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Evening With A Legend: Jim Busby · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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  Evening with the Legend is a series of presentations exclusive to
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  Legends of the Famous 24 Hours of Le Mans, giving us an opportunity
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  to bring a piece of Le Mans to you.
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  By sharing stories and highlights of the big event, you get a chance
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  to become part of the Legend of Le Mans, with guests from different
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  eras of over 100 years of racing.
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  In 1978, Jim Busby debuted at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in a
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  Porsche 935 from Crema Racing and finished in 6th position overall.
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  His enduring association with BFGoodrich began with the 1982 Le Mans 24 Hours
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  when his Porsche 924 Carrera GTR won the GT class using BFG's road specification
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  tires and they remained his sponsors and tire suppliers during his 1984 return
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  to Le Mans with a Group C2 Lola Mazda.
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  In subsequent seasons he concentrated on managing the team and perhaps his
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  finest victory came in the 1989 Daytona 24 Hours when John Andretti, Bob
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  Wallach, and Derrick Bell shared the win in the Miller Hi Life Porsche 962.
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  Jim sold his team in 1990 and moved on to other projects and racing.
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  Busby himself may not admit it but he's regarded as one of the world's best
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  Porsche specialists for the 1970s and 80s.
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  Jim now spends his time in Newport Beach, California with his wife.
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  This Evening with a Legend was hosted by David Spitzer, a member of the ACO USA and
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  who you might recognize as one of the Pitt reporters from the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
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  Welcome to everybody and an exciting night and this has been quite a series that
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  David has helped put together already with multiple esteemed guests tonight.
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  We're very honored to have Jim Busby.
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  I've spoken to Jim several times now, and I know that tonight my job is probably
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  the easiest job in all of motor sports.
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  All I need to do is kind of get him started.
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  Jim.
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  You've got such wonderful stories and I'm looking on the backdrop
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  right now on my screen is David Lowe and some of the artwork that was
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  done by Eric for different cars.
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  You've been involved in so many amazing cars over the years.
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  So many memories for us.
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  For me growing up around Watkins Glen and going to sports car races every year.
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  And so I'm sure I speak for all the fans that are on the line
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  to say, thank you for your time.
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  And let's start you off with a question just to kind of get you rolling.
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  Tell us about the first time going to Lamar.
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  Tell us a little bit about how it felt as you got ready to go over there and
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  then arriving there for the first time.
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  It's such an experience.
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  A lot of our ACO members are dreaming or are going to Lamar.
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  And so tell us about your first time and a little bit about how all that felt.
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  To sort of give a little background to how that happened, I always dreamed
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  of Lamont and Lamont to me was the kid's dream because my uncle was
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  fascinated by sports car racing and in particular the Mille Miglia and Lamont.
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  He had a Cat Allard, which he raced at Pebble Beach down south at Torrey Ponds.
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  I didn't really have an opportunity to do that.
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  I was a hot rod guy.
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  Because I could afford to do that.
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  I worked at a body shop in Pasadena, but I always dreamt of going to Le Mans.
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  And then I started sports car racing, had some success in IMSA right away.
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  I'd raced in Europe before that, which I think gave me a leg up on
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  a lot of guys and began winning races in IMSA right out of the gate.
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  Well, I, I built a 9 35 conversion of a 9 34 for a felony.
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  Hal Shaw, who he owned the OR house, and Hal said, Hey Jim,
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  would you drive a Daytona with me?
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  And I said, well, sure, but you know, we don't have a factory 9 35 engine.
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  We're gonna run your 9 34 engine.
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  But we re bodied the car as we did for Rick when he first went to Seabring.
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  And it was, it was a mid packer, and with some luck, it could run near the front.
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  So after my second stint, I got outta the car and I was walking
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  across the paddock at Daytona.
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  And up walks Erwin Kramer.
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  And I'd met him through John Fitzpatrick and a couple of guys.
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  And of course their focus was Le Mans, Monza, and the big stuff.
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  And he walked right up to me and he said, Jim, would you like
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  to drive our car at Le Mans?
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  Are you kidding me?
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  I said, Tim, do I leave tonight?
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  Do you want me to not stay?
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  And he said, we've watched you.
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  We want you to drive our cars at Le Mans.
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  And I said, well, okay, but I'm going to level with you.
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  I raced really hard and I want a chance to win.
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  You know, Lamar is a very dangerous race and part of the mystique of Lamar, whether
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  we like it or not, is the fact that it's very high speed and very dangerous.
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  And that myth and that truth Have carried Le Mans as far as it's gotten today, and
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  it remains high speed and dangerous today.
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  Somebody said, well, they put in the chicanes.
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  Well, we raced non chicane.
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  Rick Newp and I did that.
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  We get it.
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  It's still a high speed dangerous place, and that's half of the mystique of the
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  race, and it needs to stay that way.
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  People need to understand that this is the real deal.
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  This is not your little backyard game, and that's what people are so fascinated with.
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  So I said, well, who would I drive with and they shall remain nameless.
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  And they told me, and I said, look, I'm so flattered that you've asked me to
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  come in and I would like very much to do that, but I want a chance to win.
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  And I don't think that's going to happen.
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  And he said, well, what would you do?
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  And I said, well, what if we could find a couple of guys in America that
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  I think are really good, that can give us a chance and we're racing in the
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  group five category, which is harder than the IMSA category, but different
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  size fuel tank, different length pit stops, it's a tough race to win.
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  And so I thought about that and I, and I walked over to Fred New.
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  Rick's dad.
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  And I said, Fred, do you think Rick would like to go to Le Mans?
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  Of course, Rick had never been to anything like that.
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  He was at Daytona.
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  I think I saw a Carrera with maybe Howard Meister or somebody like that.
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  Good team.
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  And, and I'd seen him race.
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  And best part was, is he was quick enough as a beginner.
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  But he brought them back alive.
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  The cars came back alive.
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  And if you think you can win it in the mall without bringing them back alive,
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  you're dead wrong, especially in that era, you know, I mean, nowadays may
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  be a little bit more tolerant, but certainly in that area, the danger
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  and the keep the gearbox going, you know, keep the darn thing on the track.
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  So Fred looked at me and he said, well, if we could put that
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  together, that would be wonderful.
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  I said, we've got to replace the money that these other drivers are
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  bringing with money that we can find, because that's going to supply it.
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  And frankly, I'm a paid driver and we got to find money to run our guys.
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  And so he said, what about Chris Cord?
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  And I said, Chris Cord is a really quick guy.
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  I've raced him in both Trans Am and in IMSA and his moms, and he's very quick.
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  Chris Cord was that guy that you didn't expect him to be.
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  And then you looked in your mirror and there he is.
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  Stuck up your tailpipe.
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  So you got to press on a little bit.
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  So I thought Chris is a real winner.
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  He's mature.
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  He's quick.
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  He's good.
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  So I called the Kramer brothers and said, what about these guys?
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  If we can round up some money.
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  Well, Chris found Amdahl Computers, which is a film about Le Mans
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  that was done, narrated by Bruce Meyer of the Peterson Museum.
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  You'll see that we were sponsored by Amdahl Computers.
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  We weren't buy a ride guys.
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  We got the sponsorship.
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  So I call it Kramer Brothers.
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  And I said, we got it.
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  We've got 20 grand from Amdahl Computers.
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  Chris Kord's the driver.
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  They say, wow, he's great.
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  We love him.
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  And we've got Rick Newhart.
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  It went silent on the other end of the line.
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  And then Irwin or Manfred Kramer.
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  Their English was a little questionable and probably designed
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  to be so because Amdahl Computers.
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  They don't want to be too committal, but anyway, here was the question.
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  Has Rick Newt ever driven a turbo?
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  My answer was, has Rick Newt ever driven a turbo?
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  Like it was the most incredulous thing I've ever heard in my life.
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  Preposterous question.
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  Yeah.
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  And they never, ever said, well, what do you mean by that?
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  They said, okay.
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  So we get there and one of my first memories when we got to Le Mans, we had
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  some car trouble with some vibrations.
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  We sent Rick out for a couple of laps.
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  After he did the most flat chat and high gear, man, he had eyes the size of sauce.
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  When he arrived back in the pit lane, they're going to try something.
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  They put some, something over the air and let's to try to stop this vibration.
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  Put me back in the car and I took off again and didn't fix it.
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  And so on and so forth.
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  Then we'd put Ricky in and then we'd.
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  You know, the moment, the practice is really great because it starts at four
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  in the afternoon and then it morphs into darkness, but darkness is very late.
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  They're 10 30, something like that, depending a little bit in the day and you
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  run a lot at night and it's wonderful.
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  And so Rick took well to that.
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  And after that, it was just no problem.
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  He was in like a little pro and he was a kid at the time for Chris
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  recently passed away, but he was a vet.
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  At the time, a veteran at the time, and I was not a veteran of Lamar.
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  That's for sure.
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  But I'd done some long distance racing.
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  Was it everything you thought it was going to be in terms of, uh, it was more.
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  And I think the nighttime racing on the most on straight and rich Quebec,
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  this up was the most incredible thing I've ever done, and it was,
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  More difficult than I ever imagined.
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  I'd run Daytona, gosh, I can't even tell you how many times the 24 hour
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  and been on the podium and finished second, third, fourth, second, so on.
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  Never won that one myself as a driver, but we did win as a team, but it was
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  everything that I imagined and then some much more dangerous, much more risky.
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  And it was everything that I had hoped it would be.
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  Remember that when people see what Lamar was in the day and they saw
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  Steve McQueen's movie and the huge accidents, that's the real deal.
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  Those cars do flip over backwards.
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  They do hit things at very high speeds.
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  And while the terrible 1955 Mercedes accident will always be tagged to Lamar,
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  Lamar will always own that accident.
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  People still show it.
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  Why?
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  Because it's part of the scenery at Lamont and it's huge and it had an
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  enormous impact on the popularity of racing, tragically in both directions.
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  And why do people go to Lamont to see the danger and people lose their lives?
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  No.
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  they go to see them escape doing that.
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  They want to see that they're right on the ragged edge of being
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  in that awful fire, but not in it.
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  Almost.
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  And that's what they want to see.
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  And as soon as there's too much, I don't want to say safety, but
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  too much emphasis on not making it risky, it loses its mystique.
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  I'm sorry.
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  That's just the way it is.
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  And it will always be the race.
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  It's not a race.
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  It's not a great distance race.
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  It's the race always will be.
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  And you can win the farm into one world championship.
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  But boy, when you get done with that, you better get a ride at Lamont.
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  That's you notice they're all doing that because that's the one they left out.
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  And it's still the most exciting, the most dangerous and the biggest thrill to win.
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  It's incredible.
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  Incredible.
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  And the helicopter's going over the top of the pit lane with your name on it.
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  That doesn't happen at IMSA in mid Ohio, but it's a hell of a hard race
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  in mid Ohio, but the reality is that it has a mystique in and of itself.
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  It's not the same as anything else.
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  The Daytona 24 hour is a wonderful 24 hour race, but it's not Le Mans.
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  It never will be.
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  And it's still just as tough to win in some ways.
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  It will never have the mystique and the thrill that not only the
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  drivers get, but the spectators get.
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  Spectators are on their toes all the time.
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  You know, in the middle of the night, you walk out into the
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  pit lane and you stare across.
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  And when the race started, there was 150, 000 people in that grandstand.
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  Standing on those concrete little steps that are at a weird angle.
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  Yep.
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  And then you come out at 1130 or 12 o'clock at night.
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  And then you come out at three in the morning and they're empty.
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  There's not a single person in the grandstands.
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  What do they do?
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  Well, whatever French people go off into the forest and do, and then come
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  back and they start trickling in.
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  And by morning time, there isn't an empty seat anywhere.
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  I had a really fun experience in my first daylight session after we'd run all night.
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  And Chris had witnessed a horrible accident on the Moulson street, and we
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  thought it had killed Bob Gerritsen.
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  But.
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  I thought it was Brian Redmond because I'd been following Brian
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  and then I lost track of him, I think I got around him or something.
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  Anyway, I, he wasn't, we weren't together anymore.
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  And then I came around and I saw this wadded up red 935 in the
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  middle of the street and they were cleaning it up after Chris.
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  Had witnessed the accident.
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  It was turbos and engines flying through the air and everything jumped.
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  The Kramer brothers had the foresight to say, don't pit for new tires.
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  We were running over debris.
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  Chris called in and said, you want me to come in and get new tires?
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  This is a really bad accident.
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  It's going to take a while to clean up.
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  They said, no, don't come in.
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  Why?
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  Because you'll put new tires on the car and go out and puncture them.
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  And then we'll put another set on.
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  Plus you don't pit because when I asked Phil Hill, when he came in right before
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  the start, after my first session, before the start of the second section, which
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  would have been Chris, I said, Phil, give me an idea how you win this thing.
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  And all he said was after his decades of racing there and five wins or whatever
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  his overall win record was, he looked at me and he said, stay out of the pits.
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  So I said, great wisdom entailed.
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  And all I said was stay out of the pits and the pits is Rick will recall.
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  We ended up also winning, not just the group five category.
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  We won what's called the Francis Afrique trophy.
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  You ask, what is that?
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  Well, I don't know, to tell you the truth, they give you so many trophies.
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  They all take that too.
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  And we've got them all lined up here.
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  When was the last time you got over to Lamar?
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  Have you been over recently?
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  No, I went to race and never went back for any other reason.
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  I went three times and we went three times.
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  Tell us a little bit about the lodging and the experience.
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  Just the whole ambiance, you know, seeing people at dinner and the whole
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  experience of being in France was that extra special beyond the racetrack.
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  It was equally important because I'd never done it and
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  I went with Chris and his wife.
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  Rick, his brother and Rick's dad, and we got a little, I'm going to murder
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  this town, but I think it's good.
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  It was called Allen song.
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  Your pronunciation is excellent.
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  It's on the signs right around the mall.
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  That's right.
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  Yep.
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  So Rick's dad rounds up this hotel in Allen song and a cool little restaurant.
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  So that's good enough for me.
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  And we're staying there and we commute back and forth daily.
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  So here we are sitting in this tiny little town.
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  It's not known for racing.
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  It's known for making beautiful lace.
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  And a very sophisticated population.
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  And I'm really thinking this is cool.
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  And yet we're a few miles away from the circuit, which is remarkable in itself.
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  But mostly when I get there, I find out that the technical
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  inspection is in downtown Lamont.
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  So somebody says to me, who's going to drive the car on the
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  racetrack from the tech inspection?
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  I said, I'll do it.
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  I'm your guy.
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  And then somebody says, no, they quit that last year or something.
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  So they don't do that anymore, but they did in the day.
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  And I imagine myself going down some Boulevard and breathing nine 35 headed for
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  the racetrack down the Mulsanne highway, which then leads you in the Indianapolis
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  corner, all incredible legendary stuff.
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  That's going to happen to me as a young man, none of it happened.
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  They trailered the car over there and we got going.
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  And that was that.
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  But it was by the plaster Jacobon with the big, beautiful Gothic church and
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  everything right there in the center.
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  Absolutely.
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  Yeah.
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  Every tech inspection I ever went through.
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  All you can think of is when am I going to get out of here?
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  Do I really need to be here?
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  Please look at my helmet and tell me it's okay.
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  And let me get out of here.
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  You could have stayed there for two days and enjoyed the
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  ambiance and the photograph.
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  The fans were so excited to be there and they're locals.
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  You'd think that if you lived in Ramon that you would
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  ignore the race after a while.
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  It would become blasé.
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  I grew up in Pasadena and I eventually ignored the Rose Parade,
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  which was two blocks from my house.
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  Park cars and make money.
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  No, if you live in Lamar, you go to tech inspection, the
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  entire city turns up for that.
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  And so you get to meet people that are thoroughly excited to be there
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  and want to meet you and so forth.
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  So once again, the experience of Lamar, it isn't just the challenge
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  or the danger, it's Lamar itself.
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  It's an unusual city full of wonderful people.
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  And the idea that French people can be difficult to get along with is
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  something that's generated here.
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  I'm sure because they weren't, and they were wonderful to us and treated us
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  like princes and princesses the entire time we were there, my wife and I went a
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  couple of years later, there's another.
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  A movie that was done by BF Goodrich for the Porsche clubs, which you can
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  also find next to the Le Mans movie.
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  Let's talk about BFG.
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  So you mentioned that you started out on street tires and then you
• 16:30
  kind of put together a deal that allowed you to take them to Le Mans.
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  Is that right?
• 16:34
  Can you talk us through a little bit of that journey?
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  Well, really what happened.
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  It was sort of the reverse of that.
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  What happened was as a friend of mine from sports car racing back in
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  the day, when I was racing in Europe and I'd won a race at Le Châtre in
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  central France, which had been won by Jack Brabham and some big shots.
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  The only reason I won is I was a kid from America.
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  I didn't come in in the rain.
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  I didn't know about rain tires.
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  I'd never raced in the rain in my life.
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  So I just stayed out, slid through the grass.
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  And they finally called off the race with a couple of laps to
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  go because it was too dangerous.
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  And I won it because everybody else stopped for rain tires and I stayed out.
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  So I'd gotten a reputation for being this crazy American guy,
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  which wasn't intentional, didn't occur to me that I'd want to stop.
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  And I didn't, I had gotten to know Duncan Nearpatch, who at the time was running the
• 17:18
  FIA and had run BMW when I drove for BMW factory, he hired me, I sadly replaced.
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  Ronnie Peterson at BMW after he died, and Jochen Nierkash was my boss.
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  He came up to me at a race in America, and he said, you know, we're happy
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  with what you're doing here in America, but do you think BFGoodrich would be
• 17:38
  interested in ever going to Le Mans?
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  And I said, well, I don't know if they would, but I sure would.
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  He said, well, we're going to start the C2 category, which is
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  going to be very competitive.
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  Do you think they'd be interested in participating in that?
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  So I went to Gary Pace, who was running in the BFGooders program at the time.
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  And I said, Gary, I know you've mentioned that you like the idea of Le Mans and
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  we'd already been in the 924, which was basically a factory effort of a Brumos
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  car, and we had done it on street tires, which was outrageous, but BFGooders had
• 18:10
  had some experience at doing that by shaving their tires down almost to slicks.
• 18:14
  So they're pretty sketchy in the beginning and they never get to be
• 18:17
  a race tire, but they get managed.
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  And we did it in the 924 turbo, which was a factory effort, which has a
• 18:24
  whole bunch of fun Le Mans stories about Porsche rebuilding the engine
• 18:27
  in the rain and so on and so forth.
• 18:29
  And we went.
• 18:30
  So when Nearpatch suggests that we go again on street
• 18:34
  tires, VF Goodyear goes for it.
• 18:36
  I go to Japan and meet with the The people from Mazda, because they're
• 18:39
  going to supply the engines and we know that they're good 24 hour engines
• 18:43
  and I take a look at their stuff.
• 18:45
  And when I, I said to one of the engineers, I said, well, maybe you
• 18:49
  want to have a human transmission, not a synchromesh transmission.
• 18:52
  Maybe you want to have a little different chassis than what you've been
• 18:55
  running there for a couple of years.
• 18:56
  You haven't had the success that you like.
• 18:58
  If you send me to Lola, we can get a really good chassis built, use your
• 19:02
  running gear and so on and so forth.
• 19:04
  We'll be good to go.
• 19:05
  So the guy looks at me and the greatest honor in Japan is when you're getting
• 19:09
  ready to go to the ma, you get to take a bath with the president of the company.
• 19:12
  So naturally I'm thinking, well, maybe that's not my first idea.
• 19:16
  I guess I'll do that.
• 19:18
  So that night I taught the president of Toyo Kogo, which is Mazda in Hiroshima.
• 19:24
  I talk them into going to Le Mans with a Lola chassis, a Hewlin gearbox, and
• 19:28
  their power plants with BF Goodrich tires, which BF Goodrich is convinced
• 19:32
  are going to be street tires.
• 19:34
  I'm not, but that's a fight for another day.
• 19:36
  What ends up happening is I fly backwards that night around the world.
• 19:41
  To London, meet with Eric Bradley, who I'd driven for in the sports car
• 19:45
  championship in Europe, of Lola fame, could you build us a car that would do
• 19:50
  something unique and win it in Le Mans?
• 19:52
  He said, sure.
• 19:53
  Is that's for your passion's new C2.
• 19:55
  I said, it is.
• 19:56
  He said, okay.
• 19:57
  And they had their Le Mans car there, which was a 610.
• 20:00
  I looked at it and I said, well, that's a big car for a small engine in the C2.
• 20:05
  And he said, well, why don't we make it smaller?
• 20:08
  Isn't your sponsor a tire company?
• 20:10
  And I said, of course it is.
• 20:11
  He said, good.
• 20:12
  We need 13 inch tires, just like on the front of a Formula One car.
• 20:16
  And we'll squeeze that body down to nothing.
• 20:18
  And that was that really flat body that looked like it got squashed.
• 20:22
  That's exactly right.
• 20:23
  And it came out really pretty.
• 20:25
  And I've got pictures of it all around here.
• 20:27
  Rick and I, our first race in Europe was Monza.
• 20:30
  Rick and I won it in that C2 car and the C2 car.
• 20:33
  Then we went to Lamont and one there.
• 20:35
  The reason was that car.
• 20:37
  Wouldn't accelerate like a rocket, but it had high speed
• 20:40
  because it had no wind resistance.
• 20:42
  If you look at the pictures of the actual Lamar car, as opposed to the one we
• 20:46
  ran here, wing is down behind the car.
• 20:48
  It's a trimming device.
• 20:49
  It's not a real wing and there's no wind resistance.
• 20:52
  So by doing that, and then ultimately through tire testing, convincing
• 20:57
  BF Goodyear that they need to make slick tires with real radial street
• 21:01
  construction, which was more challenging than you can imagine, because I can
• 21:05
  remember the first test I did, it shook the fillings out of my teeth because they
• 21:09
  were trying to use a street construction that has all sorts of lifelong tendencies
• 21:14
  of a street tire, but with the traction of a racing tire, but they did it.
• 21:18
  And we won, I mean, we didn't screw around with that car.
• 21:21
  We led races and we won to win at Monza on our way to high speed.
• 21:26
  Also, right.
• 21:27
  There was only one thing that they liked better than looking at our cars
• 21:30
  and that was looking at our 18 wheeler.
• 21:32
  They'd never seen one.
• 21:33
  There was a hundred thousand people watching the race and 40, 000 of them.
• 21:37
  Every time we'd pull in and our 18 wheeler would come and stand around the
• 21:40
  truck and wait for it to be unloaded.
• 21:43
  That was the whole story of the race was the BF Goodrich 18 wheel truck.
• 21:47
  And they loved it.
• 21:48
  And that thing got stuck in some old lady's house, went around a car and got
• 21:52
  wedged into a wall and the president of BF Goodrich had to romance her, write a
• 21:56
  check for a man to come and remove her fence, get our 18 wheeler out of this
• 22:01
  little town and put the fence back up and write a check for the whole thing.
• 22:04
  Any of our fans that have been to Le Mans or been to France know
• 22:07
  exactly what he's talking about.
• 22:09
  You get to these.
• 22:09
  Old medieval towns and you're lucky it wasn't two buildings
• 22:12
  that just couldn't be taken down.
• 22:14
  But I did a lot of work for Cadillac back in the day.
• 22:16
  And I mean, we'd get over there with a Cadillac street car and there
• 22:18
  were places you just couldn't go.
• 22:20
  I'm imagining with an 18 wheeler.
• 22:21
  Now, one of our fans asked a very interesting question.
• 22:25
  The question related to the 1986 event.
• 22:28
  Apparently there's a rumor out there in the world that you were racing with
• 22:31
  BF Goodrich sponsorship on a car that actually did not have BF Goodrich tires.
• 22:36
  Is there any truth to that?
• 22:37
  You're smiling already.
• 22:38
  First of all, every story takes on its own truth, and that's not what happened.
• 22:44
  And it wasn't 1986, it was 1982.
• 22:49
  Porsche wanted to win both categories, which they were pretty
• 22:53
  sure they were going to win the overall with X and Bell in the 956.
• 22:59
  Yeah, 962 shorter wheelbase, 962 with a four valve twin turbo engine, whereas in
• 23:05
  America, we're in the 62 longer wheelbase with an air cooled motor, single turbo,
• 23:10
  which ultimately we managed to hop up here with Ed Pink and Alvin Springer.
• 23:14
  And I'll to make more horsepower than the factory four cam motor, because we had 3.
• 23:20
  2 liter motors.
• 23:21
  They have 2.
• 23:22
  4.
• 23:22
  I know Alvin very well.
• 23:23
  He's been a part of racing for many, many years.
• 23:26
  Alvin and I started to get, what happened was this Porsche was convinced that
• 23:30
  in order to race, you must qualify.
• 23:33
  BF Goodrich agreed to allow us to qualify on Dunlop tires without
• 23:39
  any ID on them, because the truth is, is that there's a limit.
• 23:43
  You have to cut within a certain limit to make the show.
• 23:46
  You don't just go because you're in a class.
• 23:48
  My drivers, two of the guys that I raced with.
• 23:52
  Francois Mignot, who was a great guy, great driver.
• 23:55
  He didn't get enough in the time in the car and they didn't let him race.
• 23:58
  And he was French, which is just unheard of.
• 24:00
  They'd make some new rule or something and change that, but they didn't.
• 24:04
  And so they stick to their rules and God bless them.
• 24:06
  And the poor guy was a great driver.
• 24:08
  He just never got enough time in the car and they didn't let him start.
• 24:11
  So doc Bundy had to do that race with me.
• 24:13
  And there was just two of us and we did the whole race, which I was used to.
• 24:16
  Cause at the Daytona 24, we did two driver races leading up to Nowadays, when there's
• 24:22
  six drivers or whatever it is, I never quite understood that why there's more
• 24:26
  drivers on the podium than mechanics, it's how they get it paid for Jim.
• 24:29
  Come on.
• 24:30
  You know, the answer to that.
• 24:31
  I didn't want to bring that up, but that's how it is, by the way.
• 24:33
  I got to dial back to the fact that you guys came up with 20 grand and
• 24:36
  that was enough to go to Lamar.
• 24:37
  That blows my mind.
• 24:38
  20 grand.
• 24:39
  Wouldn't even pay the fuel bill at Lamar.
• 24:41
  There's a little sidebar that the Kramer brothers will go on any.
• 24:44
  Right.
• 24:44
  They went every year and they were a top lot flight team.
• 24:47
  They won overall the next year because they didn't have the group six class.
• 24:51
  And I hooked them up with the guys who raced in that, the Whittington brothers,
• 24:55
  basically the same car, which is now owned by Bruce Meyer, who's the founding
• 24:59
  director of Peterson museum owns that car.
• 25:02
  And I hooked the Whittington brothers up with the Kramer brothers.
• 25:05
  And they won again, both in group five, we were five previous year.
• 25:09
  And they won overall because there was no group six anymore.
• 25:11
  So anyway, BFGoodrich agreed to do that.
• 25:14
  We did qualify.
• 25:15
  And that car was so fast down the street.
• 25:19
  I remember in qualifying that little 924 with this hot rod motor in it.
• 25:23
  I could catch a toll off Derek Bell in the 956 and he wouldn't get away from me.
• 25:28
  As soon as we went over the kink, down through the kink and over the hump
• 25:31
  and get on the brakes, he'd disappear.
• 25:33
  Right.
• 25:34
  We didn't have the downforce or the braking capability in our car waiting.
• 25:37
  Anyway, the factory set it up.
• 25:39
  So I got a tow with the 924 from the 956 in qualifying and we did well.
• 25:44
  I would catch a tow from him occasionally during the race.
• 25:47
  And I, Doc did too.
• 25:49
  And it was Doc Bundy and I, Doc had never been to Le Mans.
• 25:52
  I'd never been, I'd been to Le Mans in 78, but I'd never been in a stock 924.
• 25:57
  Well, guess what?
• 25:58
  We had a lot of engine trouble leading up to the start of the race and poor
• 26:01
  Francois didn't get into the car and Doc and I are now starting this race alone.
• 26:06
  So the night before the race, we find out that the reason the engine isn't
• 26:11
  running well is something is wrong and Porsche decides to rebuild the engine.
• 26:14
  Now this will tell you why, if I ever go anywhere to a serious
• 26:19
  race, go with Porsche, because you got a real good chance of doing
• 26:22
  well, they always come back a lot.
• 26:24
  I say, what are we going to do guys?
• 26:25
  And they said, we've got it figured out.
• 26:27
  So two guys show up.
• 26:29
  You ever seen a Volkswagen?
• 26:32
  Flatbed truck where the full sides fold down.
• 26:34
  It's a dual cab, like a Volkswagen bus, but with folding down rear
• 26:38
  sides into a flatbed truck.
• 26:39
  And they pull one of those things into the paddock.
• 26:42
  It's raining.
• 26:43
  Remember this isn't the glorious pits that you have at Le Mans.
• 26:46
  Now, these are concrete bunkers with steel pipes full of
• 26:49
  gasoline running over the top.
• 26:51
  So I say, well, what are you going to do with that thing?
• 26:53
  They pull an engine stand off, stick it in this hole in the back of this truck.
• 26:58
  And pull the 924 motor out of the car, which is in trouble and rebuild
• 27:03
  it in the rain to portion mechanics in red jumpsuits, like you'd see
• 27:07
  in the factory water from the rain, dripping off their noses onto parts.
• 27:11
  And they build the engine that we will run in the 24 hours in the
• 27:15
  rain outside on the back of a truck.
• 27:17
  And what had happened is one of the gears on the crankshaft was incorrectly indexed.
• 27:22
  Oh, they took a flat file for lack of a better term was a flat bastard
• 27:27
  file, a new groove in it and put the gear on the other way off.
• 27:31
  We went to the new motor and we ran 24 hours with that motor flat chat the entire
• 27:36
  time and missed a lick, except it pushed out a head gasket with about 3 laps to go.
• 27:41
  And doc was in the car and we called him in.
• 27:44
  And they would pack ice bags on top of the cylinder head and send them back out.
• 27:48
  And they did that for the last three laps.
• 27:50
  Every lap he pitted, we had a big lead over the Chevy Camaros, and we could give
• 27:54
  up time and by God, we ended up winning the race with ice steaming off the top
• 27:59
  of the cylinder heads on this Porsche.
• 28:01
  And it still goes down the street as fast as it did in qualifying.
• 28:04
  And it still wins the race.
• 28:06
  So that.
• 28:07
  That's why you always want to go with Porsche.
• 28:09
  I used to kid Kirby and Hodgkiss.
• 28:11
  They always went to Le Mans because they love Le Mans.
• 28:14
  And one day I went up to him and I said, let me ask you guys, why you
• 28:18
  always come here in a Chevy Camaro?
• 28:20
  They don't have the reliability.
• 28:21
  Don't seem to have the reliability that you'd want.
• 28:24
  It's a lot different than the GM of racing today.
• 28:27
  These homemade guys with their Camaros and Corvettes.
• 28:30
  And their answer was really simple.
• 28:32
  We have dinner reservations on Saturday.
• 28:38
  And we've got this great place where we're staying and they
• 28:41
  got dinner and everything else.
• 28:42
  So remember that part of the reason to go to the mall is the dinner in the hotels
• 28:45
  and that's why they went eventually.
• 28:47
  I think they did finish in one and we're great.
• 28:49
  I'm quite disappointed they had to go to breakfast, but anyway, there's so
• 28:53
  many wonderful stories about this thing.
• 28:55
  And don't anybody get confused about Lamar and all the other races in the world.
• 29:00
  There aren't any.
• 29:01
  This is it.
• 29:02
  This is the race in the place with the people.
• 29:06
  And that's why I'm so happy that I went there three times and I'm so happy that I
• 29:10
  won as a driver twice and finished third.
• 29:12
  Second or third the other time, but on the team that time, that was the first
• 29:16
  time I'd ever gone as the team owner.
• 29:18
  One of the things that's really interesting with this centennial
• 29:21
  edition of Lamar this year, we're all so excited to go and be part of it
• 29:25
  because IMSA and the FIA through the world endurance championship and the
• 29:29
  ACO of course, have gotten together and worked really hard to hammer out a set
• 29:34
  of equivalency that creates a premier category that allows the Yankees to
• 29:39
  come over and race for the top honors.
• 29:41
  Of course.
• 29:42
  You and I both know there's a long history of politics at Lamar.
• 29:45
  There's all the group Sierra and there's all the stuff that happens.
• 29:48
  So many chapters that we can go through.
• 29:50
  So I'm interested in your perspective today.
• 29:52
  First of all, are you excited for Lamar 2023?
• 29:55
  Is that on your radar screen?
• 29:56
  And then maybe if you want to dial that back and talk about.
• 29:59
  Politics, you know, you were an American person with American co drivers,
• 30:03
  you're with Kramer, which that's good.
• 30:04
  That gets you a check mark of Euro that gives you entree.
• 30:07
  But how did that feel back then?
• 30:09
  And what's your observations on the politics between big
• 30:12
  old America and little France that wants to rule the roost?
• 30:15
  There's a couple of different answers to that.
• 30:17
  First of all, I'm very excited and I really want to see Hendrick's car do well,
• 30:23
  and that's garage 54 or whatever it is.
• 30:27
  And Jeff Gordon is a friend and a wonderful guy and Jimmy Johnson's
• 30:30
  going to go and the whole deal.
• 30:32
  And don't you count that car out.
• 30:33
  That's going to be a fast car.
• 30:36
  That's going to open a lot of eyes.
• 30:38
  That's a real state of the art current NASCAR.
• 30:41
  Which is really built by Dallara, I think the chassis.
• 30:45
  So that's a serious company in Europe.
• 30:47
  That's not in North Carolina, which I don't mean to downgrade
• 30:50
  North Carolina, but they do stock car racing in North Carolina.
• 30:54
  They race Dallara's there now and they're fast and the drivers are really.
• 30:58
  Really good.
• 30:59
  There's no slouches in NASCAR.
• 31:01
  I know Jean Paulo Dallara very well, been there many times and worked with
• 31:04
  him on a lot of programs for sure.
• 31:06
  Right?
• 31:07
  That's a pretty stout car.
• 31:08
  They made a lot of modifications to to get it to run 24 hours,
• 31:11
  but it's going to be stout.
• 31:12
  They needed to also get downforce in the car, which is restricted by NASCAR.
• 31:16
  Sure.
• 31:16
  And downforce is going to be the key.
• 31:18
  And then you trim your down course out to get qualifying speed,
• 31:22
  but you prefer it in the race, particularly if it begins to rain.
• 31:25
  So I'm very excited about that.
• 31:27
  And let's also remember that like anything on earth, There's almost no politics
• 31:33
  that can't be cured with a checkbook.
• 31:36
  And so I got to go to Le Mans with one, the Kramer brothers and to BF Goodrich,
• 31:43
  which is an enormous company that has great sway and dealers all over Europe.
• 31:48
  You know, we did it one in one country.
• 31:50
  We'd have the Italian dealers come.
• 31:52
  We'd go to France and have the French dealers come.
• 31:54
  We'd go to England and all the British dealers would come.
• 31:57
  When we came up against some question that May turn out to be somewhat political.
• 32:03
  It tended to get solved at a different level than mine.
• 32:06
  So I was never really crushed by politics while I was going to the mall.
• 32:11
  And frankly speaking, no matter what you think about politics at the mall, they're
• 32:16
  racers and ultimately the politics go out the window for the love of the race.
• 32:21
  Yep.
• 32:21
  And they did it every time and they've done it every time.
• 32:25
  And you show me a series that runs in America or anywhere else in the world
• 32:30
  that doesn't have political upheaval.
• 32:31
  We're looking at Formula One right now.
• 32:33
  It's almost a fistfight every race.
• 32:35
  It always gets cured when you light the motors up.
• 32:38
  You know, it's like you say, have you ever been frightened?
• 32:41
  Sure, I guess so.
• 32:42
  What stops it when the engine starts?
• 32:45
  You don't think about it anymore.
• 32:46
  It doesn't, nothing happens.
• 32:47
  There's no politics, there's no nothing.
• 32:49
  Then the focus comes.
• 32:50
  Have you had a chance to work with Jim France over the years?
• 32:52
  Have you gotten to know Jim at all?
• 32:54
  I got to know big bill France and that's an experience.
• 32:58
  And I didn't realize the garages at Talladega closed at five o'clock at night.
• 33:03
  And everybody got their lunch pail and went home.
• 33:05
  I just thought it was like sports car racing in America.
• 33:08
  You pull the motor up 6 30 and three in the morning, you put it
• 33:10
  back in the car and wake up in the morning, groggy and go race.
• 33:14
  We decided not to go home.
• 33:16
  Garage people told us to go home and the next thing I know, I'm sitting in
• 33:19
  Bill Francis' office staring at him.
• 33:21
  That was a very imposing man.
• 33:23
  It didn't take very long at all before I saw it exactly his way, . And
• 33:28
  so I think that like we all deal with politics of different sorts.
• 33:32
  And let's face it, when you're going to LA Mall, you're going to a foreign country.
• 33:36
  It's their soil.
• 33:38
  Yeah.
• 33:38
  They call the shots.
• 33:39
  Give us your thoughts on hypercars, this current generation of premier class at
• 33:44
  Lamar, a couple of characteristics that I have noted and shared with the fans.
• 33:47
  I think it's really unique the way they take all the cars, the wind tunnel
• 33:50
  now to try to get them all in the same window for downforce, and they're using
• 33:54
  half shaft torque sensors to be able to measure the power output to try and
• 33:57
  get them equal, maybe talk a little bit about hypercar, where that category
• 34:01
  is and any of your thoughts on that.
• 34:02
  When Tesla came out with the S model.
• 34:06
  I bought one.
• 34:06
  I still drive it today, 10 years and 80, 000 miles on that car.
• 34:11
  And it's never missed a lick.
• 34:13
  The company on the other hand makes great spaceships, but their service is
• 34:17
  questionable in their automobile industry.
• 34:19
  And then we're comparing it to companies have been in business for a hundred years.
• 34:22
  So the car is a wonderful car.
• 34:24
  I still drive it today.
• 34:25
  I love it.
• 34:25
  A flip side of that.
• 34:26
  My favorite car that I own is a 2015 Corvette front engine, big V8.
• 34:32
  I love the feel of that car.
• 34:34
  And it's a great road car for me and my wife.
• 34:36
  I've had it all.
• 34:37
  And I've driven wonderful Porsches and Porsches loaned me cars over the
• 34:40
  years when I was driving their cars.
• 34:42
  And I just think it comes down to a particular model of car
• 34:46
  from a particular manufacturer.
• 34:48
  So if you say.
• 34:50
  The new rules are going to be predicated on dyno runs and torque shaft
• 34:55
  sensors and all that kind of stuff.
• 34:57
  So be it, whoever gets that right, it's going to win.
• 34:59
  If you think you're going to even up the field by giving everybody the same
• 35:03
  drive shaft and all that, it never happens, Roger Penske always wins.
• 35:08
  Even at Indy with all the same cars and the same engines,
• 35:10
  Roger always wins, right?
• 35:12
  Right, so I was asked one time, because the big question for an
• 35:15
  American racing car driver is, when are you going to go to Indy?
• 35:19
  Have you ever wanted to go to Indy?
• 35:20
  Sure, but I won at Riverside twice.
• 35:23
  Got a podium too.
• 35:25
  And I lived in Southern California.
• 35:27
  That's like a kid from Indy winning the 500 because I lived in Southern
• 35:30
  California and I had seen Phil Hill and Lance Raventlow scarab there
• 35:36
  when I was a teenager sitting in the grandstands with my father.
• 35:39
  So I was a fiend for that.
• 35:41
  And when I won there, it was bigger than a kid from Indy for me winning the 500.
• 35:46
  I was asked one time, so what do you think about this class or that class?
• 35:51
  Or did you ever want to go to Indy?
• 35:52
  And so on so forth.
• 35:53
  My answer was always the same.
• 35:54
  I never went to Indy because Roger Penske never called me.
• 35:57
  So that was the end of it.
• 35:58
  If you ever sit on a porch in Ohio in the middle of summer with a
• 36:02
  bug zapper on the porch next to you, I think of Indy as zzzzzzz.
• 36:08
  Just like, cause man, those concrete walls stop you really quick.
• 36:12
  And they hurt a lot of people.
• 36:13
  So if you're going to go there and hang around a bug zap, you better be
• 36:17
  pretty sure you're not going in it.
• 36:19
  And that best way to do that is to be in the best car.
• 36:21
  And I wouldn't go to Indy.
• 36:23
  I had some offers to go to Indy.
• 36:24
  I didn't want to go without Roger Penske and he never called
• 36:27
  me and I never went to Indy.
• 36:29
  So the answer to your question is.
• 36:31
  If you're going to do an equivalency formula where you decide who's got
• 36:36
  this and who's got that, and you try to equal them up, it doesn't matter.
• 36:39
  Wayne Taylor and Roger Penske are always going to win.
• 36:42
  I don't care what the equality formula is.
• 36:45
  It doesn't work that way.
• 36:46
  The best team wins, and that is the best part of motor racing.
• 36:50
  The best drivers and the best teams always win.
• 36:52
  Because the best teams read the rule book and figure out the
• 36:57
  equivalencies and do it right.
• 36:58
  And the best drivers bring them back a lot.
• 37:00
  So tell us about a few other of your co drivers that you've
• 37:03
  worked with over the years.
• 37:04
  I started thinking about Roger Penske and some of the larger than life
• 37:07
  figures that you've been around.
• 37:09
  Certainly the Kramer brothers are very famous.
• 37:11
  In fact, we had doc Bundy on this program, Vern Schupan, Pete Halsmer, Jochen Mass.
• 37:15
  Any stories you want to share on some of your co drivers?
• 37:18
  You did your homework.
• 37:19
  I have had the benefit and the joy.
• 37:22
  Uh, driving with some of the best drivers in the world.
• 37:25
  My wife would say, well, what do you think about this?
• 37:27
  And think about that?
• 37:28
  I said, well, I think he'll make me look good.
• 37:29
  Cause that's all I ever thought about.
• 37:31
  I've been a teammate of Bob Wallach's.
• 37:33
  I've been a teammate of Derek Bell's.
• 37:35
  I've been a teammate of Rick Newbs.
• 37:37
  I never drove with Pete Halsmer, but he was on our team.
• 37:40
  So I never had a direct experience teaming up with him, but Jokin
• 37:44
  Mass is as good as they get.
• 37:46
  And when Jokin Mass and I drove together, I'm six feet tall with Seven foot legs.
• 37:53
  My wife, who's five one in a theater, I'm shorter than she is.
• 37:57
  So with mass and I, we were very quick and we led a lot of races, even at
• 38:02
  the time, difficult BF Goodrich tires and almost won a few and should have
• 38:07
  won the Daytona 24 hour three times.
• 38:09
  I couldn't see over his steering wheel and he couldn't reach my pedals.
• 38:13
  So there's more to it than, is he a great driver?
• 38:16
  Does he fit or do you fit?
• 38:18
  And so he would wear a pad taped to his back so he could reach.
• 38:23
  So you didn't have seat inserts.
• 38:24
  You could slide in during a pit stop piece of foam and sit on it.
• 38:27
  So I could see over the steering wheel.
• 38:28
  Right.
• 38:29
  He's all body and no legs.
• 38:30
  So that was always difficult with me because of the length of my legs.
• 38:33
  And that came up with lots of different people.
• 38:35
  When I drove the historic formula one cars for the last eight or nine years of my
• 38:40
  life, including a Ferrari, I had to cut the toes off my shoes and tape my toes.
• 38:45
  In order to sit in the car, fit your feet down in the foot.
• 38:48
  Well, right down jammed up against the cowl and they had to move the
• 38:52
  steering wheel back with the paddle shift Ferraris in the formula one cars.
• 38:56
  There's not a lot of room in there.
• 38:58
  And Schumacher was a couple of inches shorter than me.
• 39:00
  And we usually drove the same cars.
• 39:02
  So we kind of melded together in those cars, but with any
• 39:07
  other drivers, look about a lot.
• 39:08
  It was a great test driver.
• 39:10
  Ferrari was a different size than me.
• 39:12
  And so we struggled in the same cars.
• 39:14
  Eventually what happened is I just did all my own testing at Ferrano
• 39:18
  when I was working with Ferrari.
• 39:20
  But with Porsche, remember that in the very first 956s and 62s, those were
• 39:26
  adjustable seats, pull up a lever.
• 39:28
  And slide it forward and back.
• 39:30
  Yeah.
• 39:30
  That didn't help that I was so short in the body that I couldn't
• 39:32
  see over the steering wheel.
• 39:33
  Right.
• 39:34
  So we'd use a smaller steering wheel, which took more effort.
• 39:37
  Remember, this is pre power steering.
• 39:39
  That was a little bit of a problem, is finishing a long race without arm fatigue.
• 39:44
  Rick Newp and I had an interesting experience.
• 39:46
  They decided to race these big German sports cars, which are really
• 39:50
  fast, believe me, at Charlotte.
• 39:52
  On the Roval?
• 39:53
  On the Roval, pre new Roval, this was old Roval, this was old
• 39:58
  Roval, where the transition would just about bash your brains out.
• 40:03
  And so Noop and I go out at Charlotte in this 962, which is much, much
• 40:09
  faster around that oval than a NASCAR.
• 40:11
  That's for sure.
• 40:12
  I come in and I'm bashing my brains out.
• 40:15
  The top of a 956 or 62 doors is plexiglass.
• 40:19
  It's not fiberglass.
• 40:21
  So I'm bashing the window out of this thing with my head, because
• 40:24
  when I go up on the banking, the g forces are so heavy, there's no
• 40:27
  possibility you can hold your head up.
• 40:29
  I don't care how long you worked out at the gym, it's not going to work.
• 40:32
  Noop and I are talking, and we decide to go get surgical tubing in a
• 40:36
  hardware store in downtown Charlotte, and lo and behold, they've got it.
• 40:40
  And when we start that race, I'm starting the race and I've got this
• 40:44
  surgical tubing tied to the side of my helmet, down under my left arm.
• 40:48
  We're going backwards around this oval.
• 40:49
  And so my head, I'm leaning over in the car, like waiting for the
• 40:53
  rest to start praying because I'm about to get a terrible cramp.
• 40:56
  As soon as the race started, your head would just go up straight
• 40:59
  and we ran the whole race.
• 41:00
  I think we finished second there and new people remember that story because
• 41:03
  we both suffered from the same problem.
• 41:05
  Once your neck muscles give up, you don't get them back.
• 41:07
  That point you're along for the ride.
• 41:08
  Yeah.
• 41:09
  I can remember thinking of that.
• 41:10
  It's funny.
• 41:11
  You brought that up because one Indy 500 that I remember, you remember
• 41:14
  Jerry Grant drove for Dan Gurney?
• 41:17
  Jerry was a great guy and I knew him right up to the end.
• 41:20
  Great guy.
• 41:20
  Anyway, Jerry was not a guy who lived at the gym.
• 41:25
  It's a very gracious way of saying it.
• 41:27
  Yeah.
• 41:27
  Right.
• 41:27
  But he was a hell of a good race driver, but he was a.
• 41:30
  Enormous guy, and he stuck out of an Indy Eagle like a foot and his head
• 41:35
  was higher than the roll bar and so on.
• 41:37
  So at the end of the 500, Jerry Grant is leading the 500.
• 41:40
  He's going to win it.
• 41:41
  It's clear he's in the fastest car and he's run the smartest race.
• 41:45
  And Gurney's put together a good program.
• 41:47
  I, at the time, was working at Gurney's, so I knew Jim.
• 41:49
  I'm watching it on TV.
• 41:50
  And pretty soon he comes out of turn four, his head might as well have
• 41:54
  been laying over on the fuel filler.
• 41:57
  Poor guy was leaned over.
• 41:58
  He couldn't hold his head up anymore in the 500 and he's going to win.
• 42:01
  So at the last minute, he can't do it any longer.
• 42:03
  He pulls in and they tug his head over and put the strap around and send
• 42:07
  him back out and he finishes sick.
• 42:09
  in the race.
• 42:10
  And he of course argued that it should have been over on the previous
• 42:13
  lap and everything, but he lost, but that was where I got the idea.
• 42:18
  Well, why don't we just pull our heads the other way with a rubber
• 42:20
  band and have a rubber band?
• 42:22
  But we did find surgical tubing and we invented these things under
• 42:25
  our arm and attached to the side of the helmet and pulled us over.
• 42:29
  So as soon as you're up to speed, your head's up straight.
• 42:31
  Perfect.
• 42:32
  Perfectly.
• 42:33
  And now everybody's got those things.
• 42:35
  They've got Hans devices and all this stuff we never had.
• 42:38
  And even the Hans device now can be adjusted to give you stability too.
• 42:42
  And then the padding on the side of the cars, the later Ferraris that I drove
• 42:46
  2003, four or five, they had big padding.
• 42:50
  And if you got uncomfortable, you could lean up against it, but the
• 42:53
  vibration would hurt your eyesight.
• 42:55
  So you didn't want to do it all.
• 42:56
  Great stuff.
• 42:57
  Do you have any one last story that you wanted to try to work in?
• 43:00
  We got to wrap this up.
• 43:01
  If you got one more.
• 43:02
  More that's tickling around in there.
• 43:04
  I know you mentioned you had a couple of real gems that you were going to hold out.
• 43:07
  I think those have probably come through, but anything else that comes to mind?
• 43:10
  I'll tell you a little piece that's fascinating to me.
• 43:12
  And it's why Portia wins them all the time.
• 43:15
  When they decide to Portia is a hot rod company.
• 43:18
  I'm a hot rod guy.
• 43:19
  I grew up in Pasadena.
• 43:20
  I watched the guys come home on the GI bill and take a 32 Ford and pull the
• 43:24
  fenders off and put a modified flat in it.
• 43:27
  I watched him take a Harley Davidson and strip the fenders
• 43:31
  off and turn it into a Triumph.
• 43:33
  It looked like it had the buddy seat on it and so on and they'd
• 43:36
  lower them and do everything.
• 43:38
  I'm a hot rod guy.
• 43:39
  I still am today.
• 43:40
  I love 32 Fords.
• 43:41
  I got a 32 Ford that'll smoke most of these cars.
• 43:44
  I love Porsche because think about it.
• 43:47
  If you go to Daytona this year, or Lamont this year, what will you see?
• 43:51
  You will see a 1963 Porsche nine 11 with fat offenders in the engine turned around
• 43:59
  and a different engine which has more horsepower and the suspension lowered.
• 44:03
  It's still a 63 9 11 mm-Hmm rear engine car that's been modified.
• 44:07
  It's a hot rod and I'm a hot rod guy and I love doing it.
• 44:11
  And look, the very first nine 62s we got had 625 horsepower.
• 44:16
  And so people didn't get killed when they'd hit things, they'd get hurt.
• 44:18
  We got banged up a bit pretty soon.
• 44:20
  We killed people and we killed them at Lamar.
• 44:22
  We killed them at Daytona.
• 44:23
  We killed them.
• 44:24
  Poor Manfred Winklehock was killed at the most port.
• 44:27
  Why?
• 44:27
  Because the car was supposed to have 625 horsepower.
• 44:30
  They turned it up to 900.
• 44:32
  We had two qualifying motors, one from Ed Pink and one from Alvin Springer
• 44:36
  at 910 horsepower on the dyno and one that we turned up for qualifying at
• 44:42
  Daytona that had a thousand horsepower.
• 44:45
  It was a hot rod motor.
• 44:46
  It had an aluminum chassis, man.
• 44:48
  That's the recipe.
• 44:50
  So what did we do?
• 44:51
  We here, if you could be here, you'd see one away.
• 44:54
  Eric has done the beautiful drawings of this car.
• 44:57
  108 C2.
• 44:58
  What does C stand for?
• 44:59
  Chapman.
• 45:00
  Jimmy Chapman built chassis for Indy cars and he was here in Orange County.
• 45:05
  When I folded the tub up over me at Miami and broke my shoulder and two ribs and
• 45:09
  had to be back the next week to race, we sent the car to Dave Clem up in Atlanta.
• 45:13
  He rebuilt the car, sent it back.
• 45:15
  It's still a sheet metal chassis.
• 45:16
  And we've got all this horsepower.
• 45:18
  Well, I ended up doing is building a honeycomb tub, which we made Chapman
• 45:23
  tub numbers and Portia was so happy with it, that if you look in the
• 45:26
  Porsche record of the nine 62s, you will see C's after certain ones.
• 45:31
  And those are the Cassies we built right here in Laguna beach and race them out.
• 45:36
  Well, that is a perfect place to stop.
• 45:39
  It's so hard to stop.
• 45:40
  Cause I know Jim, we could go on and on.
• 45:42
  I am going to do my very best to come and visit you.
• 45:44
  I think we're left savoring those last bites.
• 45:47
  And just that notion of you as a racer and a hot rodder matches
• 45:52
  your Southern California history.
• 45:54
  It matches all the stories and it really ties it together.
• 45:56
  So I want to thank you for the extraordinary pleasure of spending
• 45:59
  this hour with you on behalf of all the fans that are here, I look forward
• 46:02
  to more people getting a chance to see this with the recording that David
• 46:05
  prepared and we get this laid down.
• 46:07
  It's quite a nice time, Jim.
• 46:09
  Thank you.
• 46:09
  My pleasure for sure.
• 46:22
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