, and Rose's car had failed just laps short in 1949.
 

Vukovich remained supremely confident, telling Jack and Lois McGrath at dinner the night before the race, "No one's ever won three in row, but this little Slav just might pull it off."
 

Ironically, Vukovich expected McGrath to be his toughest competitor. Vukovich planned to push him hard from the start, forcing pole sitter McGrath into a mistake or his car into failing. 
 

That's exactly how it transpired. From his fifth-place starting spot, Vukovich snatched the lead on Lap 4. From there, McGrath and Vukovich fought one of the fiercest battles ever witnessed at the Speedway. 
 

They challenged, pushed and feinted. The crowd, refusing to sit, cheered wildly. Finally, Vukovich had enough. On Lap 27, he turned the fastest race lap ever recorded at the time and pulled away.
 

On Lap 54, McGrath rolled to a stop, his engine smoking. Passing the pits, Vukovich acknowledged his closest competitor's demise with a nod to his crew that implied, “I'm in control, see you at the end.”
 

The end came sooner than expected. On Lap 57, Vukovich was fatally injured after being trapped in a multi-car crash.

 

(One of the last known photographs of Bill Vukovich in the No. 4 car, racing Jack McGrath in the No. 3, in 1955.  Vukovich lost his life after being caught up in a wreck on Lap 57 while in the lead.)

 

Even as the accomplishments that elevated Vukovich to the status of Indianapolis icon are recalled, the idea of what could have been fascinates followers of the Indianapolis 500 yet today.
 

Years after Vukovich's first 500 win, the prose of writer Russ Catlin, a Vuky contemporary, perhaps still best epitomizes his remarkable legacy.
 

"He will be remembered, always, as being as great as any man who ever pulled on a racing glove."

 

 

[Radoye]

 

[Radoye]

Nacionalna klasa na britanski nacin, 1969:

 

 

[alberto.ascari]

Odesláno z mého BBF100-1 pomocí Tapatalk

[zoran59]

2 hours ago, Radoye said:

Nacionalna klasa na britanski nacin, 1969:

 

Bas zanimljivo je sto su se osim Escorta i Minija nasli i po jedan Ford Anglia i Hillman IMP. Mada, ocito nisu bili konkurentni, zaostali vise od jednog kruga...

Edited May 15, 2020 by zoran59

[Radoye]

Cini mi se da vidim i par Ostina 1100.

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[Radoye]

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If anyone ever looked like a sprint car driver it was Sammy Sessions. A raw-boned native of Michigan with a flat-top haircut and a nose for adventure, Sessions started out in stock cars and supermodifieds before heading for USAC in the mid-60s. He was instantly successful in that rough-and-tumble era and his prowess on dirt and pavement earned him a ride for Indianapolis.

 

Sessions qualified for six consecutive Indy 500s (1968-73), finishing fourth in 1972, and his final start came in 1975.

 

The USAC sprint champ in 1972, Sammy raced snowmobiles in the winter to make ends meet and he lost his life on one in 1977 where it was believed he suffered a heart attack before crashing.

 

 

 

 

[Radoye]

How Niki Lauda's final title-winning car, the 1984 McLaren MP4/2, changed F1

 

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.how-niki-laudas-final-title-winning-car-the-1984-mclaren-mp4-2-changed-f1.7vGiQXahtUbaKo70ZJ8OGQ.html

 

 

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Montoja:

 

 

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