Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / From a Stewards Point of View: John Bornholdt

Transcript

From a Stewards Point of View: John Bornholdt · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Breakfix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
• 0:04
  by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
• 0:07
  Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
• 0:11
  Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
• 0:16
  We're happy to have you join us today for the center conversation
• 0:19
  from the steward's point of view.
• 0:21
  This series of talks covering a broad range of interests in motorsports is
• 0:25
  sponsored in part by a grant from the Watkins Glen Chamber of Commerce, and
• 0:29
  we are grateful for their support.
• 0:31
  John Bordholt, known familiarly as Johnny B.
• 0:35
  John was a race steward for more than 50 years starting in 1952 at Sebring.
• 0:40
  He worked in race series ranging from the SCCA to Formula One.
• 0:44
  Currently, a member of the SCCA's Professional Court of Appeals, Bornholt
• 0:48
  is one of only two people who have been honored with the Wolf Bonato, David
• 0:53
  Morell, and the SCCA Hall of Fame Awards.
• 0:56
  Pretty impressive.
• 0:57
  Back in 1951, BH Holt was a spectator at open road races here in Watkins
• 1:02
  Glen and in Bridge Hampton, and started his officiating as a
• 1:06
  pit steward at Sebring in 1952.
• 1:09
  Didn't take him long.
• 1:10
  51 to 52.
• 1:11
  Continuing there for the next 10 years, he joined the Fcca a's Washington DC
• 1:15
  region in 1955, working as a pit steward at the first Marlboro Speedway race.
• 1:20
  He's the founding regional executive of the South Jersey SCCA.
• 1:24
  Bornholt worked at virtually all races in the Vineland Speedway
• 1:28
  road course from 1958 on.
• 1:30
  He was steward at the United States road racing championship races, then
• 1:33
  chairman of stewards for many Can Am, Trans Am, And formula 5, 000 races in
• 1:39
  the mid 1950s, he was a pit crew member of the triple a Eastern sprint team.
• 1:44
  Bornholtz was the American steward at us formula one races from 1970 through 1991.
• 1:50
  He was series chief steward for the single seat five liter Can Am, and
• 1:55
  then spent 17 years as series chief steward for the Toyota Atlantic series.
• 2:01
  He was also a judge for cart and champ car additionally, but wait, there's more.
• 2:06
  Bornholt was briefly series chief steward for the Oldsmobile sports car race series.
• 2:11
  He held various positions in SCCA club racing stewards organizations,
• 2:15
  including divisional executive steward and director of stewards.
• 2:19
  He also put in time as a flagger and chief timing and scoring
• 2:22
  during his career in racing.
• 2:23
  Bornholt worked for 45 years at RCA, becoming program manager of large
• 2:29
  radar projects, retiring in 1996.
• 2:32
  Ladies and gentlemen.
• 2:34
  Johnny B.
• 2:40
  I'd be, or I'd be standing up here as they did at a lot of driver's meetings,
• 2:44
  cause you get better attention that way.
• 2:46
  I'd like this to be a talk.
• 2:47
  It's not a presentation.
• 2:49
  And by the difference in my book is that a talk is for me to let you get
• 2:54
  as much information as you can absorb what we're talking about, which means
• 2:58
  that you can ask questions at any time.
• 3:00
  And I like that because it makes it flow better and it's more informative for you.
• 3:05
  A presentation to stand up, tell them what you told them, and leave.
• 3:09
  I've done hundreds of those in my business, and I don't like them.
• 3:12
  That said, what are we going to talk about today?
• 3:14
  I looked around, and I thought around, and I thought, you
• 3:17
  know, there's several things.
• 3:18
  Most of us that go to races, we watch the cars go around, but we
• 3:21
  really don't know what's going on out there behind the scenes.
• 3:24
  And I thought I'd try and give you a peek into race organization, racing
• 3:29
  organizations, and particularly the stewards organization,
• 3:33
  because they're the ones that can affect the outcome of the race.
• 3:36
  As it is officially published over the last four or five or six weeks,
• 3:40
  I wrote a whole series of notes and I came here and I find out with my
• 3:43
  lousy macular degeneration, which is one reason why I'm not an operating
• 3:47
  steward anymore that I can't read my own notes, but haven't written them.
• 3:50
  I should know what's in them.
• 3:52
  Let's start at the top.
• 3:53
  Automobile racing is a huge area to talk about.
• 3:59
  I'm going to talk about the part of it.
• 4:02
  That has to do with what happens on track from the official's viewpoint.
• 4:07
  I'm going to leave out of it, the whole aspects of the organizing of
• 4:11
  the event before the event, which is a whole world in itself, I'm going
• 4:15
  to leave out of it, the press I'm going to leave out of it, the driving
• 4:18
  side of it, because I'm not a driver.
• 4:20
  And I've never purported to be one because I found out very
• 4:23
  early on that I was a lousy one.
• 4:25
  Which is why I'm an official.
• 4:26
  So let's talk about the organizational side of it.
• 4:29
  First of all, in auto racing, in most of the world, there's only one organization
• 4:35
  in each country that runs the auto races.
• 4:37
  United States, I believe is unique, or at least one of the few that has many
• 4:43
  organizations running automobile racing.
• 4:46
  And not all of them are underneath the aegis of the international
• 4:50
  organization, the Federation International of the Automobile.
• 4:53
  The FIA.
• 4:54
  It sets the tone for racing for those clubs that belong to it.
• 4:59
  How did this happen in America?
• 5:01
  How many people know what happened in 1955 in auto racing?
• 5:04
  Okay, for the rest of you, in 1955 at the Le Mans race, Pierre Levesque went
• 5:10
  into the crowd in the grandstands in front of the Mustard finish line because
• 5:15
  he ran in the back of another car.
• 5:16
  And it's controversial, I think, to this day, exactly what
• 5:19
  happened and how that happened.
• 5:22
  But the results are certainly not controversial.
• 5:25
  Upwards of 90 people were killed.
• 5:27
  God knows how many were injured.
• 5:29
  The race continued.
• 5:30
  The stewards decided that it had an impact on racing that you just can't imagine.
• 5:35
  In the United States up until that time, the American Automobile Association.
• 5:40
  Randall organized racing that amounted to anything.
• 5:44
  There were many, many other racing organizations in the United
• 5:47
  States, but they were outlawed.
• 5:49
  What does that mean?
• 5:50
  That means their drivers could not participate in AAA races, nor could
• 5:54
  they participate internationally.
• 5:56
  The FIA recognized AAA and only AAA.
• 6:00
  After 1955, when that happened, within days after it happened, AAA said, we're
• 6:05
  out of here, boys, in automobile racing.
• 6:08
  America needed to have an organization representing itself for its
• 6:12
  international races, and so it formed the Automobile Competition
• 6:16
  Committee of the United States.
• 6:19
  And ACUS in turn had membership of the major racing organizations
• 6:25
  and still does to this day.
• 6:26
  You have USAC, you have SECA, you have NASCAR, you have NHRA,
• 6:32
  AMSA, and you have others.
• 6:34
  The organization below that level is by each club.
• 6:38
  Each club then, NASCAR, SCCA, IndyCar, they sanction races,
• 6:44
  and when they sanction a race, they appoint the officials.
• 6:48
  They appoint them, but they not originally name them.
• 6:51
  Often the names of the officials at a race are chosen by the local organization,
• 6:56
  submitted to the sanctioning body for approval, the sanctioning body approves
• 7:01
  them, and then appoints them to the race.
• 7:03
  Amongst those officials at a race, you have various kinds of
• 7:07
  stewards and other specialties.
• 7:09
  I'll do the other specialties first because we're not
• 7:11
  going to talk about them.
• 7:12
  We have tech, we have timing and scoring, we have registration, safety,
• 7:18
  and we have steward organizations, but they're not the same as the
• 7:23
  ones I want to spend my time with.
• 7:25
  We have pit stewards, we have paddock stewards, we have safety stewards.
• 7:29
  Their jobs are mainly.
• 7:32
  To assist drivers and entrance and to monitor the drivers and entrance
• 7:37
  and performance, the remaining stewards are fall into two categories,
• 7:42
  judicial ones and operational ones.
• 7:45
  The operational ones are your chief steward.
• 7:48
  And he goes by a lot of titles in SCCA club racing.
• 7:51
  He's a chief steward, or he may be the series chief steward in IndyCar.
• 7:56
  He's known as the race director.
• 7:59
  I believe in FIA now has a race director.
• 8:02
  It used to be that he was called the clerk of the course.
• 8:05
  In any case, those names mean he's the boss once the racetrack
• 8:10
  and the organization of pre race from the race chairman or the
• 8:15
  sanctioning body or somebody tells him, okay, here's who's running.
• 8:19
  Here's what's on the schedule.
• 8:21
  You do it.
• 8:22
  And so the chief steward's job is to.
• 8:25
  Do it.
• 8:26
  He controls everybody that's at the racetrack that weekend.
• 8:29
  He has some limited control.
• 8:31
  It depends on which organization.
• 8:33
  In IndyCar, he has a back of him, the judges.
• 8:37
  And I'll talk about that in a moment.
• 8:39
  In NASCAR and in AAA racing before 1955 and in SCCA racing
• 8:45
  until sometime after 1955.
• 8:48
  The chief steward has control period.
• 8:51
  If there's any recourse that a contestant, and that means an entrant
• 8:56
  or a driver, has with what went on, he has to go to a higher authority, which
• 9:01
  in NASCAR they appoint an appeals court.
• 9:04
  In AAA before 55 was the contest board, as it was in SCCA.
• 9:09
  In SCCA racing, we have the stewards of the meeting.
• 9:12
  In FIA racing, we have the stewards of the meeting.
• 9:15
  And their job is only to To take on protests by somebody, some
• 9:21
  entrant as to what happened.
• 9:23
  They can accept the protest or they can reject it.
• 9:26
  And if they accept it, then they have a hearing and they
• 9:28
  adjudicate as to what happened.
• 9:30
  And if the people feel unhappy about that result, in the case of, I don't know what
• 9:35
  it is today, but when I was with court, they can tell the chief judge, well,
• 9:39
  I, we don't agree with your finding.
• 9:40
  And he says, well, you got 48 hours.
• 9:42
  To cough up 25, 000 in a written reason why it should be appealed.
• 9:46
  And so it goes to appeal, if they accept it.
• 9:49
  That's the general idea of how the organization works from the top down.
• 9:55
  When the race is over and the checkered flag falls, the
• 9:59
  chief steward is out of a job.
• 10:01
  Then the stewards take over again because, at least in SCCA and in ChampCar,
• 10:06
  which is the last pro racing I worked, contestants had a half hour from the time
• 10:11
  the checker fell to get a piece of paper, and in the case of ChampCar, 5, 000.
• 10:16
  protest fee and to protest something that they felt was
• 10:20
  incorrect that affected them.
• 10:21
  That's a key word in there, affected them.
• 10:24
  In the past years, we had protests in SCCA from amongst the officials.
• 10:30
  That's no longer allowed in any organizations that I know.
• 10:33
  Written out of it by the rulebook, because the rulebook will spell
• 10:36
  out what exactly can be done.
• 10:38
  So there you have the overall organization of how a race is run.
• 10:43
  Okay, you got stewards, and you got a chief steward, and you got a chairman
• 10:47
  of stewards, and you told me how they're going to be appointed, and
• 10:50
  you kind of told me what they do.
• 10:52
  Tell me some other things about them.
• 10:54
  How do they get to be there?
• 10:56
  Stewards organizations have a decision to make.
• 10:59
  On the makeup of the kind of people that they want to make stewards.
• 11:03
  There was at one time, a very strong push that a steward had to be a driver.
• 11:09
  I was not, not long enough to qualify anyway.
• 11:12
  And several others were not, I believe Charlie Whiting, who's race director
• 11:16
  for FIA for the last umpty ump years.
• 11:18
  I don't believe Charlie was a racer.
• 11:20
  He might've been, but I don't believe so.
• 11:22
  So that criteria has been changed.
• 11:25
  However, it's very, very important for the stewards, all of them, to
• 11:29
  have the driver's viewpoint because that's what you're dealing with.
• 11:32
  You're dealing with issues that happened on the racetrack.
• 11:35
  So, how do you get that?
• 11:37
  Well, in my case, I got it because I did a lot of flagging, I worked on a
• 11:40
  crew, and I was around the racing a lot, and I understood what was going on.
• 11:45
  I learned a hell of a lot more about stewarding after I was one than
• 11:48
  before I was one, I can tell you that.
• 11:50
  Mainly what you can and can't do and should and should not do.
• 11:53
  We'll talk a little bit about that too.
• 11:55
  Now you've got some background on what do we expect from these guys?
• 12:00
  Your judicial stewards are that they deal after the fact.
• 12:04
  They don't do anything until they get a protest.
• 12:07
  It used to be in the FIA, GCR, General Competition Regulations, that the
• 12:12
  stewards could replace the chief steward.
• 12:15
  I don't believe that's in there anymore.
• 12:17
  That's certainly not in the FIA code.
• 12:19
  The code is the name for the regulations that the FIA uses to run their races.
• 12:24
  Which brings up an interesting subject is how the code comes about.
• 12:27
  It's written by people in the sanctioning body, almost always reviewed by the
• 12:33
  senior stewards in the organization, because they're the ones that are
• 12:36
  going to have to work with it.
• 12:37
  And sometimes, it has input from the competitors themselves.
• 12:41
  Right now, I know that the FIA has gone round and round and round and
• 12:44
  round on what they're going to do about engines in, uh, I think it's 2020.
• 12:48
  Involving the manufacturers in their decision making, which is
• 12:51
  the proper way to do it, I think.
• 12:53
  Now you've got The stewards there, you've got the chief steward, you've
• 12:57
  got a rule book sitting on the table.
• 12:59
  Issues come up.
• 13:00
  Now how do the stewards handle that?
• 13:02
  Well, the stewards have a hearing on a protest that's been entered, and
• 13:05
  that has been handled properly, etc.
• 13:08
  And they call in the protestor, and they call in the protestee, and they have, or
• 13:14
  should have, already notified both parties when and where they're going to meet, etc.
• 13:18
  We do not allow, and when I say we do not for FIA, I'm talking about
• 13:23
  1991 and previously because I've not been on a committee since,
• 13:27
  but I don't think it's changed.
• 13:28
  We do not allow what's allowed in courts, in our court system,
• 13:33
  and that is cross examination.
• 13:35
  We call a person in, we ask him his questions, why he's brought
• 13:39
  the matter up, why he thinks we ought to hear it, pertinent issues
• 13:43
  there are, we let him talk, and then we send him out of the room.
• 13:46
  Thank you.
• 13:46
  We hear the protested party.
• 13:48
  We may call both back, we may not.
• 13:50
  Depends on what we've heard and what evidence has been presented.
• 13:54
  And then we make a decision.
• 13:55
  And we announce that decision.
• 13:57
  Sometimes it's announced on the spot.
• 13:59
  Sometimes we say, don't come back but in 72 hours we'll give you a letter
• 14:02
  that tells you what our results will.
• 14:04
  And your appeal period starts at the time that you receive the letter.
• 14:08
  The protest hearing is an interesting, a really interesting experience.
• 14:13
  If you're at all into how people interact and how people act,
• 14:18
  that's a great place to learn.
• 14:21
  You get all kinds of people come in with all kinds of
• 14:25
  problems based on a rule book.
• 14:27
  The whole world in racing revolves around that rule book, which then tells
• 14:32
  you what the philosophy should be.
• 14:35
  We follow the rule book.
• 14:36
  If it ain't in a rule book, it doesn't exist.
• 14:39
  I used to start driver's meetings in Atlantic series at the first race, when we
• 14:44
  get a bunch of new guys come in, much of them usually young coming up the ladder.
• 14:48
  And I'd say there's three simple rules.
• 14:51
  Regarding the rulebook you follow it.
• 14:53
  You don't like what's in the rulebook go and get the rulebook changed
• 14:57
  But while you're doing that the rulebook exists as is written and
• 15:01
  follow it And if you can't do one and you can't do two get out of here.
• 15:05
  It's that simple.
• 15:06
  And why is it that simple?
• 15:07
  Well, if we didn't have a rulebook I can tell you we'd have chaos.
• 15:12
  It's difficult enough with a rulebook There are so many circumstances
• 15:17
  that can come up that affect the outcome of a competition.
• 15:21
  You can't have it that I'll judge it on the spot.
• 15:24
  Because then, at the next event, and the same thing happens, how does
• 15:29
  the contestant know that stewards or the judges are going to come
• 15:32
  up with the same findings on the same, exactly same circumstances?
• 15:36
  The only way you can know is to have continuity.
• 15:38
  Two kinds of continuity.
• 15:40
  Continuity in officialdom, and if not in the person, at least in their training.
• 15:45
  And continuity and having a rule book that's clear and says, you
• 15:49
  can do this and you can't do that.
• 15:50
  One of the problems we have, I have it with a very, very good friend of mine.
• 15:55
  And I won't tell you who it is, who is excellent at writing rules,
• 15:58
  but damn poor at enforcing them.
• 16:00
  In my book, you should not do that.
• 16:02
  Rule books should never have the word should, may, can.
• 16:07
  Rule books in my book should say must, shall, then you've got no
• 16:12
  question about whether or not.
• 16:14
  You're asking people to sit down and make a decision.
• 16:18
  A decision is based on the facts as they can find them.
• 16:21
  And if you make it equivocal, then you're going to get different answers
• 16:25
  every time you have a meeting.
• 16:26
  Write the rule book and you won't have that problem.
• 16:29
  You may have other ones, but you ain't going to have that one.
• 16:31
  Let's go back to the conquer.
• 16:32
  I plan to do this talk.
• 16:34
  At first, to tell you about the overall organization of things and that kind
• 16:39
  of stuff, and then get into some specifics, and also tell a couple, I
• 16:43
  think, humorous situations at tracks that I was at, none of which has
• 16:47
  ever been published to my knowledge.
• 16:49
  But I think maybe this is a good time to get, because of this particular
• 16:53
  question, and because it deals with what we're talking about, about
• 16:56
  rules, rules interpretation, rules preparation, and that sort of thing.
• 17:01
  We had a race on the west coast in Long Beach in Formula one, Colin Chapman,
• 17:06
  who in my humble opinion was probably one of the most brilliant automotive
• 17:10
  engineers that I was ever born.
• 17:12
  He was also your classic entrepreneur, which means that
• 17:16
  rule books don't really exist.
• 17:18
  They're sort of guidelines.
• 17:20
  He came out with his team, cars, and he also brought two new cars, the Lotus 88.
• 17:26
  Now at that time, sliding skirts were legal, and they rested on the ground.
• 17:30
  Now why did they have live sliding skirts?
• 17:32
  Because they found out if they used sliding skirts made out of Lexan, which
• 17:35
  raised hell with the racetrack, but kept the air out from underneath the
• 17:38
  car, that the air pressure underneath the car was less than it was outside.
• 17:42
  What's that mean?
• 17:43
  That means whatever that pressure differential was, Existed for
• 17:46
  every square inch on the top of that car, including the tires and
• 17:50
  everything you could see looking down.
• 17:52
  And if that was four or five pounds across that number of square inches,
• 17:56
  you got a hell of a force when you were putting the brakes on or
• 17:58
  you were going through a corner.
• 18:00
  That means that the tires, which are the only four points that car touches
• 18:03
  the road, and their friction is going to go up by the amount of that force.
• 18:08
  But it's not car weight.
• 18:09
  So the car is still the same light car that it was when it was
• 18:12
  sitting still, but now effectively it weighs 6, 000 pounds more.
• 18:17
  And that means it gets huge traction.
• 18:19
  That means you get four or five Gs at very high speeds in some corners in Formula
• 18:25
  One, which means the car is essentially making right angle turns, which means
• 18:29
  you get through the corner faster.
• 18:31
  What's that mean?
• 18:31
  Lap speed faster.
• 18:32
  Oh, I win.
• 18:34
  Now, the problem with that was.
• 18:36
  The poor devil behind the steering wheel, because they had to put springs
• 18:40
  in there to allow the wheels to move up and down because the racetracks
• 18:43
  are not perfectly smooth, God knows.
• 18:45
  Every time the wheel hit one of those, it had to bump up and down.
• 18:48
  Well, it had to bump up and down at low speeds.
• 18:52
  Which, when the car was only getting a few pounds of pressure on, from
• 18:56
  aerodynamic effect, and at high speeds, when it might, as I said,
• 19:00
  may have three tons pushing on it.
• 19:01
  And so the springs were like virtually solid bars sitting there.
• 19:05
  Which meant that when the car hit a bump, bang, into the driver.
• 19:09
  So bad that they would come into the pits after qualifying complaining of vertigo.
• 19:14
  That's a problem.
• 19:15
  And the FIA had the problem that they were in their own rules and
• 19:18
  in their organization, they can't change the rule race to race.
• 19:22
  So, what did Colin do?
• 19:23
  Brilliant, brilliant move.
• 19:26
  He said, we'll design a car just like we've always designed a car.
• 19:28
  The springs are the same 8, 000 pounds springs they've always been.
• 19:32
  But, we'll put the driver in a separate capsule.
• 19:34
  And we'll put a set of springs between him and the car.
• 19:37
  And he won't feel those shocks anymore, but the car will sit on
• 19:40
  the ground like it's supposed to.
• 19:41
  And he brought the car to Long Beach built that way.
• 19:44
  And Ferrari took one look at it and said, No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 19:47
  And I believe they were the ones that instigated, I don't remember exactly, but
• 19:51
  I think they were the ones that instigated the protest that came to the Stewart.
• 19:54
  The chairman was John, rest his soul, John Korsman from Holland.
• 19:57
  And we looked at the car, and we looked at the rule book, and we looked at everything
• 20:01
  else, and we finally decided, No.
• 20:04
  Why did we say no?
• 20:06
  The rule book was quite clear to us, It said that the springing
• 20:11
  system, so and so and so and so.
• 20:13
  The book did not say the springing systems.
• 20:17
  And so we ruled no.
• 20:18
  Well, Cullen didn't sit square with that one.
• 20:21
  He immediately filed an appeal on the spot.
• 20:24
  And it went to the FIA appeals court and they upheld us.
• 20:28
  And they ruled that one letter made a difference in racing.
• 20:31
  The letter S.
• 20:32
  That's an example of how some of those things get handled.
• 20:36
  Let me give another example of Colin Chapman.
• 20:39
  Bertie Martin was the clerk of the course.
• 20:41
  Bertie was my mentor.
• 20:43
  He was the first president of SCCA Professional Racing.
• 20:46
  I'm sorry, he was the second one.
• 20:48
  Jim Kayser was the first.
• 20:49
  Bertie was the clerk of the course.
• 20:51
  Wally Reese from Ohio was assistant clerk of the course.
• 20:54
  In those days, the standing start allowed the teams to send their cars
• 20:59
  out of the pits and go around the racetrack for a 15 minute period.
• 21:04
  At the end of that 15 minute period, the pit gate was closed.
• 21:07
  The out gate was closed and cars in the pits at that time had to stay in the pits
• 21:13
  until they were rolled out to the grid, Reggazoni racing for Lotus at that time.
• 21:18
  Went out on his 15 minute tour, and either the pits didn't notify him, I never know,
• 21:23
  I never found out why, he didn't come in, but he didn't come in, he stayed out, the
• 21:27
  pit gate wasn't closed, he comes into the pits, nowhere near starting time yet, as
• 21:32
  I remember, it used to be about a half an hour window in between, he decides to go
• 21:35
  out of the pits again, Wally Reese is the assistant clerk, the court says, no, no,
• 21:39
  no, you don't, puts his hand out, puts his foot out, Regazzoni runs over his foot,
• 21:44
  Calls up and tells Bertie what happened.
• 21:47
  Bertie comes to us and said, what do you want to do about it?
• 21:49
  I looked over at John.
• 21:50
  I said, simple.
• 21:51
  I think, what do you think?
• 21:52
  He said, yeah, we find them 10, 000.
• 21:55
  That kind of a penalty action by the stewards did not require a hearing.
• 21:59
  It's the kind of thing that we could decide by their rule book.
• 22:02
  In Formula One, everything is done in writing.
• 22:06
  If you have a new notice to the teams about something, it gets in writing.
• 22:10
  When it goes to each team, it's carried around by hand, and the
• 22:13
  master copy, the goddard carries it around, gets a team manager to sign
• 22:17
  it, and that goes in the race record.
• 22:18
  So there's no question after the race about, Oh no, I wasn't told.
• 22:22
  Kind of thing.
• 22:23
  We sent one down to Colan.
• 22:24
  A written record said you've been fined 10, 000 for Clay
• 22:28
  Rega's only car number so and so.
• 22:30
  For going out of the pit gate after the pit gate was closed.
• 22:33
  Period.
• 22:33
  So Colan comes charging into the meeting.
• 22:36
  Raving and all that.
• 22:37
  Fine, 10, 000.
• 22:38
  Now this is back in the early 80s.
• 22:40
  So 10, 000 was what?
• 22:42
  Three times what it is now?
• 22:43
  Whoa, whoa, how did you ever come up with 10, 000?
• 22:48
  And I looked at him and I said, he ran over Wally Reese's foot.
• 22:50
  Wally Reese's foot's got five toes on it, it's 2, 000 a toe.
• 22:56
  He looked at me, he burst out laughing and he walked out.
• 23:01
  True story.
• 23:03
  Uh, let's see, let's get back on the track.
• 23:05
  We were talking about stewards, we were talking about stewards training.
• 23:09
  I can talk about two organizations because I work for them.
• 23:12
  I work for CART and CHAMPCAR.
• 23:14
  I worked for them first as a chief steward when the Atlantic Series, which
• 23:18
  was owned by the greatest ra If you, if you, anybody in this audience gets
• 23:22
  a crazy idea you want to run a race series, you want to hire Vicki O'Connor.
• 23:26
  She knows how to run a race series from start to finish, anything to do with it.
• 23:33
  The press, the publicity, the guarantee, the support, anything, she's the lady.
• 23:39
  So I worked for CART.
• 23:40
  CART bought the promotion agency, which is Vicki O'Connor, and in doing so, they
• 23:46
  wanted to be also to be the sanctioning body, obviously, and so they made a deal
• 23:50
  with SCCA, who were the sanctioning body before, and so I became an employee,
• 23:54
  or a non paid employee of CART.
• 23:58
  And then CART went bankrupt, and the assets were bought by a
• 24:01
  group, called themselves ChampCAR.
• 24:03
  Atlantic ran underneath that until the last ChampCAR race,
• 24:06
  I believe, at Long Beach.
• 24:07
  I was with SCCA, obviously, I'm still a member, so I know how that's done.
• 24:11
  SCCA runs a training program for stewards.
• 24:16
  I can remember when somebody like me, when I was an exec steward, would look around
• 24:22
  in the paddock and say, you know, that guy not only has a decent driver, but he's got
• 24:26
  the right kind of mind to be a steward.
• 24:28
  I think we ought to have him in a program.
• 24:30
  Walk up to him and take his arm and bend it up close to his
• 24:33
  collarbone and say, we need you.
• 24:35
  One of those guys sitting here, Ray Stone, that's how it started.
• 24:38
  I don't know how it works today because I haven't been in that position.
• 24:41
  And then you went into the program as a steward in training.
• 24:44
  You are allowed to sit in on stewards meetings, you are
• 24:47
  allowed to ask questions, but you weren't allowed to vote.
• 24:50
  That may still be in place.
• 24:51
  And then it grew from there.
• 24:53
  They started to think, well, you know, we really ought to
• 24:56
  have a set of guidelines for the stewards, aside from the rule book.
• 25:00
  The rule book tells you what and when and how to run competitions, but
• 25:03
  doesn't tell you how to be a steward.
• 25:05
  I can remember my predecessor as executive steward for all of SCCA.
• 25:10
  He was asked by the board of directors to prepare.
• 25:12
  a manual for the stewards, and he said, I can't write a book about common sense.
• 25:17
  And that's really the truth, because that's what you're supposed
• 25:19
  to be doing, using common sense.
• 25:21
  But common sense, it turns out, ain't so common.
• 25:23
  And so today we have a manual, we have training courses and that kind of thing.
• 25:27
  Has it made the stewarding any better?
• 25:29
  I couldn't answer that question.
• 25:31
  You'd have to ask the competitors that have been around long enough whether
• 25:35
  it's better today than it was before.
• 25:37
  In kart, the judges were picked by the management of kart.
• 25:41
  When I was chief steward for the Atlantic said I was getting a little
• 25:44
  tired of sitting in the hot seat.
• 25:45
  I'd made enough mistakes that nobody had caught me yet.
• 25:47
  I didn't want to make one and get caught, but I don't want
• 25:50
  to walk away from the scene.
• 25:51
  I really love racing and I still do.
• 25:55
  Deeply.
• 25:55
  I don't wanna be outta the race control and I don't, I was in one
• 25:59
  last week, but I wanna be involved.
• 26:01
  And so they said, well, we'll make you one of the judges.
• 26:03
  And their judges and our stewards in the meeting are very similar and
• 26:07
  their responsibilities in the way they act and that, except they have
• 26:10
  one thing that I think was brilliant.
• 26:11
  They have one judge at the racetrack, but they have two judges that are,
• 26:15
  he is in touch with by telephone.
• 26:17
  So they don't have to pay for two guys sitting at the racetrack
• 26:19
  doing nothing except ogling girls and watching cars go by.
• 26:23
  Which is what the judge does nine times out of ten, maybe
• 26:26
  more than nine times out of ten.
• 26:28
  Very rare in professional racing at that level do you get protests.
• 26:32
  But when you get a race protest at that level, it's not kidding around.
• 26:36
  It's something serious.
• 26:38
  Something that's going to have an impact beyond that day.
• 26:42
  I remember Trans Am, I was a chairman of the stewards at a
• 26:45
  Trans Am, I believe at Lime Rock.
• 26:47
  Jim Hall came to me with a protest, and the protest had to do with the
• 26:52
  Ford team that was run by Bud Moore.
• 26:55
  I said to Jim, who by the way is another brilliant racing engineer, besides
• 27:00
  being a pretty fast driver, I said, Jim, the FIA, in those days, Trans
• 27:05
  Am's where FIA won full international races, and so they are required.
• 27:10
  That each car that was entered by a manufacturer or a private entry affiliated
• 27:15
  with a factory have a book about that car with pictures of all the engine parts and
• 27:21
  pictures of the suspension systems and specification numbers and measurements
• 27:25
  and weights and God knows all what.
• 27:28
  And I said, Jim, you know that we've got a book on that Ford and you know that
• 27:33
  John Tomatis John, another God rest his soul, probably the best Czech guy I ever
• 27:38
  worked with, went over these cars and made sure that they were to that book.
• 27:42
  And he said, yeah, I know that too, he said, but Chevy wants
• 27:44
  me to give a Ford a hard time.
• 27:46
  That happens occasionally, very occasionally.
• 27:49
  That reminds me of something though.
• 27:51
  Let me tell you about two things having to do with the rules.
• 27:54
  The first one is a Concord Agreement was mentioned earlier.
• 27:57
  I got a call from Paris, the headquarters of FIA, in my office one day, not too
• 28:02
  long before a Long Beach Formula One race, and I was asked to share a meeting
• 28:06
  of all the entrants at Long Beach to straighten out something in the rules.
• 28:10
  And at that time anyway, the Concord Agreement required that every team agree
• 28:16
  to a change before it could be made.
• 28:20
  100%.
• 28:20
  I don't know whether that's true.
• 28:22
  When I worked at RCA, I used to, towards my end, I would sit in on
• 28:26
  the negotiations with the government, our government or foreign government,
• 28:29
  when we sold them a radar system.
• 28:30
  And I'd sit in there and when the contract was signed, I didn't sign it.
• 28:33
  The contracting officer signed it for the government and our contracts
• 28:36
  guy would sign it for a company.
• 28:38
  But I'd be right there at his elbow because it was either me or one of
• 28:41
  my people that was going to have to live with it, sign the last page and
• 28:44
  date it and all that kind of stuff.
• 28:45
  Not the Concord agreement.
• 28:47
  The Concord agreement is signed and dated on every page.
• 28:50
  Okay.
• 28:50
  I'd never seen that done before.
• 28:52
  Anyway, they asked me to do it.
• 28:54
  And so I said, okay.
• 28:55
  And I call up Christopher Robin Pook, who was at that time, the major domo
• 28:59
  for Long Beach now it's Jim McAleon.
• 29:02
  Really neat guy.
• 29:03
  Chris is an interesting one to work with.
• 29:05
  He's a brilliant guy.
• 29:07
  He said, I'll set you up in a meeting in the mayor's office.
• 29:09
  There's a nice, big, long table.
• 29:12
  So I went back to Paris and I told them what arrangements had been
• 29:15
  made and they let the teams know.
• 29:17
  I go up to about, oh, 10, 15 minutes early to the meeting and
• 29:21
  I walk in the room and there's two guys sitting on the opposite side.
• 29:24
  I can see them like they're sitting there in front of me.
• 29:27
  They're sitting there towards the back of it from me, and I'm up at the head of it.
• 29:30
  And they're yelling at one another, and one of them is standing over there with
• 29:32
  his finger pointing at the other one.
• 29:34
  And I had a copy of the rule book, which at that time is yellow.
• 29:37
  Picked it up and slammed it down on the top of the table.
• 29:39
  Got their attention, they both turned around and I said, From
• 29:41
  this moment on, no team talks to no team without they come to me.
• 29:47
  You talk to me, I'll talk to the other team.
• 29:50
  Understand?
• 29:51
  And they understood.
• 29:53
  And this is before the meeting even started.
• 29:55
  So, the meeting starts, and we went on for hours.
• 29:58
  I don't remember what paragraph of the rule book we were dealing with.
• 30:02
  I have no idea as I sit up here.
• 30:05
  But I sure remember how it ended.
• 30:07
  At the end of the meeting, I said, okay, I think I hear an a total agreement.
• 30:14
  Am I correct?
• 30:16
  We have 100 percent unanimous Agreement on what we've talked about here.
• 30:23
  If we need to, I'll reread it because I had just read what I
• 30:26
  thought was, was, and it was silence.
• 30:28
  And then this curly blonde haired guy sits up one of the other sides of
• 30:32
  the table and it was Marco Piccinini.
• 30:34
  And he was the manager at that time for Scuderia Ferrari.
• 30:38
  And he said, and I think I can quote from memory.
• 30:40
  And by the way, he was a trained lawyer.
• 30:43
  I believe he's a JD from Columbia university, impeccable English.
• 30:48
  He said, well.
• 30:49
  If the others all agree, Ferrari disagrees.
• 30:54
  And I looked at that, and I thought, I had a hell with it.
• 30:57
  I said, meeting's just over, and I called Paris and said, you
• 31:00
  gotta get yourself another boy.
• 31:02
  I couldn't do it.
• 31:03
  That's a true story.
• 31:04
  There had been a race at Monza, Italian Grand Prix, we're going
• 31:07
  to bring me your daughter Italia.
• 31:08
  At that time, the drivers on their warm up lap was a different
• 31:13
  requirement than it is today.
• 31:15
  And, Ricardo Patrici was a first time driver in Formula One.
• 31:20
  I believe he was with Alfa Romeo, if I'm not mistaken.
• 31:23
  He came up to the grid at speed, before the green flag had fell, which was legal.
• 31:27
  And the green flag fell and he moved up several rows.
• 31:30
  Well, Things happened at the back of the grid and a couple cars collided
• 31:34
  on a start and one of them was hit hard and that was Ronnie Peterson.
• 31:39
  Ronnie died in that accident.
• 31:41
  The driver's next race was Watkins Glen.
• 31:44
  The drivers unanimously wrote a letter to the FIA and to Mal Currie, I believe.
• 31:51
  The drivers unanimously stated that if Ricardo Patrici was in
• 31:54
  that race, they were out of it.
• 31:56
  Now, if you were the promoter, and you had a rookie, on one hand, and you had 20 some
• 32:02
  in those days, 26, 28, other cars on the other hand, that ain't a hell of a lot of
• 32:06
  a decision to make, and he made that, and so, they notified Patrese he couldn't run.
• 32:12
  Patrese ran into New York and he hired three lawyers from New York.
• 32:15
  I can still see them, young guys, and they were top talent from one
• 32:18
  of the big law firms in New York.
• 32:20
  You know, multi hundreds of dollars per hour, including travel time.
• 32:24
  Only one thing wrong, they didn't know a damn thing about motor racing.
• 32:27
  And they showed up, court hearing was held here.
• 32:30
  And the courthouse called the judge in off the golf course, I believe,
• 32:34
  which didn't make him very happy because they had entered an injunction
• 32:37
  against the promoter for disallowing the entry of Ricardo Patrici.
• 32:43
  Judge notified Malcolm that we're going to have a hearing
• 32:45
  at some time in the afternoon.
• 32:47
  I believe it was on Friday, but I'm not sure of that.
• 32:49
  Maybe it might have been on the Thursday before, but in any event, he notified
• 32:52
  us and we went into the courthouse.
• 32:54
  I can still remember, I walked out, I got in the car coming
• 32:57
  in with Mal and the tractor.
• 32:59
  Ownership at that time was the Franzisi family, and one of their members was
• 33:03
  there, and I'm sitting in the car, and I go, Oh, shoot, I didn't bring a rule book.
• 33:06
  And I said, Mal, do you have a rule book?
• 33:08
  And he said, yeah.
• 33:08
  I said, let me have it, because I knew as soon as I got in there, the judge
• 33:11
  was going to ask me, What's your role?
• 33:14
  And then he's going to ask me about the rule book, and then
• 33:16
  he's going to ask me for it.
• 33:17
  So sure enough, I get in there, and he asked me, and I said, please,
• 33:21
  your honor, I have essentially the same role at the racetrack.
• 33:24
  that you do here in court.
• 33:26
  I'm the chairman of the stewards for this event, the chief judge, if you will.
• 33:30
  And he looked at me and he said, I see you have a rule book.
• 33:32
  May I have it?
• 33:33
  And I, I bit my tongue because I was going to say, no, I can't give it to you.
• 33:36
  It's my, it's not mine.
• 33:39
  And then I thought, don't play judicial with the judge.
• 33:43
  And I said, yes, sir.
• 33:45
  And I gave him, he gave it back.
• 33:46
  He made a very, very important ruling.
• 33:49
  That's held up in racing a lot of times since.
• 33:52
  And another case that I was involved in, I won't go into because it's germane.
• 33:56
  He said, in effect, to the appellant in this case for betraysing, that
• 34:01
  they had not applied themselves to the remedies within the sport.
• 34:07
  And therefore, the court Would not have jurisdiction, which meant that
• 34:12
  anything that happens at the racetrack gets settled at the racetrack.
• 34:16
  And that's held up in other courts in other places.
• 34:18
  Well, it was legal precedent.
• 34:20
  That happened at Watkins Glen.
• 34:21
  When I was out of that courtroom, I was done as far as that issue was concerned.
• 34:26
  Who's in race control?
• 34:28
  That's an interesting question.
• 34:29
  Depends on the racetrack.
• 34:30
  Depends on the race.
• 34:32
  Professional racing, pretty much the same.
• 34:34
  I've been in 24s at Daytona, which I don't really know who sanctions that.
• 34:39
  I would guess it's probably IMSA.
• 34:40
  Does anybody know how IMSA was formed?
• 34:42
  This is complete aside from this, but it might be interesting
• 34:45
  because we're all racing fans.
• 34:46
  IMSA, way back when, there was a tremendous fight within SCCA over whether
• 34:51
  they would allow professional drivers.
• 34:53
  In SCCA, in the early days when I first joined, you had to be an amateur.
• 34:57
  If you were a professional racing driver, in any event, any kind, from
• 35:01
  dirt track in Podunk, Kansas to anything, you were not allowed to be an amateur.
• 35:05
  to be an SCCA driver.
• 35:07
  They didn't want to race against pros.
• 35:08
  Jim Kazer came along and saw that the future of racing was
• 35:13
  on road racing, in his opinion.
• 35:15
  He said, we need to change the club's bylaws and rules and
• 35:18
  that, and he did allow for that.
• 35:20
  There was a tremendous fight over that.
• 35:23
  And John Bishop was on the amateur only, club only.
• 35:28
  And the fight went on, and John went to the Board of Directors, and I
• 35:31
  have this from Bertie Morton, went to the Board of Directors, at those
• 35:34
  times, they were Board of Governors, and said, either he goes, or I go.
• 35:39
  Because, at that time, Kaiser reported to him.
• 35:42
  The Board of Governors said to him, come back in the morning.
• 35:44
  And Bertie told me, whenever they said that, that meant goodbye.
• 35:47
  And he did come back in the morning, and yes it did.
• 35:50
  And so John got fired.
• 35:51
  You read your magazine's sports cards from that day, it'll talk
• 35:55
  about how he left the organization.
• 35:57
  Well, that's the truth of it.
• 35:58
  And so, at that time, SCCA was a powerhouse.
• 36:02
  A K& M.
• 36:03
  was rivaling Formula One when I was associated with it.
• 36:07
  And this is in the time of the K& M Unlimiteds.
• 36:09
  We had a 100, 000 purse, and it was more than some Formula One races at the time.
• 36:15
  We had all the names in the world in the K& M.
• 36:18
  And there was a fledgling outfit that ran pseudo stock
• 36:21
  cars down South called NASCAR.
• 36:23
  And it was USAC that ran all the Ovals, including 500.
• 36:27
  USAC and SEC had their battles, and we did, over who's going to run road
• 36:31
  racing, but that battle had been ended.
• 36:33
  We kind of saw eye to eye about things, and NASCAR said, whoops, them is
• 36:38
  one, and them is two, and me is one.
• 36:42
  And I'm going to go into ACUS meetings with a lost position before I start.
• 36:47
  And lo and behold, John Bishop gets fired.
• 36:49
  Aha!
• 36:50
  What I ought to do.
• 36:51
  This is Bill France Sr., his former racing organization, for
• 36:55
  road racing, because NASCAR didn't have anything approaching that.
• 36:58
  I'll fund it, I'll keep it going, and what I really want it for is I'll
• 37:01
  make it an independent organization, apply to a sanctioning agreement
• 37:06
  from ACUS, and now I got two votes.
• 37:09
  And that's how that happened.
• 37:10
  And John Bishop was the director for many years.
• 37:13
  I was the guy that wrote the paperwork that nominated Jim
• 37:18
  Kaser for the SCCA Hall of Fame.
• 37:20
  And that's how I found some of this stuff out.
• 37:22
  I didn't know it.
• 37:23
  This was going on way above my pay grade.
• 37:25
  Final Selection Committee in the Hall of Fame approved Kaser to be one of the
• 37:29
  people selected for the Hall of Fame.
• 37:31
  Also being nominated from another group was the only guy that I know
• 37:35
  of that was ever formally tossed out of SCCA from the Midwest.
• 37:38
  And why was he tossed out?
• 37:40
  Because Larry Dent got word.
• 37:42
  that SCCA behind the scenes was negotiating with USAC for a joint
• 37:47
  operation of all professional road racing in North America.
• 37:51
  I'm sorry, in the United States.
• 37:53
  And that negotiation was held by two people from SCCA and two people from USAC.
• 37:59
  And the two people from SCCA did not include the Chairman
• 38:03
  of the Board of Governors.
• 38:04
  One was Jim Kaser, and I've forgotten who the other one was.
• 38:07
  The Board of Governors knew nothing about this.
• 38:10
  Larry Dent somehow got word of what was going on and he blew the whistle on him.
• 38:16
  He blew it in a way such that he wasn't involved and he didn't, certainly
• 38:20
  blew it in a way that whoever was leaking it to him was not involved.
• 38:23
  And it was a tremendous sure invite.
• 38:25
  And, and he had said some, he said some things and written some things that
• 38:28
  he shouldn't have, and so the Board of Governors voted him out of the club.
• 38:32
  To this day, you can look in the records and he wasn't voted outta
• 38:34
  the club, but at the time he was.
• 38:36
  He was later allowed back in after making suitable apologies to certain people.
• 38:41
  And he and Jim Kayser now, 50 years later, are going to be sitting on the same
• 38:47
  panel of selectees to the Hall of Fame.
• 38:50
  And I wanted to be in Las Vegas to see those two meet
• 38:53
  for the first time in 50 years.
• 38:55
  Because he blew Kayser's job.
• 38:57
  Kayser was done after that.
• 38:59
  Unfortunately, Jim died before he got to sit on the stage at Las Vegas.
• 39:04
  That has nothing to do with stewards, but I thought it's interesting.
• 39:06
  Let me give you some racing situations.
• 39:08
  I asked Bill Green when he asked me if I do this, how long, who's the audience?
• 39:13
  He said, well, a racing enthusiast.
• 39:14
  And I go, okay, that takes care of that.
• 39:16
  How long?
• 39:17
  He said, well, Bill Davidson talked about two hours.
• 39:19
  I said, well, yeah, but he's a pro.
• 39:21
  And so I wrote these notes hoping that I could go through them.
• 39:26
  I can't read them, but I hope that I could get through them
• 39:29
  in a reasonably short time.
• 39:30
  So, I'll tell you about some of the things that happened along the way that
• 39:34
  I think you might find interesting.
• 39:35
  None of them, to my knowledge, were ever published.
• 39:38
  A couple of them are humorous.
• 39:40
  John Korismit, God rest his soul, from Holland.
• 39:42
  was for several years the chairman of the stewards at Formula One
• 39:47
  races throughout the world.
• 39:48
  Which I thought was an excellent idea.
• 39:50
  He was a great guy, understood racing, he was a lot older than I am.
• 39:54
  He had a fundamental feeling for what's right in racing.
• 39:59
  And he was a stickler, a stickler to do by the rules.
• 40:03
  One of the rules is, for the stewards, is that the stewards shall, but not the
• 40:08
  clerk of the course, come to think of it.
• 40:10
  I never thought of that.
• 40:11
  The stewards shall do a tour of the course before the green flag is shown
• 40:16
  at any session at a Formula One race.
• 40:18
  That's practice, qualifying, if there's a warm up, and a race.
• 40:22
  So here we are, and I don't remember, but I kinda think it was Phoenix, one of the
• 40:27
  two years at Phoenix we were in a race, and we're going around and waving to the
• 40:30
  flag stations we go by, and I look up ahead, and here the flag station people
• 40:35
  are lined up at the edge of the track, except the first one is mooning us.
• 40:43
  And the next one is a woman, and she's got her braless shirt up.
• 40:49
  And the next one, I don't know whether it's male or female, you can't tell from
• 40:52
  the back, is, is mooning us, and so on.
• 40:55
  Well John sees it in about a millisecond after I see it, and he erupts.
• 41:01
  BORTLED!
• 41:02
  What in the world is going on here?
• 41:04
  What are you doing?
• 41:05
  What are you doing?
• 41:05
  I'm the American steward, so who else is he going to yell to?
• 41:09
  And I'm sitting right next to him, and in the back seat of the
• 41:13
  pace car, and uh, his big smile.
• 41:16
  And I said, John, they're singing a song to us.
• 41:19
  And he said, I said, look at it!
• 41:24
  Rump titty, rump titty, rump, rump, rump.
• 41:28
  True.
• 41:33
  I'll tell a story I wasn't planning on telling.
• 41:35
  I was executive steward, I think, three times up here.
• 41:38
  Ray Stone is here, Ray and I go back years and years and years.
• 41:41
  He was executive steward after me, I think, for the New England division.
• 41:45
  And Floyd Stone, his father, was my predecessor.
• 41:48
  And Floyd did something that bothered the Board of Governors.
• 41:52
  And so they decided that he's not going to get the job again.
• 41:54
  Maybe Ray knows why.
• 41:55
  So they came to me, and I was his deputy for Area 2, which is south of here.
• 41:59
  They asked me if I would take it over.
• 42:01
  If I'd be exec for the following year.
• 42:04
  I said under one condition that Floyd is my deputy for area one, which is up here.
• 42:08
  And they hemmed and hawed and said, well, okay, so I was.
• 42:12
  Well, the PS to that was I did something they didn't like and
• 42:15
  they fired me and he went back in.
• 42:18
  I don't know if you know that story.
• 42:19
  Anyway, and then I got out again a third time, sometime later, I don't remember.
• 42:24
  Normal circumstances.
• 42:25
  I was exec steward up here.
• 42:28
  I didn't mention this.
• 42:29
  You know, you have a pace car.
• 42:31
  Well, who drives a pace car nowadays?
• 42:33
  It's required that he'd be a driver.
• 42:34
  And that's a real good requirement because.
• 42:37
  You drive the track, you ought to drive it the way the guys are going to drive it.
• 42:40
  People are going to be following you, uh, even though they've been
• 42:43
  out in practice and qualifying.
• 42:44
  It doesn't matter.
• 42:45
  You don't want to look sloppy out there.
• 42:46
  Secondly, he has a feel for the track, and it's just a damn good idea.
• 42:51
  Almost always, he has his shotgun, and the shotgun's got a radio, and the radio
• 42:55
  is in contact with the chief steward.
• 42:57
  So that's a normal situation.
• 42:58
  Well, a nice perk is to allow people to ride in the pace car on the pace laps.
• 43:04
  So, we're at Watkins Glen and it's a six hour race, and I'm, I think
• 43:08
  I was chairman that year too.
• 43:09
  And, I'm walking by Pace Cars in Pitland, I'm walking on, used to be
• 43:14
  called a paddock club, overlooked the lead in to the uphill right hander.
• 43:18
  And in those days, the lead in to it, Had been chicaned.
• 43:23
  Francois was killed on that turn, hitting the guardrail and let drivers left.
• 43:27
  And so they paved super bump strips in the racetrack to
• 43:31
  make a chicane going up there.
• 43:33
  That's part of the story.
• 43:34
  So here I am, I'm walking over to paddock club to get lunch, fat,
• 43:37
  dumb, and happy cause in a six hour race, nothing ever happens.
• 43:40
  So they're not going to need me.
• 43:41
  I left word with the tower where I was going to be in case something did
• 43:45
  happen, but nothing's going to happen.
• 43:47
  And I go buy the pace car.
• 43:48
  Yeah.
• 43:48
  And Morrow Decker was sitting in shotgun.
• 43:51
  That's important.
• 43:52
  I forgot who the driver was, but the driver said to me, I'm stuck
• 43:56
  here for six hours and I'm hungry and you ain't doing anything.
• 44:00
  I know you stewards.
• 44:01
  Cause he's another one at that time.
• 44:03
  And he said, I got to get some lunch.
• 44:05
  Would you drive the pace car?
• 44:07
  You know, nothing's going to happen in the six hours.
• 44:09
  So I said, stupidly, yeah, yeah, I'll take it.
• 44:13
  So I got by it, never driven the car before.
• 44:15
  It was a Datsun five speed manual should never do in a pace car.
• 44:19
  Cause you got other things to be doing other than doing this.
• 44:22
  So I'm sitting there, I didn't get through lunch period.
• 44:25
  Pace car roll!
• 44:26
  Pace car roll!
• 44:27
  So, okay, well, we go.
• 44:29
  Well, I go out of the pits.
• 44:30
  And I can remember, there were nine 35s that were in the
• 44:34
  front at the race at that time.
• 44:36
  Turbo Porsche.
• 44:37
  What, 600, 700 horsepower, I guess they had.
• 44:39
  They didn't like going slow.
• 44:41
  Well, neither did I, but I found out that in 4th and 5th gears, this
• 44:45
  car wouldn't do more than 65 miles an hour if you whistled Dixie.
• 44:49
  And I'm sitting in there now, starting to row, row, row, row, and I go up, turn
• 44:53
  around a 90, and I'm still feeling around it, and I suddenly realize, we're in a
• 44:57
  chicane, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
• 45:00
  Okay.
• 45:01
  And go around.
• 45:02
  And go up the street and I can't get this thing going uphill to go over 65.
• 45:07
  The nine 30 fives are going, yeah, I past the window and back and
• 45:12
  they're giving me the message.
• 45:13
  I've received it, but I ain't doing anything about it.
• 45:17
  We were running a long course.
• 45:19
  We come around, go down and down around, and I'm fiddling
• 45:22
  with this thing and I damn near.
• 45:25
  Hit the BMW that it was the course of the all course which is sitting square in the
• 45:29
  middle of the racetrack About that time.
• 45:31
  I look over in my shotgun Morrow and he's white with what's been
• 45:35
  going on I screamed at him.
• 45:37
  I said you tell control to fix whatever they gotta fix, but get me out of here We
• 45:44
  made one more lap and we came in I swore never Never drive a pace car, especially
• 45:49
  when you haven't driven one before.
• 45:51
  Found out later on the car had been borrowed from Bridgehampton.
• 45:53
  Hadn't been run for two years.
• 45:55
  It hadn't been serviced.
• 45:55
  It hadn't been anything.
• 45:56
  It was lucky it ran.
• 45:59
  So, sometime later, I'm down at Nazareth.
• 46:03
  Well, you know it's a road course that runs only to the left.
• 46:06
  Cause it runs uphill and downhill, and it's got more than four turns to it.
• 46:10
  So, they were running a Super V race.
• 46:12
  Roger E.
• 46:12
  Andy was the series chief for it, and he had a Scirocco that VW supplied.
• 46:18
  As the pace car, and I don't know what happened, but he asked me to
• 46:22
  drive the pace car, and I don't remember the circumstances of it,
• 46:26
  but I got in this stupid thing.
• 46:27
  I have to remember what happened up here.
• 46:29
  I hadn't driven it again, and I've come to find out it's a turbo ed
• 46:33
  Scirocco, which I didn't, which was not a car that they built.
• 46:36
  And the throttle on this thing had two positions, full on and nothing.
• 46:41
  And on that oval, that's not the kind of thing you want to be fooling around with.
• 46:45
  That was the last pace car I ever drove.
• 46:49
  Little Al answer.
• 46:51
  Little Al come up out of midgets and sprint cars.
• 46:53
  When he came into, must have been Super V at that time, he had the
• 46:58
  reputation of passing yellows and reds in his pro racing.
• 47:03
  And he was just a kid at the time.
• 47:05
  And then George Cousins was the president of SCCA Pro Racing.
• 47:09
  He called me up and asked me to go to Riverside.
• 47:11
  And be the chairman of the stewards, and in particular, keep an eye on
• 47:14
  Little Al in the Superview race.
• 47:16
  Sure enough, he passed out of yellow.
• 47:17
  I didn't black flag him or do anything, but I announced that there was a 500 fine.
• 47:22
  I don't know if anybody here was ever at Riverside, but the control was at
• 47:26
  the outside of the track, at the top of the stands, and the concession stands
• 47:29
  were on the inside in the paddock.
• 47:31
  So at lunchtime, I Went on downstairs, and I'm walking down, and there's
• 47:34
  this chunky, blonde haired guy walking towards me from the other side.
• 47:37
  I didn't pay any attention to it.
• 47:38
  It was quite a walk.
• 47:39
  But as the longer I walked, the longer I realized, this guy is not looking
• 47:42
  at the stands, he's not looking at anything, he's looking at me.
• 47:45
  Finally, we get within yelling distance to one another, and he
• 47:48
  said, Are you the Chief Steward?
• 47:49
  And I said, Yes.
• 47:51
  And he starts in about the 500 fine.
• 47:54
  And he goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.
• 48:01
  And finally he runs out of breath and he says to me, you didn't say anything.
• 48:06
  And I said to him, The next thing I say is, this is a thousand,
• 48:10
  and he did the same thing.
• 48:11
  He burst out laughing.
• 48:13
  That was Rick Gallus.
• 48:14
  I'd never met him before.
• 48:15
  Rick was Little Al's sponsor for a number of years.
• 48:18
  We got to be good friends.
• 48:19
  Great guy to work with.
• 48:21
  Before we came up here, We looked at a video called Circuit.
• 48:25
  I'm in it, okay?
• 48:27
  It was a movie made about one year in K& M 2, the 5 liter single seater K&
• 48:32
  M, about Danny Sullivan, primarily.
• 48:35
  It was about following the exploits of Danny Sullivan.
• 48:38
  And I'm in it in the beginning, when the credits are rolling.
• 48:41
  I'm holding a driver's meeting at Mosport.
• 48:44
  When the movie came out, they sent me a complimentary copy.
• 48:46
  And I watched it.
• 48:47
  And I learned more about what happened in the Can Am that I never knew.
• 48:52
  And I was the series chief steward.
• 48:54
  Things were happening on the track and in the paddock I never heard about.
• 48:58
  We had a race, an Atlantic race at Mosport.
• 49:01
  We always did standing starts, which I love, by the way, for a lot of reasons.
• 49:06
  People think, oh, aren't they dangerous?
• 49:07
  No, I think they're safer than rolling starts.
• 49:10
  We had a start, and not too long, like maybe lap two or so, I got
• 49:14
  a call from the pits that number so and so jumped the start.
• 49:18
  I black flagged him, made him do a pit through.
• 49:20
  When all was said and done, it turned out that it was not car numbers so and so, it
• 49:25
  was pit start position numbers so and so.
• 49:28
  But it hadn't been announced to me that way.
• 49:30
  I had presumed that it was car numbers so and so.
• 49:33
  We made two rule changes after that.
• 49:35
  One very significant and one operational.
• 49:38
  The operational one was the judges at the start, which you have for standing
• 49:42
  starts, they are to always say car number or always say one or the other.
• 49:47
  For me, it was car number because that's what I deal with is car numbers.
• 49:51
  The other rule was much more significant.
• 49:53
  We made a rule change.
• 49:54
  If anything had happened on a racetrack like that, where you were going to
• 49:58
  affect the competition, you let the team know that at that point, that
• 50:03
  there'd been an infraction and that you were going to inflict a penalty.
• 50:06
  And they had an option of taking that penalty now or a 30 second
• 50:11
  penalty after the race was over.
• 50:13
  And we had opportunity to talk about it and look into it.
• 50:15
  And that was, I think, a very significant change in favor of the competitor.
• 50:19
  Because there's a lot of times.
• 50:20
  The chief steward makes decisions based on what other people are telling him,
• 50:23
  and he comes to find out that that ain't the way it was sold, especially
• 50:27
  passing under the yellow flag.
• 50:28
  That's a very contentious issue.
• 50:30
  Where does this zone start?
• 50:31
  I know what the rule book says.
• 50:33
  I've also been a flagger and ain't easy to judge and you may misjudge it.
• 50:37
  There's a big thing going on in SCCA right now about in the rule book getting
• 50:41
  changed on pass under the yellow.
• 50:42
  And where does it start and where does it stop?
• 50:44
  FIA has a very simple rule.
• 50:47
  It starts at the first station before the incident, and ends at the
• 50:53
  first station after the incident.
• 50:55
  That's a flag station.
• 50:56
  You look across the track, is he in front of him or isn't he?
• 50:58
  Simple, black or white.
• 51:00
  SCCA can't do that, and they were honest enough to admit why.
• 51:04
  Cause they don't man all the stations all the times.
• 51:07
  And some of the stations that are the first station after the incident are
• 51:11
  pretty damn far away and you don't want to map the situation of trying
• 51:15
  to maintain it all the way through.
• 51:17
  People ask me, what's the difference between pro racing and club racing?
• 51:20
  Obviously they're similar, but there's some fundamental differences, very
• 51:24
  fundamental that affect the way in which you look at things in club racing.
• 51:29
  Everything has to do with the participants, the drivers.
• 51:33
  The entrance, mechanics, the flag workers, everybody who's doing something
• 51:39
  that weekend, that's a club member.
• 51:40
  They're all involved.
• 51:41
  That's not the case in pro racing.
• 51:44
  In pro racing, everything has to do with the drivers, and the
• 51:48
  entrance, and the spectators.
• 51:51
  And the TV and the press and the promoter.
• 51:54
  Don't forget the sponsors.
• 51:56
  Good Lord.
• 51:56
  Don't forget the sponsors.
• 51:57
  You wouldn't be there if they weren't there.
• 51:59
  And so that's a philosophical difference that you'd sometimes have to break.
• 52:03
  FIA has a very, at least when I was in it, had a very interesting
• 52:07
  attitude towards those things.
• 52:09
  They recognized that there's going to be conflicts between those two
• 52:13
  kinds of approaches to things.
• 52:15
  And what they said was there's the sporting side of the issues and there's
• 52:19
  the commercial side of the issues and they have to be balanced, one can't.
• 52:24
  Totally overruled the other one.
• 52:26
  I like that.
• 52:27
  Now you look at racing today, I think NASCAR is all hardest
• 52:31
  over on the commercial side, club racing is the opposite.
• 52:34
  It's all the way over on the sporting side.
• 52:37
  And I think that's properly so because that's what it's for.
• 52:39
  It's for the people that are there to have fun at the races.
• 52:42
  There are some other differences in that you didn't get as many driver
• 52:46
  to driver protests, another major differences in pro racing, you got
• 52:50
  the same officials at every race.
• 52:53
  This year, maybe every race for the next egg and n number of years contestants.
• 52:58
  know the officials, mostly by first name, and know how they operate,
• 53:04
  and know what to expect from them.
• 53:06
  In club racing, they're almost always different, a very little overlap.
• 53:10
  Club racing attempts to solve part of that problem with a red book, which is, I
• 53:14
  think, unique to Northeast Division, which is, there's a book that goes to every race
• 53:19
  and goes to the chief steward, and it has, uh, There's notes in it from the previous
• 53:23
  race, Chief Steward, and the previous and the previous and the previous.
• 53:26
  So that he can get some idea of what went on from the Chief Steward's
• 53:30
  viewpoint at previous events.
• 53:32
  I don't know if they still do that or not.
• 53:34
  I have not and will not sit in a chair.
• 53:36
  I was invited to sit in a chair last weekend and I said three things.
• 53:40
  I said, been there, done that, no.
• 53:45
  I think that was pretty emphatic.
• 53:47
  Funny situation.
• 53:48
  George Falmer, Dirty George, to those of us know, familiar, neat guy, great
• 53:54
  race driver, had a very bad accident.
• 53:56
  Totally out of his control.
• 53:58
  I never talked to George about it.
• 54:00
  At Laguna and the backstretch is a famous.
• 54:03
  Corkscrew turn, which is sharply downhill with a pair of turns at the same time.
• 54:07
  Following the corkscrew is a short straight, sort of like
• 54:11
  the 90 to the uphill here.
• 54:13
  About the same, but downhill, so you can accelerate pretty quick.
• 54:16
  And then a left hand turn, and another straight, and then a right,
• 54:20
  and then a left in front of the pits.
• 54:21
  George came out of the corkscrew, and accelerated, and
• 54:25
  accelerated, and accelerated!
• 54:27
  And accelerated.
• 54:28
  He never backed off.
• 54:29
  He hit the bank.
• 54:30
  He went over the heads of the crowd.
• 54:32
  Went over the tops of the safety vehicles, bang, he ended up side
• 54:36
  because that was a hill like that.
• 54:39
  He was in the hospital for quite a while.
• 54:41
  He came back to see us, but not race the following year at Charlotte.
• 54:45
  We ran the Can Am single seater, five liters at Charlotte motor speedway
• 54:50
  using the infield track and most of the oval two years in a row.
• 54:54
  Okay.
• 54:54
  With the NASCAR 600.
• 54:56
  I can tell you the last thing in the world you want to be is a chief
• 55:00
  steward of a support race for the 600 cause there ain't no time on anything
• 55:06
  on anybody's part for you get lost.
• 55:08
  We really wish you weren't here.
• 55:10
  Now that I got that off my chest, George is there.
• 55:14
  Visiting, in the infield, in the paddock area.
• 55:17
  Somehow, WBT TV, which is the big station in Charlotte,
• 55:22
  got word that he'd come back.
• 55:24
  And so they sent a cameraman out to interview him.
• 55:27
  So here's George, and here's the cameraman, and the announcer,
• 55:31
  and the cameraman's assistant.
• 55:32
  In those days, they had a battery pack with the cameraman.
• 55:35
  Unbeknownst to the announcer and the camera man and the camera man's battery
• 55:40
  man, standing in back of them, but facing George, was Dallas Heiser Dunn.
• 55:45
  Johnny Dunn ran K& M.
• 55:47
  Well, Johnny Dunn ran K& M, but he also had a business called Guns Goodies.
• 55:52
  He sold racing parts out of Miami, Florida.
• 55:55
  Dallas wore a t shirt with Guns Goodies.
• 56:00
  Dallas never wore a bra.
• 56:02
  And when she had her badge made by SCCA to get into the racetrack, it was not
• 56:06
  from here up, it was from here down.
• 56:10
  You got the picture?
• 56:11
  She's back at the two camera guy.
• 56:13
  She is standing there, slowly raising her George is looking at the The
• 56:22
  announcer is asking perfectly legitimate questions, and getting weird looks
• 56:28
  out of George, and very slow answers.
• 56:32
  I happen to be staying alongside Dallas Cole quits when she got her effect on him.
• 56:38
  That's a true story.
• 56:39
  These are all true stories.
• 56:41
  I said that reminded me, Laguna, after you got all through going down the
• 56:45
  hill, you came out on the pit straight.
• 56:47
  In those days, The beginning of it, which was a 90 degree turn, was carved out of
• 56:51
  a hill, so you didn't need a guardrail.
• 56:55
  You had two miles of dirt in front of you.
• 56:57
  The last lap of the featured Can Am five liter race, Danny Sullivan
• 57:03
  took the lead, somewhere in the back stretch, maybe at the corkscrew, maybe
• 57:07
  at that turn, and promptly went off course into the wall at, I think it's
• 57:13
  turn nine, just before the finish line, just before the checkered flag.
• 57:17
  Well, it's a race.
• 57:18
  And in fact, he stayed there, so he's one of the last finishers.
• 57:21
  They got him up on the stand after the race was over, and people are
• 57:25
  still wandering around leaving.
• 57:26
  And they asked Danny, Danny, what happened?
• 57:29
  Danny said, damn racetrack didn't go where I was driving.
• 57:33
  You know, he's, I think, the only man that ever spun and won at Indianapolis.
• 57:39
  Just spinning at Indianapolis is a scary thought in itself.
• 57:42
  You talk about steward's hearings.
• 57:44
  I was here at the Glenn, a Formula V race years ago, when Formula V was the event.
• 57:50
  The Seatta of today.
• 57:52
  The Formula Ford of 10 or 15 years ago.
• 57:55
  You weren't a real competitive Formula V driver unless you
• 57:59
  had tire tracks on your helmet.
• 58:00
  I mean, that kind of thing.
• 58:02
  I'm up in race control.
• 58:03
  This kid comes running up to me, ranting and raving, and I
• 58:07
  get him out on the back porch.
• 58:08
  And I said, what's your problem?
• 58:10
  He said, I want you to do so and so and so and so and so.
• 58:12
  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 58:14
  I said, first of all, I don't have any actions called into me
• 58:19
  that weren't me doing any actions.
• 58:21
  So this is a problem you have with your competitor, which means that you,
• 58:26
  I'm going to have to write a protest and you're going to have to bring that
• 58:29
  protest to me with any data that you have that supports your position and 25.
• 58:35
  And he says to me, I don't have $25.
• 58:38
  I've got a, a tire gauge and, and an infrared thing to use.
• 58:42
  Measure tire temperatures.
• 58:43
  I said, son, I'm running a race, not a hawk shop.
• 58:47
  Go find $25 and go bring it up.
• 58:49
  So he goes away.
• 58:50
  When he comes back, he hands me a five and 20 singles.
• 58:53
  It's obvious he's gone around to talk to people.
• 58:55
  So he's driving the white car.
• 58:57
  What's the protest about?
• 58:58
  He's driving a white car on the opening lap, leaving the start rolling start.
• 59:02
  He gets hit in the back by the black car and forced off the course.
• 59:06
  He never gets to the 90.
• 59:08
  He never gets to run his race.
• 59:09
  I want that guy in that black car banned for the rest of this year.
• 59:13
  I want him.
• 59:14
  I said, thank you very much.
• 59:15
  We'll hear it.
• 59:16
  So we hear him and he tells us the same story.
• 59:19
  So we call the guy in a black car and tell him what happened.
• 59:22
  We read him the protest and he says, Hey, I never hit him.
• 59:26
  In fact, I could have hit him.
• 59:27
  I think he missed the shift or something.
• 59:29
  I never saw him after the start.
• 59:31
  He was back there someplace when I got to the 90.
• 59:34
  Okay, how do we solve this one?
• 59:36
  Well, it happened within view of the 90.
• 59:38
  Let's call the flag captain in.
• 59:40
  The flag captain comes in and said, no.
• 59:42
  Black car never hit the white car.
• 59:44
  Black car was far in advance of him before they even got anywhere near the corner.
• 59:49
  Hmm.
• 59:49
  Then we get a guy comes in and says, well, I was witnessed that I was
• 59:53
  in the red car right behind him.
• 59:55
  I saw it all.
• 59:56
  And that black car, obviously he'd been sent in by the black car.
• 1:00:00
  The black car never had anything to do with it.
• 1:00:02
  And anyone in there would tirade about how dangerous Formula V was turning
• 1:00:06
  out to be with all these accidents that were happening at every racetrack.
• 1:00:09
  And these guys can get away, but nobody ever does anything about
• 1:00:13
  it, and he does it week after week.
• 1:00:14
  If you're ever a steward, you hear those stories.
• 1:00:16
  And we let him run on, and we finally said thank you, and he
• 1:00:19
  was the driver of the red car.
• 1:00:21
  And so we called the flag station back in for some reason or other,
• 1:00:25
  and we asked them, well, who did hit the guy in the white car?
• 1:00:27
  Well, the guy in the red car.
• 1:00:34
  Another difference between pro racing and club racing, that that reminds me of.
• 1:00:38
  In club racing, almost always, you're using the flag stations for your eyes.
• 1:00:44
  Why?
• 1:00:45
  Because they're going to tell you what's happening out on the racetrack.
• 1:00:48
  In pro racing, most of the time, you've got cameras.
• 1:00:52
  Road America, the last time I was there, they had their communications,
• 1:00:56
  data, and TV on On fiber optics and they had the cameras on the corners
• 1:01:03
  remotely controllable from race control.
• 1:01:05
  So God bless whoever put that in the race chief could go and look at
• 1:01:10
  the corner in question to see, for example, where is the car sitting?
• 1:01:14
  So do I need to stop the race?
• 1:01:16
  Do I need to put out all course yellow?
• 1:01:18
  Do I need to go local yellow or what?
• 1:01:20
  And that camera is focused on the corner when you're not moving around.
• 1:01:24
  And it's recorded.
• 1:01:26
  And you got on a tape from every corner what went on.
• 1:01:30
  Boy, I gotta tell you, the club guys never had that luxury.
• 1:01:34
  You could solve some protests and hearing matters and that kind of stuff like that.
• 1:01:39
  Which is why a lot of them never happen.
• 1:01:41
  Because the guys driving the cars know they're under somebody's eyes.
• 1:01:44
  But the camera angle isn't great.
• 1:01:46
  And sometimes you could equivocate about, you know, did it see
• 1:01:50
  it right or didn't see it?
• 1:01:51
  And I used to say, boy, what I want There's a camera, God's eye in the
• 1:01:56
  sky, directly above the track, and high enough up, so I don't have to worry
• 1:02:00
  about angles or anything, and then I can tell what's really happened on there.
• 1:02:04
  Did he move over on him?
• 1:02:06
  Did he turn in on him before?
• 1:02:08
  Did he move over on him and say he moved on me?
• 1:02:11
  On me?
• 1:02:12
  This kind of thing.
• 1:02:13
  Did he really break Jackham?
• 1:02:15
  Those things do happen, you know.
• 1:02:16
  But I found out something very interesting.
• 1:02:19
  You watch TV and you watch, up until recently anyway, you watch the National
• 1:02:22
  Football League and you notice that all the cameras, you never, ever
• 1:02:27
  see a shot from directly above.
• 1:02:29
  Because the teams all agreed that they would not allow camera shots from directly
• 1:02:33
  above because it might reveal some secrets on formations that they don't want.
• 1:02:37
  And I thought, that's not interesting.
• 1:02:38
  That has nothing to do with automobile racing, but it's interesting.
• 1:02:41
  It's interesting.
• 1:02:41
  Let them talk.
• 1:02:42
  I think more drivers have talked themselves in their
• 1:02:46
  penalties than they realize.
• 1:02:47
  If you let them talk and let them talk, they'll say things that
• 1:02:50
  they should never have talked.
• 1:02:51
  In racing, we do not allow them to bring anybody in as their counsel.
• 1:02:56
  They have to appear.
• 1:02:57
  In person, represent themselves, and that's it.
• 1:03:00
  They can bring people in as additional witnesses, but only
• 1:03:03
  the witness comes in alone.
• 1:03:05
  Hey, no connivance in front of me, thank you.
• 1:03:07
  I didn't have it on my list, but here at Watkins Glen, there was a
• 1:03:10
  six hour race, and the rule was it was five over the wall on the pits
• 1:03:14
  on stops, and six was not allowed.
• 1:03:16
  And I don't remember whether that included the team manager or not.
• 1:03:19
  Anyway, there was a rule, and the Alfa Romeo team violated the rule.
• 1:03:23
  They had one or two guys over that should have been over.
• 1:03:25
  He was also later the design engineer for Ferrari.
• 1:03:30
  I sent somebody down to tell him, you know, one more time on that.
• 1:03:34
  We gave him a break and there'll be a penalty.
• 1:03:36
  And he told the pit guy that he didn't speak English.
• 1:03:40
  You know, no speakers, na na na na na na na, don't understand
• 1:03:43
  what you're telling me, na na na.
• 1:03:44
  He was a big guy, as I remember.
• 1:03:46
  The big guy told me that.
• 1:03:47
  I said to him, tell him the next time it's 25, 000.
• 1:03:50
  And he told him that, and he said, gee, he suddenly understood English.
• 1:03:55
  That's a true story.
• 1:03:56
  Who's in race control?
• 1:03:58
  Most of the pro races, and the only real pro races I ran were
• 1:04:02
  kart and champ car events.
• 1:04:04
  You had the race director, you had an operational chief steward, and there
• 1:04:08
  was a flag marshal alongside of him.
• 1:04:10
  There was a lady, or guy, recorder, recording what was being said.
• 1:04:14
  Beside which, an actual recorder, recording everything that was
• 1:04:18
  said on the phone network.
• 1:04:20
  There was also the chief of safety and cart safety was a number one to work with.
• 1:04:27
  That's why, what's his name was alive.
• 1:04:30
  He got his legs severed in an oval in Germany.
• 1:04:32
  And if they hadn't gotten to him as quickly and as thoroughly
• 1:04:35
  and as efficiently as that, he'd have been dead door nail.
• 1:04:38
  These guys were great.
• 1:04:39
  And their chief was a really neat, laid back, quiet guy.
• 1:04:43
  You never knew he was there, but he was the boss.
• 1:04:46
  Run Romney.
• 1:04:47
  Boy, they were great to work with.
• 1:04:48
  Which brings me back to another story.
• 1:04:50
  Another rule change.
• 1:04:51
  In Atlantics, when we first started, we ran virtually club rules.
• 1:04:55
  And as time went on, and things we learned, we decided to have our own rules.
• 1:05:00
  And one of them was, we never put out any vehicle on the racetrack, other
• 1:05:05
  than racecars, without the course being under Full course yellow and a pace car.
• 1:05:10
  And why at Lime Rock, we had a car off course and a car getting
• 1:05:15
  towed from off the back, the front of the field came around.
• 1:05:20
  And it came in as the one wrecker is crossing the track to get to the
• 1:05:24
  car that's off course and the other wrecker that's towing the car is
• 1:05:28
  crossing the track to go into the pits.
• 1:05:31
  And that put the lead cars everywhere, but on the racetrack.
• 1:05:34
  Nobody got hurt, and no cars got trashed.
• 1:05:36
  How?
• 1:05:37
  I'll never know.
• 1:05:38
  But when that was over, I said, that's it.
• 1:05:40
  From now on, nobody goes on that racetrack except race cars.
• 1:05:45
  If they do, it's all course yellow.
• 1:05:47
  It's that simple.
• 1:05:48
  And yeah, I know, I don't like all course yellows.
• 1:05:50
  It messes up the competition.
• 1:05:52
  But we're gonna do it that way, and we did.
• 1:05:54
  The interesting thought is, some racing organizations, and I'll
• 1:05:57
  leave them via anonymous, I have something called a competition yellow.
• 1:06:02
  And what that means is that, oh my god, he's running away with the race.
• 1:06:07
  There's dirt on the back stretcher.
• 1:06:08
  It's going to cause somebody to crash.
• 1:06:10
  I need a yellow flag all over.
• 1:06:11
  Okay, or an oval pollens, yellow, yellow, yellow.
• 1:06:15
  Let me talk a little bit about road courses and ovals.
• 1:06:17
  They are a world apart from every possible aspect.
• 1:06:22
  You can run an oval with a handful of people.
• 1:06:25
  You only need a few people out on the course, you need the normal
• 1:06:28
  complement in the pits in the paddock, but that's not many.
• 1:06:31
  And a couple up in race control and that's it.
• 1:06:34
  On a road course you gotta have people out on the stations.
• 1:06:36
  The rule in racing, I hope, is still.
• 1:06:40
  that every flag station must be able to see the preceding and
• 1:06:44
  succeeding station at all times.
• 1:06:47
  And that's a good rule because if they can't, something could happen
• 1:06:50
  in between and they wouldn't know it.
• 1:06:51
  And you wouldn't be able to warn the drivers on the course, and
• 1:06:54
  you wouldn't be able to call for safety if somebody needed it.
• 1:06:56
  You have to be able to see from station to station.
• 1:06:59
  You have to have those stations manned that you can see.
• 1:07:02
  And if you can't see them, you'll have to man them.
• 1:07:04
  I had two unfavored tracks, two tracks that I hated to
• 1:07:08
  work at for various reasons.
• 1:07:09
  Top of the list by miles was Nazareth.
• 1:07:13
  That was the most dangerous damn place I'd ever been.
• 1:07:15
  Because of the layout of the track.
• 1:07:17
  It was fast.
• 1:07:18
  Think the lap speed for cars on there?
• 1:07:21
  I think their lap times was in the 160, 180 range for a
• 1:07:25
  mile, and it wasn't a mile.
• 1:07:26
  I can remember Dennis Eade, one of the team managers in Atlantic,
• 1:07:30
  there for the first time when we ran Atlantic's there, coming to me and
• 1:07:33
  saying, how long is this racetrack?
• 1:07:35
  I said, it's announced as a mile.
• 1:07:37
  He said, maybe announced as a mile, but it must be around the
• 1:07:39
  outside of the top of the stands.
• 1:07:41
  He said, I know from my gearing, how far it is.
• 1:07:45
  That brings me to Pocono.
• 1:07:46
  Pocono for a different reason.
• 1:07:47
  The racetrack was built.
• 1:07:49
  Hi, this one has some of the same problems.
• 1:07:51
  I don't know what this elevation above sea level here is.
• 1:07:54
  Pocono is up about 2, 000, 2, 100 feet.
• 1:07:57
  I happen to know there's a little hill on the back.
• 1:07:59
  That's the highest point in Eastern Pennsylvania.
• 1:08:01
  And we hams used to use that for a radio contest, but that's another old story.
• 1:08:05
  The problem with that is if the tracks at 2, 150.
• 1:08:09
  And the cloud ceiling is at 2100.
• 1:08:12
  You ain't gonna run no race, cause you can't see from here to the next guy.
• 1:08:15
  We had a national race.
• 1:08:17
  Bob Tullius and somebody else, don't think it was Paul Newman, but
• 1:08:21
  it might have been, were running for the national championship.
• 1:08:25
  That race was gonna decide it.
• 1:08:27
  And that damn cloud bank rolled in.
• 1:08:29
  Got a call from one of the stations.
• 1:08:31
  I've lost station so and so, but I can see so and so.
• 1:08:34
  Okay, I can keep going.
• 1:08:36
  I've lost station so and so, but I can, I can see so and so.
• 1:08:41
  Okay, How many laps we got to go?
• 1:08:44
  And I ran it the last lap when one station could not see another station.
• 1:08:48
  After that was over, I said, you know, that was nuts.
• 1:08:51
  I'm never gonna do that again.
• 1:08:52
  Which brings another story to mind.
• 1:08:54
  Tullius and Newman, who, I don't know if you guys know this,
• 1:08:58
  they were great friends, but terrible competitors on the track.
• 1:09:01
  And Paul was a very good driver.
• 1:09:03
  And both of them were malevolent in their thinking.
• 1:09:07
  We get to mid Ohio, and after the cars are paddocked on Friday, and get in on
• 1:09:12
  Saturday, and it was a National, alongside Tullius's car, spanking white, garbage
• 1:09:18
  truck, and a With black number 44s on both sides, printed back 44s backwards.
• 1:09:23
  Now, there's a story behind that.
• 1:09:25
  Why the backwards 44?
• 1:09:27
  Bob's first race at Marlborough, he had his girlfriend put the numbers on.
• 1:09:31
  She put them on wrong.
• 1:09:32
  She put them on backwards and he won the race.
• 1:09:35
  And so he said, that's my lucky number.
• 1:09:37
  And so his, if you remember, he always raced the 44 with the backwards numbers.
• 1:09:43
  Well, right after that was the runoffs down at Road Atlanta,
• 1:09:47
  which were a week long.
• 1:09:48
  Coming in, I expected something between them.
• 1:09:51
  And sure enough, here comes this Piper Cub or Arrow Oronco.
• 1:09:55
  One of, something of that size.
• 1:09:57
  Puttin across the sky with this great big flag in back of it.
• 1:10:00
  Bobby called Mommy.
• 1:10:02
  I didn't even have to ask what's that all about.
• 1:10:04
  What I wanted to find out is what was behind it.
• 1:10:07
  They had been talking and Tullius had made the mistake of saying it to Newman.
• 1:10:12
  That's not the kind of thing I would say to my mother.
• 1:10:15
  And so, that went on all week, and I don't remember what they were.
• 1:10:19
  I kept a record of them.
• 1:10:20
  And then, that racetrack, I drove home after the races were home.
• 1:10:25
  800 miles.
• 1:10:26
  I left the damned notebook with my briefcase at the racetrack, and I lost it.
• 1:10:31
  Of all the funny things, it would have made a wonderful
• 1:10:34
  article, magazine article.
• 1:10:35
  Nobody else, the press guys, weren't into most of it.
• 1:10:38
  Come Sunday morning, and the warm up.
• 1:10:40
  I'm looking at it at race control, down into the paddock.
• 1:10:42
  Here comes Georgia Highway Patrol with the light going, you know, the
• 1:10:45
  Tijuana taxi bit to Newman's car.
• 1:10:49
  And two burly cops get out to his paddock area and put him in the back seat.
• 1:10:54
  And I thought, whoa.
• 1:10:56
  Paul Newman, famous actor, the American icon.
• 1:11:00
  And he's being arrested at a racetrack that I'm chief steward at?
• 1:11:04
  What the devil has that about?
• 1:11:06
  And then about five minutes later, he comes back in police car and the
• 1:11:09
  door opens up and Newman gets out and he's shaking hands with the cops.
• 1:11:14
  And I thought, now, there is a real story.
• 1:11:17
  And so I find out later on, this is the end of it, that they'd been put up to it.
• 1:11:23
  And the charge that they charged him with that allowed them to effect an
• 1:11:27
  arrest was that he had unpaid debts.
• 1:11:30
  He owed Tullius 50 bucks on a debt from a bar someplace.
• 1:11:35
  Well standin up there with us.
• 1:11:37
  Was the captain of the blimp, the Goodyear blimp.
• 1:11:40
  And this is the beginning on Sunday and he's not aloft yet.
• 1:11:44
  I'm thinking one of those two clowns is going to get in touch with him.
• 1:11:48
  And I don't know which one, but I'm sure they're going to do something.
• 1:11:51
  So I turned to him and I, and I didn't know him from Adam, but I know who he was.
• 1:11:55
  I said, are you in on this?
• 1:11:57
  So either one of them, and you know, that kind of discussion.
• 1:11:59
  And he looked at me real serious.
• 1:12:00
  He says, do you know?
• 1:12:02
  What the market is for an unemployed limb captain.
• 1:12:09
  Anyway, that would have made a great story.
• 1:12:11
  One of my philosophies, if I was chairman and probably if I was a chair, one of the
• 1:12:17
  stewards was really never to question.
• 1:12:20
  A chief steward's judgment on those kinds of matters in which
• 1:12:25
  he had zero time to make a call.
• 1:12:28
  Should I put out an all course yellow or a yellow?
• 1:12:30
  For a couple reasons.
• 1:12:32
  First of all, you don't know what information he was acting upon.
• 1:12:36
  And secondly, you weren't sitting in the chair at the time.
• 1:12:39
  Carr very wisely put in their rule book, many of the decisions of the chief steward
• 1:12:44
  or race director are non protestable.
• 1:12:46
  It's like, first base, or the umpire, behind the plate, he may be bow
• 1:12:51
  legged and blind, but whatever he calls, that's the way Charlie it is.
• 1:12:56
  Live with it.
• 1:12:57
  SCCA rightly so, however, in club racing, does not say that.
• 1:13:02
  And the reason is, they recognize that sometimes, they have circumstances, Where
• 1:13:07
  the Chief Steward shouldn't have done what he did, either because poor judgment on
• 1:13:12
  his part, which can occasionally happen, or he had bad information that he should
• 1:13:17
  have had, meaning that it was available to him, but he didn't take it, kind of thing.
• 1:13:20
  So, SECA, and it's writing the club rules, said, no, no, no.
• 1:13:25
  The Chief Steward has no authority that's non protestable.
• 1:13:28
  And he can't declare himself non protestable, too.
• 1:13:31
  They thought of that.
• 1:13:32
  The philosophy there, again, is different in operating one and operating the other.
• 1:13:37
  Let me tell you a tough one, Vancouver, which by the way was a site of a
• 1:13:42
  track performance kind of change.
• 1:13:45
  After Vancouver cart race a number of years ago, cart ruled that no
• 1:13:50
  flag station personnel are allowed on the racetrack at any time the
• 1:13:54
  cars are on the course, period.
• 1:13:56
  The only personnel allowed on a racetrack where cars are on the
• 1:13:59
  track are the cart safety people.
• 1:14:01
  The reason for that was a very good one.
• 1:14:03
  Two guys went out to help move a car and they got hit by another
• 1:14:08
  race car and they didn't make it.
• 1:14:10
  And I can tell you, you don't want to be the chief steward to have that happen.
• 1:14:13
  I had one fatality as a chief steward.
• 1:14:16
  It happened very early in my career.
• 1:14:18
  It happened in the Vineland Speedway.
• 1:14:20
  It was a minor club race.
• 1:14:22
  It wasn't anything.
• 1:14:23
  It was just guys out having fun, almost next to track days where you
• 1:14:27
  can almost run what you're running.
• 1:14:29
  Off the street, Barry Fearon, I'll never forget his name
• 1:14:32
  though, I get put in a grave.
• 1:14:33
  Was running, he was running last, plopping around at the back of the field.
• 1:14:38
  Couldn't have been having too much fun.
• 1:14:39
  Something happened, I don't know what.
• 1:14:41
  He turned turtle.
• 1:14:42
  We had a roll bar and he had helmets in those days.
• 1:14:44
  I go back to before roll bars.
• 1:14:46
  I've witnessed races when we didn't have helmets, when we didn't have safety belts.
• 1:14:50
  When you race with a cloth cap on your head, crazy.
• 1:14:53
  Barry died of a depressed skull fracture because he borrowed that
• 1:14:57
  damn helmet from somebody else and it was four sizes too big.
• 1:15:00
  Bunch of bad stories there, isn't there?
• 1:15:03
  My story is I don't let guys plop around.
• 1:15:06
  If they're markedly off race speed, they come in.
• 1:15:09
  If it's pro race, I call the team.
• 1:15:12
  I say, Hey, you got to do something.
• 1:15:14
  You need to bring them in and fix them or you bring them in and park them.
• 1:15:16
  But he ain't running that way.
• 1:15:18
  He's not going to win any money.
• 1:15:19
  He's not going to please anybody.
• 1:15:21
  And he could kill somebody because something could happen.
• 1:15:23
  Somebody could run over him kind of thing.
• 1:15:25
  And club racing, you think about it and you think about it and you think
• 1:15:28
  about it, but I will black flag.
• 1:15:29
  I don't anymore.
• 1:15:31
  I would have black flag somebody because they're just not a good situation.
• 1:15:35
  And pro racing nowadays.
• 1:15:37
  They have communications between the chief steward and the team and the car.
• 1:15:42
  You can communicate in collaboration.
• 1:15:44
  You don't have that guys come up with a car going to run it this weekend.
• 1:15:47
  It's almost like in the days when you drove your.
• 1:15:50
  TC to the track and took the windshield off and then that kind
• 1:15:53
  of thing, took the back seat out.
• 1:15:54
  And so the communications gap between the chief steward and the driver is huge.
• 1:15:59
  While he's on the track, the only way he communicated through the flag stations.
• 1:16:04
  And you think about that, there's a hell of a difference.
• 1:16:07
  Between Chief Steward and being able to tell the crew chief, Hey, your guy, we
• 1:16:10
  think he's leaking oil, you bring him in.
• 1:16:13
  Or he's dragging something.
• 1:16:14
  Or you can even, in some cases, talk directly to the driver.
• 1:16:17
  I can tell you flat off, Club Racing Steward is a hell of a
• 1:16:21
  sight harder to do than Pro Racing.
• 1:16:23
  Pro Racing is a snap by comparison.
• 1:16:26
  And besides what you know everybody in Pro Racing, or most everybody, in Club Racing,
• 1:16:30
  you don't know who you're dealing with.
• 1:16:31
  And what would the appropriate response would be?
• 1:16:34
  The only time in my life I've been bounced from a racetrack, Jackie
• 1:16:37
  Stewart, that Jackie Stewart.
• 1:16:40
  Can Am original Can Am in which you could run, almost run what you brung
• 1:16:46
  kind of thing, Tony Dean from England won the only time a small ball car won
• 1:16:52
  a Can Am race was in the pouring rain.
• 1:16:54
  And I believe it was Atlanta that he won.
• 1:16:56
  He won it in a 908 Porsche.
• 1:16:58
  That's a flat eight version of the 906.
• 1:17:01
  Was originally designed as a hill climb car and he won it.
• 1:17:04
  The next race was mid Ohio.
• 1:17:06
  In those days, the pit straight went underneath the bridge, made a left
• 1:17:10
  hand turn on the 90 turn and on the outside of that turn, I can tell you
• 1:17:14
  how far, four feet off the pavement.
• 1:17:16
  With a bunch of oak trees, Tony Dean on the Thursday driver's practice day, hit
• 1:17:20
  those oak trees with his 908 Porsche.
• 1:17:22
  God love us, he hit it, back of him, tore the car in half, and he walked away.
• 1:17:28
  Well, Stewart was driving for Haas at that time, and he was driving a Lola
• 1:17:33
  T260, which I'm told was one of, Bromley's not top of the drawer board designs.
• 1:17:39
  And I'm also told that he was being paid 25, 000 to appear.
• 1:17:44
  The implication being that he would drive it.
• 1:17:46
  Stewart got word of the accident, saw the trees, and immediately
• 1:17:51
  had a press conference before Friday, before I even got there,
• 1:17:55
  on how dangerous the racetrack was.
• 1:17:56
  Well, Wally Reece, that same Wally Reece I talked about earlier, was Exec.
• 1:18:00
  Steward, SENDIV, the Central Division, at the time.
• 1:18:03
  And in those days, the Exec.
• 1:18:05
  Steward and the Division did track inspections.
• 1:18:08
  I did the track inspection the year that the Blue Tunnel was created.
• 1:18:12
  That's a story I'm not going to talk about.
• 1:18:14
  Anyway, Wally had approved the racetrack.
• 1:18:16
  And it was a piece of paper that stood in race control that said he
• 1:18:19
  had approved the racetrack for racing.
• 1:18:21
  And so I said that to Stuart when I found out he had.
• 1:18:24
  The owner of the track was a hard headed Dutchman like me, by the first name Les.
• 1:18:29
  I said, you know, you're killing the spectators by putting that
• 1:18:32
  kind of thing in the public press.
• 1:18:34
  Which it was.
• 1:18:34
  That the track is dangerous.
• 1:18:36
  It's dangerous.
• 1:18:36
  There's some that'll show up and a lot won't.
• 1:18:38
  And he said, well, it's, I said, I don't think it is, but I'll talk to Les.
• 1:18:44
  So I went to Les and I talked to him and Les, I said he was hardheaded,
• 1:18:48
  said, I have an approved racetrack.
• 1:18:50
  You have no authority to tell me to do anything.
• 1:18:54
  I said, no, I don't.
• 1:18:55
  I said, I do have authority though to talk common sense, and I do
• 1:18:59
  have authority to talk money.
• 1:19:00
  I said, you know, you could buy.
• 1:19:02
  For 5 a bale, hay bales, because I buy them for that
• 1:19:06
  money, for my daughter's horse.
• 1:19:07
  And you could put those hay bales in front of those trees, and you
• 1:19:10
  still wouldn't put them on the track, but you would have done something
• 1:19:13
  to alleviate a now known problem.
• 1:19:16
  We talked a little bit.
• 1:19:17
  He didn't budge that far.
• 1:19:20
  Oh, and then Stuart had another press conference after I left.
• 1:19:22
  So I went home that night.
• 1:19:24
  I came in on the next morning, not knowing what the heck I was going to do.
• 1:19:29
  Lo and behold, those trees had been leveled off with the ground.
• 1:19:33
  You would never know the trees had been there.
• 1:19:35
  They'd been cut off the night that I was gone.
• 1:19:37
  And boy, that was a whew!
• 1:19:39
  For me.
• 1:19:39
  And so I held a press conference and I said, what have you done?
• 1:19:43
  Jackie had to have another, we wound up each old and free.
• 1:19:46
  I don't remember all the circumstances.
• 1:19:48
  That was one of the few press conferences in racing that I ever had.
• 1:19:52
  That's where I got to meet Jackie Stewart in person because I went to him after
• 1:19:56
  each, the first, the second and third of his, and to learn to call him Jackie.
• 1:19:59
  At that point, he was not sir.
• 1:20:01
  At that point, he's a nice guy.
• 1:20:03
  He's a great guy.
• 1:20:04
  He really was on the right kick racing in those days.
• 1:20:08
  Dangerous as hell and it need not have been we did all kinds of stupid stuff when
• 1:20:13
  you look back at it It was a book written by the sports editor of the New York
• 1:20:17
  Times Caught the cruel sport and it talked about racing and how dangerous it was and
• 1:20:22
  how needless it was I can remember when after the Indy race was over and the first
• 1:20:27
  three cars the first three finishes You might not see one of them two years later
• 1:20:32
  I mean now that's stupid when you think of it, but that's the way it was And by
• 1:20:36
  the way, on Monday after the race, Bertie Martin, my boss, President of Pro Racing
• 1:20:40
  by that time, called me up and said, You're not allowed in mid Ohio anymore.
• 1:20:44
  Won't let you come in the racetrack.
• 1:20:46
  I said, Well, that's one less race.
• 1:20:48
  Anyway, then the track sold to, uh, Jim Truman.
• 1:20:52
  A total gentleman.
• 1:20:53
  Great businessman.
• 1:20:54
  Great guy.
• 1:20:55
  Drove two liter car.
• 1:20:56
  Drove him very, very well.
• 1:20:57
  I got to know him because he raced in the two liter class in the, in the Can Am.
• 1:21:01
  There were certain people that ran racetracks that I would work my
• 1:21:05
  damns not to have to deal with.
• 1:21:06
  And there were certain racetrack people that I would make it a point to go
• 1:21:09
  to see first when I got in the area because they were fun to work with.
• 1:21:13
  Mal Currie here was one of them.
• 1:21:15
  And Les Richter was the other one.
• 1:21:17
  Les ran Riverside as general manager.
• 1:21:19
  And then he became, I think, director of racing for NASCAR.
• 1:21:23
  But before that, he was a football player.
• 1:21:25
  And when you shook hands with Les Richter, you knew you'd shook hands.
• 1:21:28
  His hand was the size of my foot.
• 1:21:30
  He was the only football player in National Football League
• 1:21:34
  history in which he alone was traded for a total nother team.
• 1:21:40
  Go look your history up and you'll find that's true.
• 1:21:42
  And yet he's not in the Hall of Fame.
• 1:21:45
  And he was like five times on the winning team?
• 1:21:48
  All time linebacker, I believe, or tackle or linebacker, one or the other.
• 1:21:53
  And that was politics, pure politics.
• 1:21:55
  And let me tell you, there's politics on halls of fame.
• 1:21:58
  And now I know I was on part of one for three years.
• 1:22:02
  Shouldn't be that way.
• 1:22:03
  But then I remember my favorite statement, get more than two people
• 1:22:06
  together and you got politics.
• 1:22:09
  I'll tell one more story.
• 1:22:10
  Phoenix racetrack, not the Grand Prix track, the oval with a kink in
• 1:22:14
  the back, like Trenton used to have.
• 1:22:16
  I'm running a 50 lap race.
• 1:22:19
  Rule book says, the race shall end when the checkered flag is flown.
• 1:22:24
  If the checkered flag is flown before the scheduled distance, it is still a race.
• 1:22:31
  If the checkered flag is flown after the scheduled distance, the
• 1:22:36
  race finish will be deemed as the order of finish on the scheduled
• 1:22:41
  distance, not the checkered flag.
• 1:22:44
  That was the rule then.
• 1:22:46
  50 lap race.
• 1:22:47
  I'm Chief Steward.
• 1:22:48
  I'm listing.
• 1:22:49
  I always let the starter and the chief of timing and scoring talk because one or the
• 1:22:54
  other of them Better be in agreement with the other one and I'm hearing 40 laps.
• 1:23:00
  No, it's 39 41 laps.
• 1:23:03
  No, it's 30.
• 1:23:04
  It's 40 Don't you guys do this to me.
• 1:23:08
  And so we ran a 51 lap race.
• 1:23:12
  And of course, the lead changed in that last lap.
• 1:23:17
  The 51st lap.
• 1:23:18
  And I had to tell the guy that was the winner at the 51st lap, No, you're second.
• 1:23:24
  You were second when you crossed the start finish line on the 50th lap.
• 1:23:28
  Two more things.
• 1:23:31
  You go to racetracks and you hear so many miles per hour, so many miles per hour.
• 1:23:36
  That's nonsense.
• 1:23:37
  Pay attention to time.
• 1:23:39
  Time is the whole game.
• 1:23:42
  Even the 500 race.
• 1:23:44
  When you're sitting in the pit, I've never worked a race of 500.
• 1:23:48
  I've never been to the 500, but I can tell you I've worked a lot of old
• 1:23:51
  races and it's always the same thing.
• 1:23:54
  They don't measure your speed.
• 1:23:56
  They measure your time.
• 1:23:58
  And then, the press goes to work and announces what the speed was.
• 1:24:02
  That's a press thing.
• 1:24:03
  And you think, well why is he telling me all this?
• 1:24:05
  Because when you watch a race, and you see a guy going into a corner, and they're
• 1:24:09
  about that far apart, and then they go down a straightaway, and they're that far
• 1:24:13
  apart, and you think, geez, he's got MB.
• 1:24:16
  No, he doesn't.
• 1:24:18
  It's the lap time, dummy.
• 1:24:21
  There were a 10th of a second apart here and there a 10th of a second
• 1:24:24
  apart over here, but a 10th of a second at 36 miles an hour, ain't very far.
• 1:24:29
  A 10th of a second at 140, you better believe it's pretty far.
• 1:24:33
  And, you know, it's that kind of thing.
• 1:24:35
  It's the timing, and where it's timed.
• 1:24:38
  Timing stand at Road America used to be at the bottom of the, straightaway
• 1:24:43
  leading past the pits at turn 13.
• 1:24:45
  Inside, almost a half a mile away from the finish line.
• 1:24:49
  I'd have teams come roaring up to me, My guy got so and so timed,
• 1:24:53
  your official time is all wrong.
• 1:24:55
  Where did you time him?
• 1:24:56
  Whoa, time not right here at the finish line.
• 1:24:58
  Go read your rule book, or your, uh, your supplementaries for this race.
• 1:25:02
  Why?
• 1:25:03
  Because that's a fit not, no it ain't.
• 1:25:05
  Go read it.
• 1:25:06
  Timing is done down at station 13.
• 1:25:09
  That's where the timing's done.
• 1:25:11
  And that's the timing we use to set the grid.
• 1:25:13
  You time them up here.
• 1:25:14
  That don't mean a thing.
• 1:25:16
  Their time's different.
• 1:25:17
  The timing is different because the guy doesn't drive the whole racetrack
• 1:25:20
  the same speed for different people.
• 1:25:23
  So, it's time.
• 1:25:25
  Let me tell you something.
• 1:25:26
  There's two things that I learned at my age.
• 1:25:28
  And that is, take care of your legs.
• 1:25:30
  When I was a kid, the athletes always said, take care of your
• 1:25:32
  legs, take care of your legs.
• 1:25:34
  And I, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:35
  Take care of your legs, believe me.
• 1:25:37
  For me, it's the first thing to go and it's the last thing you want to go.
• 1:25:41
  Because without them, you ain't going to get very far.
• 1:25:44
  And the second thing is take care of your eyes.
• 1:25:46
  I have macular degeneration and I can't read a newspaper.
• 1:25:49
  I can't read a car number.
• 1:25:50
  So that's why I am a steward.
• 1:25:52
  Well, I think I bored you guys long enough.
• 1:26:06
  I got another one for you.
• 1:26:09
  Last weekend, I was invited to go down to the driver's meeting at the Trans
• 1:26:13
  Am at New Jersey motor sports park.
• 1:26:14
  And by the way, if you've never been there and JMP should go, there's
• 1:26:18
  two racetracks at that one location.
• 1:26:19
  Both of them are great racetracks.
• 1:26:21
  Anyway, I got invited down by Terry Dale.
• 1:26:24
  The Operating Chief, Wally Dollenbach Jr.
• 1:26:27
  is the Chief Steward for the Trans Am.
• 1:26:29
  And I come down and be at their drivers meeting.
• 1:26:31
  And be their race marshal.
• 1:26:34
  I asked, driver meeting, okay, I'll come in and say hello,
• 1:26:36
  you know, that kind of thing.
• 1:26:37
  And, a race marshal?
• 1:26:39
  I've never been a race marshal.
• 1:26:40
  What's he have to do?
• 1:26:41
  Nothing.
• 1:26:42
  I'm qualified.
• 1:26:44
  I went to the drivers meeting and as I was walking over to
• 1:26:46
  the microphone, they applauded.
• 1:26:49
  And I said, boy, that's a first.
• 1:26:51
  I never got applauded at a driver's meeting in my life.
• 1:26:55
  Anyway, thank you very much.
• 1:26:57
  I appreciate the opportunity to share some fun I've had.
• 1:27:00
  Racing is people.
• 1:27:02
  And boy, that is a truth.
• 1:27:03
  I have friends today that I don't think I saw at a racetrack 30 years
• 1:27:07
  ago that I'm still in touch with.
• 1:27:09
  End of preaching.
• 1:27:15
  This episode is brought to you in part by the International
• 1:27:17
  Motor Racing Research Center.
• 1:27:19
  Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history
• 1:27:22
  of motorsports, spanning continents, eras, and race series.
• 1:27:25
  The center's collection embodies the speed, drama, and camaraderie
• 1:27:29
  of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world.
• 1:27:32
  The Center welcomes serious researchers and casual fans alike to share stories of
• 1:27:36
  race drivers, race series, and race cars captured on their shelves and walls and
• 1:27:41
  brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events.
• 1:27:45
  To learn more about the Center, visit www.
• 1:27:48
  racingarchives.
• 1:27:49
  org.
• 1:27:50
  This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive Historians.
• 1:27:54
  They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history.
• 1:27:57
  The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers.
• 1:28:02
  organizational records, print ephemera, and images to safeguard,
• 1:28:05
  as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of motorized,
• 1:28:08
  wheeled land transportation through the modern age and into the future.
• 1:28:12
  For more information about the SAH, visit www.
• 1:28:16
  autohistory.
• 1:28:17
  org
• 1:28:22
  We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Brake Fix Podcast brought
• 1:28:26
  to you by Grand Touring Motorsports.
• 1:28:28
  If you'd like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure
• 1:28:31
  to follow us on all social media platforms at GrandTouringMotorsports.
• 1:28:35
  And if you'd like to learn more about the content of this episode,
• 1:28:39
  be sure to check out the follow on article at GTMotorsports.
• 1:28:42
  org.
• 1:28:44
  We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through
• 1:28:48
  our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans,
• 1:28:51
  families, and friends through Patreon.
• 1:28:54
  For as little as 2.
• 1:28:56
  50 a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional Pit
• 1:29:00
  Stop minisodes, and other VIP goodies.
• 1:29:03
  As well as keeping our team of creators fed on their strict diet of fig
• 1:29:08
  Newtons, gumby bears, and monster.
• 1:29:10
  So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.
• 1:29:14
  patreon.
• 1:29:14
  com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without you, none
• 1:29:19
  of this would be possible.