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The Racers Roundtable: Slammin' Sammy Swindell! · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Welcome to The Racers Roundtable, a podcast sponsored by the Eastern Museum
• 0:04
  of Motor Racing where history meets horsepower and legends live on each
• 0:09
  episode brings together voices from across the motor sports world, from grassroots
• 0:13
  heroes to seasoned veterans as they share stories, insights, and behind the scenes
• 0:18
  tales that shaped their racing journeys.
• 0:21
  Whether you're a diehard fan of dirt tracks, drag strips, or open wheel icons.
• 0:26
  The racers round table is your seat at the table for candid conversations and
• 0:29
  timeless memories from those who lived it strap in tight because it's time to
• 0:34
  talk racing history one lap at a time.
• 0:42
  Now, uh, we've got Sammy Swindell and, and Sammy is a guy that
• 0:46
  was at the top of the wishlist.
• 0:47
  And I'd like to thank Justin sites.
• 0:49
  Justin sites, he and I are friends on Facebook.
• 0:51
  Of course, even in the racing community, you, you have a lot of folks that you know
• 0:54
  through Facebook, through social media.
• 0:56
  And Justin had gotten in touch with me and said, Hey, I've got a car of Sammy's.
• 1:00
  Said I'm restoring.
• 1:01
  And I'm actually going down to see him in a couple weeks.
• 1:03
  And if he was agreeable to a round table at the Eastern Museum of Motor
• 1:06
  Racing, would that be something you'd be willing to entertain?
• 1:09
  I said, well, you know, it's, it's interesting because Alice and I
• 1:11
  had been talking and she said, put together a wishlist, and Sammy
• 1:14
  was at the top of that wishlist.
• 1:16
  So the timing was perfect, and we certainly appreciate your
• 1:19
  commitment to the calls, brother.
• 1:21
  Yeah, thank you.
• 1:26
  And for those of you who didn't hear already, uh, most of you have, but
• 1:29
  for anyone who ever questioned Sammy's character, he spent the better part
• 1:34
  of eight hours at the uh, airport.
• 1:35
  Yesterday, all flights were canceled Somewhere around midnight,
• 1:38
  he made new flight arrangements.
• 1:40
  He has been up since two 30 this morning.
• 1:42
  He flew to Charlotte, from Charlotte to Philadelphia, and then he just drove from
• 1:47
  Philadelphia here to the museum with Alan Kreitzer, which I might add is comparable
• 1:52
  to running Syracuse with no roll cage.
• 1:57
  So Sammy, thank you.
• 1:58
  Thank you so much, brother.
• 1:59
  We appreciate you.
• 2:00
  You're welcome.
• 2:05
  So for those of you that have attended the round tables here at the Eastern
• 2:08
  Museum of Motor Racing, at least the ones that I've been involved with and they've
• 2:11
  been so much fun, we like to work through things frequently, chronologically,
• 2:15
  and we're gonna do some of that today.
• 2:16
  In the first part here, we're gonna cover some sprint car stuff, and
• 2:20
  then in the second part of the round table, we're gonna talk about Sammy's
• 2:23
  pursuits and other racing venues.
• 2:25
  You're gonna be impressed, even hardcore fans are gonna go away
• 2:28
  with a greater appreciation.
• 2:30
  For those of you that know Sammy as a sprint car driver who's come through
• 2:33
  Central Pennsylvania, when you leave today, I think you'll have just a
• 2:36
  tremendous amount of respect for the man.
• 2:38
  Well, you're all familiar with the stats, the three titles, the 394 Feature wins
• 2:42
  with the World of Outlaws, his five Chili Bowl titles, and the countless
• 2:45
  wins at the highest profile, most lucrative events in the sprint car world.
• 2:49
  Flatly stated, he's done it all, but what I'm hoping you'll take from today's
• 2:53
  discussion is a greater appreciation for his accomplishments away from the dirt
• 2:57
  track arena and how his technical prowess has impacted the motorsports landscape.
• 3:01
  His book released in the spring of 2023 chronicles his ambitious and innovative
• 3:07
  journey through the world of motorsports.
• 3:08
  It is simply titled and appropriately so.
• 3:11
  Sammy, 50 plus years of Winning.
• 3:13
  Please welcome back to the Eastern Museum of Motor Racing 2006
• 3:17
  National Sprint Car Hall of Famer.
• 3:18
  One more time.
• 3:19
  How about it for Sammy Swindell?
• 3:26
  You know, we talked earlier about, uh, everything that's been happening
• 3:29
  here at the Eastern Museum of Motor Racing and how it's grown over the
• 3:32
  last 50 years since the Williams Grove Alzheimer's was um, established.
• 3:36
  We've got some great pieces here.
• 3:37
  Speaking of great pieces, if you're looking for some of Sammy's
• 3:40
  cars, I think they're pretty well displayed out at the, uh, museum of
• 3:43
  America's speed in Lincoln, Nebraska.
• 3:45
  They still have that going on with them.
• 3:47
  Yeah, yeah.
• 3:47
  There's still a few cars out there.
• 3:49
  Yeah.
• 3:49
  Sometimes they move them to different places, but I think
• 3:52
  there's three or four there.
• 3:53
  Yeah.
• 3:53
  Um, we're hoping to get some more out soon.
• 3:56
  Good.
• 3:57
  Some of.
• 3:58
  Go in and out of there.
• 3:59
  Yeah.
• 3:59
  Well, Sammy, let's, uh, let's take a walk back in time.
• 4:02
  Talk about your early years, man.
• 4:04
  You've been at this so long now.
• 4:06
  Your dad was the guy that was involved in racing down in the Memphis area?
• 4:09
  Well, he started racing the same year I was born was at the racetrack,
• 4:13
  like a few days after that.
• 4:15
  He had done real well there.
• 4:16
  Mm-hmm.
• 4:17
  Once a lot of the championships right around there.
• 4:20
  Mostly in the, the sprint cars were the A class and the modifieds were the B and
• 4:24
  the late miles for a C called the C car.
• 4:26
  So he ran, the ones he built were B cars that he ran most of the time,
• 4:30
  but he ran all three of them at one point there for quite a few years.
• 4:35
  He ran the Memphis Race Car Club, was the president there.
• 4:38
  So.
• 4:38
  Got to go to the racetrack and we'd go to the meetings and all the different things.
• 4:42
  So I got to see a lot about how everything works from him building
• 4:46
  the cars and building motors and stuff and through every part of it.
• 4:50
  And you know, and I was always interested in everything.
• 4:53
  You self described tinkerer, is that right?
• 4:55
  Yeah, and sometimes I too much, I spend too much time on details,
• 5:00
  but I like it to be right.
• 5:02
  So.
• 5:02
  By the time I was 15, you know, they, they had a little practice earlier and the year
• 5:08
  the track was open up in Milan, Tennessee, and we went up there and ran and, and
• 5:12
  everybody thought it did pretty good.
• 5:14
  He was building another car, didn't get it finished till like the first part of July.
• 5:18
  Okay.
• 5:18
  So that's when I started in 71.
• 5:21
  We went to Milan but he'd crashed the car and we got there late
• 5:24
  'cause we were working on his car.
• 5:26
  I got in and expected it to be kinda like it was and it, and it wasn't.
• 5:30
  Yeah.
• 5:30
  And um, we found out the steering had a tooth broke in it, but mm-hmm.
• 5:34
  You know, we got there a little late, but they pushed us out and we both got
• 5:37
  to make some laps to qualify so, or time.
• 5:39
  So it kind of hit the fence over here and was over there and Yeah.
• 5:43
  It's like something's not right.
• 5:45
  Something's not quite right.
• 5:46
  Yeah.
• 5:46
  So, so I didn't get to run the very first night I run second
• 5:50
  night out things went much better.
• 5:51
  Right.
• 5:51
  Yeah.
• 5:52
  The second night, 'cause it was fourth July weekend, they ran
• 5:54
  Friday and Saturday at West Memphis.
• 5:56
  Friday night he ran third, not run fifth.
• 5:59
  Hmm.
• 6:00
  The next night I won.
• 6:03
  Simple as that.
• 6:05
  Yeah.
• 6:05
  Get in the car and win.
• 6:06
  Yeah.
• 6:07
  You were sort of prepping for this though, for years.
• 6:09
  I mean, from an early age you were a sponge, you were absorbing this stuff.
• 6:13
  Yeah.
• 6:13
  And before you even got in the car, if I remember correctly, you
• 6:16
  were pretty well responsible for good portion of the maintenance
• 6:19
  on your dad's car, weren't you?
• 6:20
  Yeah.
• 6:20
  Well, I was doing a lot of the things, you know, because he worked, he was a
• 6:24
  superintendent for commercial contractor.
• 6:27
  Okay.
• 6:27
  By the time I was 12, I was doing a lot of the maintenance on it, a lot of
• 6:31
  things, or I'd have things ready Yeah.
• 6:33
  That I couldn't do for him to do.
• 6:35
  When he got there, started learning about how everything kind of went together.
• 6:39
  You know, was able to build motors by the time I was probably 13.
• 6:43
  Wow.
• 6:44
  Learned a lot of stuff from my uncle about the carburetors, about how to set
• 6:47
  those up and different things, and was with my dad working on his and doing
• 6:51
  the setup stuff and tire stuff for that.
• 6:54
  But from the whole time since I've been around, I was always in the shop with him.
• 6:58
  Yeah.
• 6:59
  And that's, you know, probably four or five years old.
• 7:01
  So.
• 7:02
  He'd have me doing something that's certainly played to
• 7:04
  your favor over the years.
• 7:06
  1973. Then you graduated from high school and drive a sprint car for the first time.
• 7:11
  Yeah, we started running, well, I was running both the classes there.
• 7:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:14
  But we could run the B cars down at Greenville, Mississippi on Friday nights.
• 7:18
  Okay.
• 7:19
  It was like the next week.
• 7:20
  The second weekend I drove, uh, we went down and I won there and I won
• 7:24
  like every race down there that year.
• 7:26
  I don't know, it was just something that fell into my car thing.
• 7:29
  We were just, it was easy down there.
• 7:31
  But I mean, at, at at West Memphis, they, they started all the cars and
• 7:35
  a lot of times they'd have 40 cars.
• 7:37
  Oh wow.
• 7:38
  I remember starting on the front, taking off and I'd go down the back
• 7:42
  stretch and West Memphis isn't really big, but when you got 40 cars, there's
• 7:46
  guys that still hadn't took off yet.
• 7:48
  Yeah.
• 7:48
  That could be probably that.
• 7:49
  So by the time I made a lap, we were in traffic.
• 7:51
  Yeah.
• 7:51
  So, um.
• 7:52
  It was a good place to learn.
• 7:54
  It was a sticky track pretty fast there with some banks, so it, it taught
• 7:58
  me a lot about going to other places and, and, but I started driving the
• 8:02
  sprint car and it was a bit different.
• 8:05
  Won a few races, but we were always up near the front all the time.
• 8:09
  But they had a lot of really good guys there at that point.
• 8:12
  And some of the cars were better than one I had, but worked
• 8:15
  hard at it and got better.
• 8:17
  I think one of the common themes in your life story has been travel.
• 8:21
  You've been traveling.
• 8:21
  When you, when you started running, uh, I guess it was Bobby Sparks
• 8:25
  the first owner in the spring car.
• 8:26
  Yeah, yeah.
• 8:26
  We started in, that's who ran four in 73.
• 8:29
  Yep.
• 8:29
  In 74 we'd start going on Sundays.
• 8:32
  They ran up at Hobs spot.
• 8:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 8:34
  Which is about 300 miles north of us.
• 8:36
  And uh, we'd go up there.
• 8:38
  It didn't take long.
• 8:39
  We won some races there And you guys were going to Devil's Bowl in Florida?
• 8:43
  Yeah, a lot of times we, in 74 we'd go to Devil's Bowl 'cause
• 8:46
  they ran on Friday nights.
• 8:48
  Go to West Memphis on Saturday and go to HubSpot on Sunday.
• 8:51
  So that's a few miles.
• 8:52
  Yeah, it is because I'm about 450 miles from.
• 8:56
  That was bowl.
• 8:57
  Wow.
• 8:57
  300 up there.
• 8:58
  So it, you're doing 6 1 1600 miles there in the weekend.
• 9:01
  Yeah.
• 9:02
  Well, when you're 17, it's okay, but things got busy, uh, at West
• 9:07
  Memphis because as you mentioned, you're driving in a couple divisions
• 9:11
  and at some stages of your career.
• 9:13
  Early on, I believe you were running three divisions.
• 9:16
  Yeah, it was just like in probably 70, maybe the last part of 73 or 74, I
• 9:21
  was running the stock car late model.
• 9:23
  There was quite a few times.
• 9:24
  I won all three.
• 9:25
  All three in the same night.
• 9:27
  Yep.
• 9:27
  So I was running a lot of laps and had to have two helmets for that.
• 9:31
  Though we didn't have tear offs so much like we did then, but
• 9:34
  we had like two visors or pull one off and different times.
• 9:38
  Yeah.
• 9:38
  A lot of times you're ducking.
• 9:39
  It was pretty muddy down there.
• 9:40
  Sometimes here in this area, we're pretty Pennsylvania centric.
• 9:44
  There's a lot of talent, a lot happening down in that Memphis area.
• 9:48
  Tell us about some of the folks you were racing against or maybe even some
• 9:50
  of the folks that you mentored with.
• 9:52
  They you looked up to.
• 9:53
  You know, when we first started traveling some there in 74, you
• 9:56
  know, Bubby Jones would come down.
• 9:58
  He drove for M Ma Brown and my dad used to race against him.
• 10:02
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:02
  Because, uh, he had a big car up there that they ran at Milam.
• 10:06
  Okay.
• 10:06
  They never really came down with that in Ma didn't, but then we had sprint cars.
• 10:10
  He would come down, you know, they were sponsored most of
• 10:13
  the time by Bruce Gel Ford.
• 10:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:15
  So, um, Mr. Gel come up from Alabama, got a relationship going
• 10:20
  there because he would come.
• 10:21
  That was when he was winning a lot of races with that car.
• 10:23
  But yeah, I was making it hard on him to win there at West Memphis.
• 10:26
  So, yeah, we had some pretty good races.
• 10:28
  He, he beat me some, but I think I beat him more.
• 10:31
  You know, that got me in a relationship to a ride down the road later on,
• 10:36
  and that was a, that was a big ride.
• 10:38
  I love a good quote, Sammy and I, and I'm gonna share one here with you.
• 10:41
  I think this is approach you've always taken, but probably it was more
• 10:44
  prevalent in your formidable years.
• 10:47
  You said people would ask, what's the best way for a young racer
• 10:50
  to get going in this sport?
• 10:51
  And your response, hang out with the best people.
• 10:54
  Go find the winners because you'll learn more.
• 10:56
  What are you gonna learn from the guys who run in the back if they
• 10:59
  knew enough to teach you anything?
• 11:01
  They wouldn't be back there in the first place.
• 11:03
  Yeah, it's just true.
• 11:08
  And, and that's why you sought out guys like Yeah, like Bubby and, and
• 11:11
  Hooker Hood was another guy down there.
• 11:13
  It was hot.
• 11:13
  Yeah.
• 11:13
  Well, Rick Kel would come down there, off and on.
• 11:16
  It was a lot of people that came down there because Birchville
• 11:19
  was pretty good for that time.
• 11:20
  You know, I think they were paying a thousand dollars to win, which
• 11:23
  most places might only been.
• 11:25
  Three or 500.
• 11:26
  It doesn't take long, you know, it's like you don't want to ask the guy
• 11:29
  that's running last how to go faster when you're already ahead of him.
• 11:33
  There you go.
• 11:35
  It's logical.
• 11:35
  Some people don't get my dry sense of humor sometimes, you know, and I'm kind
• 11:40
  of to the point, but I'm consistent.
• 11:42
  There you go.
• 11:44
  Looking at some of your stats in early on, one of the stats that really impressed
• 11:47
  me was by 1975, and here you're still very early in your career at that point.
• 11:52
  In 1975, you had 22 sprint car victories in five states and
• 11:58
  you were running Bob Guine.
• 11:59
  Gillett.
• 12:00
  Okay, thank you.
• 12:01
  One of those victories took place that in a little bull ring out in Stewart, Iowa.
• 12:04
  Yeah, you'd be the guy that was a pretty big name at the time.
• 12:07
  Yeah, I wasn't supposed to do that.
• 12:09
  We'd come up to Knoxville before with Bobby Sparks.
• 12:12
  So Bob took a little time off from his construction company, went, did
• 12:15
  some races, and we went up there and that place wasn't a lot different
• 12:20
  from West Memphis, Stewart Sort.
• 12:22
  It was kind.
• 12:23
  Maybe the same size, maybe not banked quite as much.
• 12:26
  I know we didn't really start up near the front, but we wound up winning there.
• 12:30
  And uh, was that the one that beat Reer or Opperman?
• 12:33
  Opperman, yeah.
• 12:34
  Okay.
• 12:34
  Pretty big deal.
• 12:35
  Yeah.
• 12:35
  That was a Wingless show.
• 12:36
  Yeah.
• 12:36
  Yeah.
• 12:37
  We were Wingless there and you had The Wing with you.
• 12:39
  You never know which you would go back and forth all the time.
• 12:42
  Yeah.
• 12:42
  'cause we run wings.
• 12:44
  Well they run both at West Memphis and then we'd run Wing.
• 12:46
  A lot of times we'd have a wing and then go run Stot and they did run wings.
• 12:50
  Okay.
• 12:50
  Or he'd go someplace and run one night with a wing one night without.
• 12:54
  But yeah, that was special.
• 12:56
  You know, we didn't have all the stuff we have now, the social media stuff,
• 12:59
  but I still knew about this guy.
• 13:01
  I don't think it went over too well.
• 13:04
  You said we didn't have everything then that we have now social media, but that
• 13:07
  also includes the comforts of travel.
• 13:10
  I mean, at that point you're hauling from Memphis Stewart is 45 minutes to an
• 13:15
  hour west of Des Moines off of Route 80.
• 13:18
  And so that's a pretty good hike.
• 13:19
  And you're doing that stuffed in a pickup.
• 13:21
  Well then with Bob it would just be me and the other one.
• 13:23
  Okay.
• 13:23
  Just the two of you.
• 13:24
  Two of us really?
• 13:25
  Okay.
• 13:25
  Yeah.
• 13:26
  Yeah.
• 13:26
  But that's still a pretty good home.
• 13:27
  Yeah.
• 13:28
  So you're making a name for yourself early, you talked about a ride that's
• 13:31
  on the horizon, but in between there, there was another ride that you
• 13:34
  had from um, a Memphis based car, the Bobby Davis Electric number 71.
• 13:39
  Bobby had hired Bill Anderson.
• 13:42
  Some of y'all might know that.
• 13:43
  Been around for quite a bit.
• 13:44
  Okay.
• 13:45
  But you know, in the winter he would drive trucks for.
• 13:47
  Ma Brown and he worked on the race cars during the summer and he was, he was with
• 13:52
  Bobby anyway, he went to work for Bobby.
• 13:54
  It was Tommy Nolin that was driving the car at the time and I guess
• 13:58
  they kinda had a falling out.
• 13:59
  So, okay.
• 14:00
  Bill told me he sat down and he said, well if you wanna win the
• 14:02
  races, you need to call Sammy.
• 14:04
  He said, Bobby about spit out his coffee.
• 14:06
  You know, he was always wanting to beat me.
• 14:08
  Yeah, yeah.
• 14:09
  You know, but, and he had a B car before that so that Ricky Hood drove.
• 14:13
  So we had a lot of races together and we started that and it went pretty good.
• 14:20
  But to do a little more travel and a little more things
• 14:22
  that I haven't done yet.
• 14:23
  A lot more places that I haven't been to.
• 14:26
  And you guys ran Knoxville Nationals, I think you went to Skagit.
• 14:29
  Yeah.
• 14:29
  That was a little bit later I think Bill Anderson wound up going back
• 14:32
  and I had, I got Tommy Sanders that worked for Bobby Allen up here.
• 14:36
  I'm glad you brought that up.
• 14:37
  We got the, and he was the one that brought me up here the first time.
• 14:40
  We got to do a lot more race in a lot, a lot of places, and all the way out to the
• 14:45
  very northwest corner of Washington state.
• 14:48
  Yeah.
• 14:48
  Got to go up and down the road quite a bit.
• 14:50
  And that's quite an experience, uh, for a young man.
• 14:53
  And to be able to explore the country like that and race as often as you
• 14:56
  are, that led you to a crossroads.
• 14:58
  You decided to enroll in college.
• 15:00
  I mean, you're a college student and you're racing.
• 15:02
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:03
  And at some point you said, I need to make a decision.
• 15:06
  Yeah.
• 15:06
  If we go, we go back to 73 or so.
• 15:09
  I'm in high school, living at home, and I'm making thousand, over $1,500
• 15:17
  a week in high school in 1973.
• 15:19
  Cash.
• 15:22
  They didn't give you checks back then, right?
• 15:23
  Right.
• 15:24
  So anybody has an inflation calculator, plug that in.
• 15:27
  A thousand, $1,500 a week.
• 15:28
  I think most of us would take that in 1970 $3.
• 15:32
  Yeah, you're doing well.
• 15:33
  Yeah.
• 15:34
  There's a lot of people I had that I went to school with, they
• 15:36
  make, make 25 or $30 a week.
• 15:39
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:40
  But at the same time, uh, you know, when I go to West Memphis, it was $5 to
• 15:44
  get in and it cost me about $3 for gas.
• 15:47
  The B car stuff that went on a percentage of the gate, it
• 15:50
  would be from two 50 to $500.
• 15:53
  And I didn't have to split that with anybody.
• 15:55
  That always helps cost me seven or $8 to get in and race.
• 15:59
  Yeah.
• 15:59
  Your profit margin's pretty good at that point right after I got going, it's like,
• 16:03
  wh why do I want to do anything else?
• 16:06
  So tell the folks where you were attending college and what your interest,
• 16:09
  what your major was at that point.
• 16:10
  First of, I was going to, um, Memphis State then is what it was called, and
• 16:16
  I was doing mechanical engineering.
• 16:18
  They just wanted to make you do a lot of other things, English
• 16:21
  and other things there that, that I didn't have any interest in.
• 16:26
  And so I went there for.
• 16:28
  A year.
• 16:29
  Then I went over to the state technical college.
• 16:31
  You know, when I did the mechanical engineering, we were drawing gears or
• 16:35
  doing things, you know, just pieces and didn't make a lot of sense to me.
• 16:39
  But, and my granddad built some houses and stuff, so, um, I, when
• 16:44
  I moved over to State Tech, I just went into architectural engineering.
• 16:48
  Okay.
• 16:49
  You can build something there, design something, then you can see it, you know,
• 16:52
  when you're designing gears or something.
• 16:55
  Some people doesn't know, won't ever see that.
• 16:57
  Right.
• 16:57
  I gotcha.
• 16:58
  So you made the decision that college is not gonna be the course you're gonna take.
• 17:02
  Racing looks pretty good.
• 17:03
  Yeah.
• 17:03
  Well, I did try talk to all of my teachers and stuff there and like still want to
• 17:08
  do this, but I'm doing this and half of 'em was like, okay, we can do that.
• 17:13
  Then the other, there was some that said, no, you have to be in school.
• 17:16
  And I said, well, you don't understand.
• 17:18
  I'm paying my way through school, uh, because my parents
• 17:21
  couldn't afford to do that.
• 17:22
  You know, it's like, well, I can always go back.
• 17:25
  This racing thing doesn't work out.
• 17:26
  Yeah.
• 17:27
  Well I think, uh, I think you've done okay.
• 17:28
  Yeah.
• 17:29
  Well I'm, I'm here today.
• 17:31
  There you go.
• 17:32
  You mentioned the name earlier, ma.
• 17:34
  Brown car owner.
• 17:35
  He had what Trucking company.
• 17:37
  Down that way.
• 17:38
  Yeah.
• 17:38
  He was a, uh, 2019 National Sprint Car Hall of Fame inductee.
• 17:43
  And one of the great stats about Emmy Brown, I think over the course
• 17:46
  of roughly 10 years or so, he had nine national Sprint car Hall of
• 17:50
  Famers behind the wheel of his number 44 Bruce Kogel Ford sponsored car.
• 17:55
  And of course that was the ride that you eventually picked up in when it was like
• 18:00
  August of 77, somewhere around there.
• 18:02
  Yeah.
• 18:02
  Yeah.
• 18:03
  It was just right after the nationals driving, before the FedEx car.
• 18:06
  They wanted to go racing.
• 18:08
  So they gave me a chance to go to a lot of places and do a lot of things.
• 18:11
  And it was like that one was different because, um, back then I don't think
• 18:16
  he had a motor that was under 400 cubic inches getting in that car.
• 18:20
  It showed me that, that when you've got everything you can
• 18:23
  have, how much easier it is.
• 18:25
  We came to a lot of places and and did fairly well with it Might've
• 18:29
  been, we might've come up to Port Royal and I was, I think I was leading
• 18:32
  the, I think the Eastern run, was it 75 lap race or something up there?
• 18:36
  Where's my Port Royal people?
• 18:37
  Yeah.
• 18:38
  And we were up there running that and it was actually leading for
• 18:41
  quite a while and had a flat.
• 18:43
  But that was a little scary 'cause the stands were so close and you'd have
• 18:47
  all the little kids waving the flags.
• 18:49
  I kept thinking I was gonna hit one of them.
• 18:52
  That's Pennsylvania.
• 18:55
  That was a high profile ride.
• 18:56
  I mean, you've had good rides up to this point.
• 18:58
  This one's taken you to another level, and you're fully prepared to
• 19:01
  take advantage of that opportunity.
• 19:03
  1978. Ted Johnson forms the world of Outlaws.
• 19:07
  And you're in the Ma Brown car on tour, so to speak, with the Outlaws.
• 19:11
  Yeah.
• 19:11
  I think we only ran maybe 10 races though Ma likes to see his car run stuff, so
• 19:16
  we, he wanted to be around, we'd let us go different places, but uh, we'd always
• 19:21
  have to come back and run at West Memphis some and or, or places around there, or
• 19:25
  places he could go to be it hob stock.
• 19:28
  But we did get to run a lot of the, like I said, we came up here.
• 19:31
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:31
  Cut to do a lot of, a lot more traveling.
• 19:34
  It's hard to remember all the races we went through back there, but I don't know.
• 19:38
  We won a fair amount in that car.
• 19:40
  Mike Brown m ma son.
• 19:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:42
  You still in contact with him?
• 19:44
  Yeah.
• 19:45
  I'll see him every now and then.
• 19:46
  Yeah.
• 19:47
  And he'll come down to West Memphis or he'll show up someplace I'm at.
• 19:50
  He's restored a few, a few of the cars.
• 19:53
  Yeah.
• 19:53
  The 44 is gorgeous.
• 19:54
  Yeah.
• 19:55
  And he did beautiful.
• 19:55
  I think he did the TMC car too.
• 19:57
  Did he?
• 19:58
  He did one of those, as one that he restored.
• 20:00
  Seems to do good work.
• 20:01
  He worked there with j and j with Jack.
• 20:03
  He's a real good fabricator.
• 20:05
  You mentioned the FedEx car, 1979 inbound.
• 20:09
  There, you, you make the move and you're in with a guy by the name of AJ Jeffrey.
• 20:13
  Tell us what the connection was there.
• 20:15
  Well, that was the guy I started running his late model.
• 20:18
  His late model?
• 20:18
  Yeah, his late model.
• 20:19
  And so we, if we go back, he, he was one of the three or four guys
• 20:24
  that started with Fred Smith when they were at and started FedEx
• 20:28
  and he brought it to Memphis.
• 20:29
  So we run his late model.
• 20:31
  We won a lot of races in that around locally there.
• 20:35
  We just got together and he wound up getting Fred to give us a bunch of
• 20:38
  money or give him a bunch of money.
• 20:40
  Yeah.
• 20:40
  And that was big deal.
• 20:41
  'cause with a national tour forming to be able to bring in a company, and it
• 20:47
  wasn't as large as it is today, of course.
• 20:48
  No.
• 20:49
  But at that point, to be able to bring that type of company in,
• 20:52
  that was pretty significant move.
• 20:53
  Yeah.
• 20:54
  It was still a big company just getting started.
• 20:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 20:57
  But, uh, it just didn't, that one didn't last real long,
• 21:00
  but, but when it did, it did.
• 21:02
  Yeah.
• 21:02
  It was, I think, uh, you had quite a few, we won a lot of races for that too.
• 21:06
  79, I think you were third at the Knoxville.
• 21:09
  Nashvilles after coming through the b mm-hmm.
• 21:11
  Ran behind, uh, Ron Schumann and Randy Smith.
• 21:14
  Yeah.
• 21:14
  And we had, um, Carl Kinzer's 3 55 motor in there.
• 21:19
  It was a little slick track.
• 21:21
  Well, we had a problem blur motor, so he, he loaned us one that
• 21:24
  probably didn't make anybody's notes.
• 21:28
  1980, probably the car I first remember seeing you in when
• 21:32
  you came to Pennsylvania.
• 21:33
  And this was just another step in your career, another step up the
• 21:36
  ladder you ran for Laverne Dance.
• 21:39
  That was a high profile ride at the time it seemed, and I think you were a big
• 21:42
  part of making that a high profile ride.
• 21:44
  Yeah, that was a lot going on there.
• 21:47
  It was George Gillespie calling me one day.
• 21:49
  He said, Hey, you need to go out there and see Laverne, so I did.
• 21:52
  So we went in there with him and his wife in his office and he said, and
• 21:56
  he, first thing he said to me, he says.
• 21:58
  I don't think I can afford to have you.
• 22:00
  I said, you can't afford not to have me.
• 22:04
  Then went on to explain the stuff I'd learned in the short period of time, just
• 22:09
  the way I looked at doing things, or we can do this and do, I said, we need to
• 22:13
  build a car that a guy with a toolbox this big can put it together and go race.
• 22:18
  You're a machinist.
• 22:19
  He said, yeah.
• 22:20
  I said, you could make fixtures where everything's the same.
• 22:22
  Yeah, you could make the cars the same.
• 22:24
  You can make all this stuff exactly the same.
• 22:27
  I said, well, I want to do this.
• 22:29
  We build the cars and stand them up, build the sides and do it this other way.
• 22:33
  But all the parts, you know, like the body or the, everything has to be the same.
• 22:39
  So you can just take a part off.
• 22:40
  A guy can put it on, because that was the biggest thing back then.
• 22:43
  You bought something while you had to work on it.
• 22:45
  You had to file on it or cut it or something, or fit.
• 22:49
  You know.
• 22:49
  Nothing was that close.
• 22:51
  So it was like always when you could get some parts or you got something
• 22:55
  that always you had to work on.
• 22:56
  Yeah.
• 22:57
  So you're looking for consistency of operation.
• 22:59
  Yeah.
• 22:59
  You're looking at the the minute details to make sure that when
• 23:02
  you've got a car, it's what you had before and you know where you're
• 23:05
  gonna go with your adjustments.
• 23:06
  Yeah.
• 23:07
  I told 'em I wanna put everything on a schedule that we run so many laps
• 23:10
  on everything, so it doesn't break.
• 23:12
  That was brilliant because it's, I said, you, you're a manufacturer.
• 23:16
  You're the stuff you don't make, you buy at a discount and you make a profit on.
• 23:21
  So it's like it's gonna cost us too much to fall outta races, you know?
• 23:24
  'cause we were talking about going to run the whole world of outlaw series.
• 23:29
  That's the biggest deal, is we've gotta finish every race,
• 23:32
  but we'll put it on a schedule.
• 23:33
  We'll do all this stuff.
• 23:34
  And I said, you won't have any problem selling my cars.
• 23:37
  And we'll just say, we'll run 'em for a little bit and then get another one.
• 23:41
  That one kind of almost backfired on me because then he was wanting
• 23:44
  to, well, can I have another car?
• 23:46
  Yeah.
• 23:47
  He didn't get much time in 'em then.
• 23:48
  No, but on your parts deal, instead of just selling the guy radius
• 23:52
  rods and es, you know, make the fixture where all the cars are the
• 23:56
  same, we can just make fixtures.
• 23:58
  Your grandkids could go out and build radius rods and have 'em set.
• 24:02
  Instead of selling a rear arm and this and that, you sell it with the pitch
• 24:05
  bolt, the shark bolt, the rod in.
• 24:07
  It's all set up.
• 24:08
  All he has to do is slide it on the car.
• 24:11
  When I drove for him right before that, his car, man, it's like you
• 24:14
  could adjust everything on it.
• 24:15
  There was all kinds of things, and he was a little reluctant
• 24:18
  to take a lot of that stuff off.
• 24:20
  So it's like we just bolt this one together and you can't really mess it up.
• 24:24
  But then I asked him, I said, well, how many cars did you sell last year?
• 24:26
  He said, 45.
• 24:28
  I said, well, I bet you we can do over 200.
• 24:30
  Wow.
• 24:31
  He's like.
• 24:31
  I said, well, you're gonna have to hire another welder.
• 24:34
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:35
  The one guy's not gonna be able to keep up.
• 24:37
  And so it, it started that year.
• 24:40
  We ran 136 nights and I felt a lot of two races.
• 24:45
  One was a flat tire and one, we got a hole in the oil filter.
• 24:48
  No, no mechanical failures.
• 24:49
  No mechanical failures at all in that many races.
• 24:52
  And we won 56 races and the world of Outlaw championship.
• 24:56
  And that became sort of a calling card for you, you being a driver,
• 25:00
  but with a business mindset, someone who knew how to run the entire team.
• 25:05
  You saw the big picture.
• 25:06
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:06
  What it took to be successful.
• 25:08
  The more I knew, the more I'd be worth.
• 25:11
  The more I could do, the more I was gonna be worth, you know,
• 25:14
  just being able to do everything.
• 25:16
  You know, A lot of people probably wouldn't want to take that on, but
• 25:19
  you know, I won a race and this was gonna gimme a chance to run
• 25:22
  the whole world out all for all the races, all the big paying races.
• 25:26
  We even got to run a lot of other races, you know, and all that comes with,
• 25:30
  well, every time you run it and you win.
• 25:33
  Well that makes my bank account look a little better.
• 25:37
  That's what, it just all adds up.
• 25:38
  If I could control it all, I knew what I wanted to do and
• 25:41
  I could, was able to do that.
• 25:43
  Sam, I think one of the other areas where you were proved invaluable to the, not
• 25:47
  only Nance, uh, Laverne Nance, but other chassis companies down the road, is you
• 25:51
  formed relationships with these folks and then you were able to provide input to
• 25:56
  the design of their chassis and they would incorporate that input, make a better car.
• 26:01
  And to your point earlier, sell more cars.
• 26:04
  Well, if we back up to the FedEx car Sure.
• 26:06
  Went out to Phoenix a few times and was at some races and I got to know Gary Stanton.
• 26:11
  Mm-hmm.
• 26:11
  And so, uh, we got to be pretty good friends and stuff.
• 26:14
  So he said, well I want to build you cars.
• 26:16
  And I said, well, I want to make some changes from the car you got.
• 26:19
  So he said, well, I'll build you a couple cars however you want 'em.
• 26:22
  At the same time he made three cars.
• 26:23
  I said, what are you doing?
• 26:24
  Why are you doing three cars?
• 26:26
  And he said, well, I'm gonna have one here sitting here.
• 26:28
  You know, so it didn't take me about about three weeks of running that one.
• 26:31
  And he showed up with Ron Schumann with us.
• 26:33
  I said, oh, you got my other car out here.
• 26:37
  He said, well, it's been looking pretty good, but you know, there's just a lot of
• 26:42
  little stories down through everything.
• 26:44
  But you know, to get back, there wasn't a lot of corporate stuff in
• 26:47
  the race and it was just a guy had some owned a business or had to had a
• 26:51
  car, you know, or something like that.
• 26:53
  So when we went out.
• 26:54
  To, uh, Phoenix, if we go back to 74 the first time, well, you know,
• 26:59
  Bubby Jones showed me how to, well, we talked to this promoter and,
• 27:02
  and he'll give you this money.
• 27:04
  You can get this money or you can get a hotel room or you can get, you know,
• 27:07
  money, show up money and okay, whatever.
• 27:09
  So we'll go out there, talk to Keith Hall and got this room for the whole
• 27:13
  week and had to spend time out there.
• 27:16
  And, uh, that's when I was driving for Bobby Sparks and, and so Ben Foot
• 27:21
  for Mascot comes down to him and he says, we want you to come over to
• 27:24
  the Pacific Co sofa the next week.
• 27:26
  And I said, well, it's really not up to me.
• 27:28
  Lemme see how the guys can come over there.
• 27:30
  And he said, well, I got this.
• 27:31
  I can give you this much money and I could give you a room for the week on the beach.
• 27:35
  And it's like, well go back and talk to Bobby.
• 27:37
  Oh, okay.
• 27:38
  Well he called his dad.
• 27:39
  Yep.
• 27:39
  Yeah, we went over there and did that.
• 27:40
  So I got to go see a lot of the manufacturers that, that was out there.
• 27:44
  So I got started just building more and more acquaints, you know, stuff that
• 27:48
  we would have a problem with the car.
• 27:50
  This is what would break first or mm-hmm.
• 27:52
  This, we had issues with.
• 27:54
  I could deal with them while seeing how they made pieces and did the things.
• 27:58
  So I was able to help in making their parts better.
• 28:02
  So you provided feedback to the manufacturer sponsors,
• 28:05
  the folks that Yeah.
• 28:06
  You had developed relationships with.
• 28:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 28:08
  They had enough trust in you to make that a reality, then they
• 28:10
  knew it would benefit them as well.
• 28:12
  Yeah.
• 28:12
  Even though I was 18, 19 years old.
• 28:16
  Wow.
• 28:16
  Sammy, one of the other things, uh, I thought was, was interesting.
• 28:20
  When we talk about your ability to manage a team, you're a guy that, let's say
• 28:23
  you're involved with a tour and the tour's going from Knoxville and they're gonna go
• 28:28
  out and run Chico and up through Skagit, you would sit down and do the numbers and
• 28:33
  say, financially, does this West Coast swing make sense for me, for our team,
• 28:38
  there was a lot of guys that I drove for that couldn't run the whole world
• 28:42
  of outlaw schedule, and so we would just pick out things and see what made sense.
• 28:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 28:47
  Or we thought we could make the most money for what we were doing, and that was okay.
• 28:51
  There was plenty of races going around.
• 28:53
  The first part of the Outlaws, they went to a lot of different places
• 28:55
  and it was quite a bit of money to stay out on the road back then.
• 28:59
  But we would put a schedule together with.
• 29:01
  Kind of what owner was looking to spend.
• 29:04
  Yeah.
• 29:04
  And you had to stay within that.
• 29:06
  One of the things I wanted to touch on just briefly here, while you were with
• 29:08
  the Nance team, Tommy Sanders, still with you, I think, at that point, and there's
• 29:12
  another fellow whose name would reappear throughout the course of your career.
• 29:16
  Ken Jenkins.
• 29:17
  Ken was out there and that was another thing that he was trying
• 29:21
  to get me to go out there.
• 29:22
  At the same time too, you know, that he was over at Gambler and he had the his
• 29:28
  own deal out of Dodge City there for a bit, but we did a lot of things together
• 29:32
  over the years as different places.
• 29:34
  Yeah.
• 29:34
  Comes back to those relationships.
• 29:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:36
  Yeah.
• 29:37
  Well, after the Nance deal folds, your next move from there you went met up
• 29:41
  with a guy named Raymond Bele, I believe.
• 29:43
  Yeah.
• 29:43
  That was just a deal.
• 29:43
  Like at the end of the year I got on a plane, I was just gonna go down
• 29:47
  to the Wins Cup race in Atlanta.
• 29:49
  Okay.
• 29:50
  I flew into Dallas and went from Dallas to Atlanta.
• 29:53
  I got on a plane and wound up sitting next to Raymond Beetle and so we
• 29:56
  start talking about stuff and he's, that's when he's telling me he's
• 29:59
  trying to put a cup team together and he's got his funny car, you know?
• 30:04
  He said, well, maybe we could add a sprint car deal and then put
• 30:07
  you in a few races over there.
• 30:10
  Part of the deal for me, leaving Nance, we were still gonna run his cars, but then
• 30:14
  he decided to let his son run the business and he wanted to go a different direction.
• 30:19
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:19
  So that's kind of where that split.
• 30:22
  But that brought me back to Ken Jenkins and gambler.
• 30:26
  We started running those cars.
• 30:28
  We didn't run the full schedule, but we ran quite a few races
• 30:32
  and it gave me an opportunity to run some of the NASCAR stuff.
• 30:35
  Yeah, and we're gonna get into that a little bit more in the
• 30:38
  second half of today's round table.
• 30:40
  And what, when we do, I want you to think back on everything that we've talked about
• 30:44
  here in the early portion and understand that while all this is happening over
• 30:48
  here, Sammy's also doing this over here that we're talking about right now.
• 30:53
  It's, it's super impressive.
• 30:54
  You're with Raymond Beetle, 1983 Knoxville Nationals.
• 30:58
  We should have won that one, or we did.
• 31:00
  Yeah, we did.
• 31:02
  Yeah.
• 31:02
  We had some pretty good runs and that brought me into,
• 31:06
  he had Bob Westfall there.
• 31:07
  Okay.
• 31:08
  Working at his shop.
• 31:08
  He built the motors.
• 31:10
  They were starting to build some motors there about the middle time
• 31:14
  of the year, a lot of guys had the aluminum, four 30 motors and we
• 31:17
  were still running a steel block.
• 31:19
  Okay.
• 31:20
  4 0 6. It was about just before the NA nationals that we got, the aluminum
• 31:24
  four 30 and it's like, put that in.
• 31:26
  It's like, oh my gosh, it is just so much better.
• 31:29
  And, uh, I think we won about six races in a row and counting the nationals.
• 31:34
  And uh, you know, then after we ran so many races on it, he had to take it
• 31:37
  back and wanted to look at it and it's like, man, you're gonna make me go back
• 31:41
  to this other, I'm, I'm spoiled down.
• 31:44
  This, it's way easier to pass people with this, this lighter motor with way more,
• 31:48
  you know, another a hundred horsepower.
• 31:50
  Wow.
• 31:50
  That had to be huge.
• 31:51
  Yeah, that was huge.
• 31:53
  Was this the point Du Sterl came on board right about this time?
• 31:56
  Yeah.
• 31:56
  He, he was there and the one guy that was from Wichita that come
• 32:00
  over to nag me, Steve Cox, he followed me over to Beatles team.
• 32:05
  We'd been together a couple years and then Deuce comes down and it was all good.
• 32:09
  We had some good runs, a lot of good times.
• 32:11
  We didn't get to run as much as we wanted to, but, you know,
• 32:15
  we had four years with Raymond.
• 32:17
  Oh.
• 32:17
  And all good.
• 32:17
  Learned a lot of other things too.
• 32:19
  You know, there's a lot of that.
• 32:20
  He, he owned Chaparral Trailers, which that was Oh yeah, that's right.
• 32:24
  Cadillac of the thing to have at the time.
• 32:26
  So we said, well, we just need to build a trailer for the sprint car.
• 32:30
  And we did that.
• 32:30
  He sold a lot of those.
• 32:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:33
  Too.
• 32:33
  That gave me another project to work on.
• 32:36
  Yeah.
• 32:36
  Yeah.
• 32:37
  You were with Raymond's team 1984.
• 32:39
  You were second in world of outlaw points.
• 32:41
  You wanted Syracuse.
• 32:42
  Why were you so good at Syracuse?
• 32:44
  I think there's probably a couple factors, but I read somewhere you
• 32:47
  won like half your starts there, like five out of 10 or something like that.
• 32:51
  I don't know.
• 32:51
  You might get upset here.
• 32:53
  No, have at it brother.
• 32:54
  But you know, somebody asked me about that.
• 32:56
  Well, how come you go so much better on the miles than most people?
• 33:00
  It's like, you know, I think these guys are used to running the half
• 33:03
  miles and they run 120 mile an hour like Syracuse and you run 185.
• 33:08
  That's ridiculous.
• 33:09
  Well, they're hitting the chip at one 20, so it's like the rest of the way.
• 33:12
  It's like, oh shit, I ain't gonna make it.
• 33:16
  I was talking with Al on the way up here.
• 33:18
  He was asking me something about, about why, why are you
• 33:20
  so good on the bigger track?
• 33:22
  It's just like, I don't, I liked him.
• 33:23
  You know, you just, you get your card dialed in just right and you'd
• 33:26
  just go around there and just like you're going down the freeway.
• 33:29
  I mean, speed's there.
• 33:30
  But if, you know, if you didn't want to go fast, you didn't
• 33:32
  need to be in there anyway.
• 33:33
  Yeah.
• 33:33
  Yeah.
• 33:34
  Like to go fast.
• 33:36
  Just like Ricky Bobby.
• 33:37
  Yeah.
• 33:40
  Perfect.
• 33:42
  But I remember you said at one point speed has a way of weeding drivers and cars out.
• 33:47
  Yeah.
• 33:47
  Well that was, you know, there's some guys that just, I've seen been around enough
• 33:51
  people that run quarter miles where they have trouble going to the next step.
• 33:54
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:55
  Yeah.
• 33:55
  I've seen guys go from three sixties to run four tens and they, they can
• 33:59
  win 360 races, but then they can't do any good four tens or so much quicker.
• 34:04
  And it's the same with the bigger tracks.
• 34:06
  Always liked the faster places because I had fewer people to compete with.
• 34:10
  It narrowed a lot of them out.
• 34:12
  Yeah.
• 34:12
  And some of it was just we had better cars or had better stuff, but still
• 34:17
  it's trying to get all that out of it.
• 34:19
  You know?
• 34:19
  I did win most of the mile tracks.
• 34:21
  I think that's why they quit going to them.
• 34:24
  It's a conspiracy.
• 34:26
  Yeah.
• 34:27
  At this point, you know, we look back, Sammy, you had those two back to back
• 34:31
  titles with Laverne Nance, 81 82.
• 34:34
  Between 1981 and 1989, you had one season where you were below the 20 win mark.
• 34:41
  So you're getting it done, and though you do like the fast tracks
• 34:45
  at another great quote here, and I want you to talk about this.
• 34:47
  The strategy you developed was unique, but I certainly see where you're coming from.
• 34:53
  You once said I wanted to win, going as slowly as I could.
• 34:56
  That's something, you know, I tell people if I can get my car
• 34:59
  where I can run 90% and win.
• 35:02
  I'm not hard on it.
• 35:03
  I don't make very many mistakes.
• 35:05
  Mm-hmm.
• 35:06
  The thing is, if like somebody comes up to challenge me, I still got that
• 35:10
  10% to go and that spoils their day.
• 35:15
  And meanwhile, on the flip side of that coin, some of your competitors.
• 35:18
  They might be running 110%, one lap, and then the next
• 35:22
  lap, they're in recovery mode.
• 35:24
  Yeah.
• 35:24
  Well, that's what I've told a lot of people though, helped and stuff.
• 35:28
  And you know, it's like you can't do a hundred percent every lap.
• 35:32
  90% is still hard to do if you just add it up.
• 35:35
  If you make half your laps a hundred percent and half of
• 35:38
  'em 50%, you're only at 75%.
• 35:41
  So my 90% wins every time.
• 35:44
  Yeah.
• 35:44
  At 90% it feels like I'm going slow until you get to Victory Lane.
• 35:49
  Yeah.
• 35:49
  Well, that way I can, you know, at Syracuse I can go change the radio
• 35:53
  stations back and forth because
• 35:57
  you just relax and go, but I tell a lot of these kids and stuff, it's like.
• 36:01
  I just wanna go for a ride, you know?
• 36:03
  And if I can go for a ride, then I'm having a good time
• 36:07
  and I'm not stressed out.
• 36:08
  Yeah.
• 36:09
  You know, it's like, I don't know if some people play golf, but if you're
• 36:12
  tense, it is a long ways to that hole.
• 36:17
  Love the perspective.
• 36:18
  Sammy.
• 36:18
  1988, you partnered with another gentleman out the Des Moines area, an iconic ride.
• 36:23
  The TMC number one, that was another Ken Jenkins deal.
• 36:27
  Okay.
• 36:28
  He wound up that the Harold did bystanding out.
• 36:31
  Yep.
• 36:32
  A couple years after, or a year or so after I was there.
• 36:35
  I guess me and the Harold got along pretty well, you know, 'cause he
• 36:37
  wanted his stuff clean with nice.
• 36:40
  And, uh, he, he liked to win.
• 36:42
  So they had me come down and I drove his car at Knoxville and we won.
• 36:47
  And they hadn't won all year.
• 36:49
  So it's just things go from there.
• 36:51
  So he bought Gary Stanton operation, moved it to Des
• 36:54
  Moines and renamed it Challenger.
• 36:56
  Yeah.
• 36:57
  1989. Is that when you, you went to run with USA, right?
• 37:00
  Probably, yeah, probably was.
• 37:02
  Um, so Larry Clark was the president and he had a what, a relationship with Harold.
• 37:07
  Yeah.
• 37:07
  If you ever look at the cars, the early ones, it's like on the fuel
• 37:10
  tank, he'll have Larry Clark, CPA, and that's what he did for Harold.
• 37:15
  Okay.
• 37:16
  Harold was wanting to make racing better of the sprint car stuff, and
• 37:20
  he had backing to do it at the time.
• 37:23
  He talked with Ted quite a bit, so he says that they'd come to terms on a
• 37:28
  deal and he'd write him a check, and Deb would push it back a lot more, you know?
• 37:31
  Mm. And so after about the third time, he wasn't very happy with that.
• 37:36
  So yeah, he thought he could start his own deal.
• 37:39
  I mean, he had the right intentions, but the problems they ran into
• 37:42
  with that was Ted wound up having all the tracks tied up.
• 37:46
  Okay.
• 37:46
  So there was a lot of places that we couldn't go to.
• 37:49
  'cause they were committed to the world of outlaw store.
• 37:51
  Yes.
• 37:51
  Okay.
• 37:52
  Well, that season, um, I believe you had 12 feature wins with USA,
• 37:56
  another four with the World of Outlaws here in the area, Hagerstown
• 38:00
  Speedway seems like it's been a pretty good stop for you over the years.
• 38:03
  I keep seeing that name pop up.
• 38:05
  You won there in May with the Outlaws, and then you went back, I think
• 38:08
  August and September and won with USA.
• 38:11
  What about Hagerstown suits your style?
• 38:13
  You know, if we even go back to Hobbs stock.
• 38:15
  Sure.
• 38:15
  I'm, I'm running the bottom and everybody's at the top.
• 38:17
  It's like I could run the bottom pretty well.
• 38:20
  Okay.
• 38:20
  At Hagerstown I could run the top fine, but when there was something
• 38:23
  down there I could really go where a lot of people couldn't.
• 38:26
  Yeah.
• 38:27
  You know, and it's a fairly fast place, but there's some finesse to it.
• 38:30
  There's some finesse to it, you know, trying to run that inside wall.
• 38:33
  Okay.
• 38:34
  I was there some times back in the seventies and I watched a guy named
• 38:38
  Smokey Run down there quite a bit.
• 38:39
  Yeah.
• 38:39
  So it's like, there might be something to that also.
• 38:42
  Uh, 1989, Sammy, and this is, speaks to that whole tinkering mindset.
• 38:47
  You debuted a car with independent front suspension and rack and pinions steering.
• 38:51
  Well, after I took it down to Volusia, Ted called me and told me I couldn't run it.
• 38:57
  Why?
• 38:57
  Why was that?
• 38:58
  There's not a rule in there that says you can't.
• 38:59
  He says, but there will be.
• 39:03
  So that was a lot of work for not much.
• 39:06
  I run an all star races, but there were some things I'd learned
• 39:10
  from being around the stock cars.
• 39:12
  Okay.
• 39:13
  You know, and so I learned how to do the bumps here.
• 39:15
  I could do my own stock car, how to set the front ends up and, and all
• 39:20
  the different things you could make it, do, all the adjustments and, and
• 39:24
  things that you could change that you couldn't do with a regular B Maxwell.
• 39:29
  Every time I ran it, I was fast time, but we had a problem with the rack.
• 39:33
  You know, after looking at it, I could, I could have went right back to the regular
• 39:36
  steering and it would've been really good.
• 39:38
  Uh, there was just a lag because.
• 39:40
  And there again, I learn something.
• 39:42
  You know, it's like the sprint cars, the pumps right there and the lines are real
• 39:45
  short, so it has to move really quick.
• 39:48
  So the, so it's very responsive in the traditional Yeah.
• 39:50
  So we had a little bit of a lag.
• 39:51
  Okay.
• 39:51
  You know, like qualifying, you're wide open.
• 39:53
  You don't hardly, you just nowhere to loose.
• 39:55
  You could just not much wheel.
• 39:57
  And so I could make it roll around there, but the thing was, I could
• 40:00
  run the car way softer in the back.
• 40:02
  I could run the car with less stagger because I could make the front end turn.
• 40:05
  It would've been a big advantage for I don't know how long, but we
• 40:09
  never got to deal with it because I wasn't gonna be able to run it.
• 40:13
  Right.
• 40:13
  Learned a lot of things from that, but, uh, it, it's still there.
• 40:17
  If we could ever get it back somewhere again, you still have it.
• 40:21
  Well, I've got all the blueprint, all the prints.
• 40:23
  Oh, okay, okay.
• 40:24
  Yeah.
• 40:24
  You know, it's all laid out.
• 40:25
  I there, so, but it, it's funny that that comes up because just yesterday
• 40:29
  a friend furnishes the motors from a chili bowl cars, Tim Bertand.
• 40:33
  He says, I want to do a independent frontend tq.
• 40:36
  I said, you can, it's, it's gonna be a little tight.
• 40:39
  And then he said, this guy's got this.
• 40:40
  There's a guy that's got one.
• 40:42
  He looked at it and I said, yeah.
• 40:43
  It's like, well, it could probably be cleaned up on some
• 40:45
  details, looking at some pictures.
• 40:47
  But I could help him out with what it's going to do or how it's gonna
• 40:51
  change his car and what he can do.
• 40:53
  It was all fun.
• 40:54
  It was all learning experience.
• 40:55
  It was just, you put your heart and soul in something and it's legal when
• 40:59
  you built it, but when you take it to the track, it's not, that's not fair.
• 41:04
  No, I get it.
• 41:05
  But as I understand it, you had a computer program, this is 35 years ago.
• 41:09
  Mm-hmm.
• 41:09
  That would illustrate or give you some sort of visual as to what
• 41:14
  changes you made with the mounting positions, what that would do to
• 41:17
  the car and what it would look like.
• 41:18
  Yeah.
• 41:18
  We gotta realize the computers and everything were a lot different.
• 41:21
  Yeah.
• 41:21
  But I can put it in there and you could move the front end up and down and it
• 41:25
  would tell you where the points, and you could see how it would all work
• 41:29
  together with the everything moving.
• 41:31
  If you had to input all the dimensions and then it would tell you that
• 41:35
  when you could move it or when it rolled either way, what was going on.
• 41:39
  And I would think for sprint car racing, that would be pretty
• 41:42
  cutting edge for the time.
• 41:43
  Oh yeah.
• 41:44
  Even for me.
• 41:47
  And so I wanna talk just for a minute, Sammy, about Sammy Swin, innovator.
• 41:51
  You know, we've touched on a couple things, but there were some other areas
• 41:54
  where you were doing some experimentation, where you saw maybe a shortcoming and
• 41:57
  came up with a practical solution.
• 41:59
  1987. Tell us about the Kodiak Big Tube car.
• 42:03
  Well, it was just from the Indy cars, you know, they used to
• 42:05
  build aluminum tubs and stuff.
• 42:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 42:08
  And being around some of the guys I've known, you know, and
• 42:11
  spent some time with 'em, what little time I had extra to spend.
• 42:16
  But you know, and then a guy comes out and builds a carbon
• 42:18
  fiber tub that Johnny Rutherford's driving and he's like, way faster.
• 42:22
  Well, it was stiffer.
• 42:23
  I'd had some cars.
• 42:25
  Even when we go back to MA Brown's car, the 44, he had two cars that
• 42:30
  we were running and, but we would always say, this car is perfect.
• 42:34
  One of the best cars he's had, that's when he used to have the top rail.
• 42:38
  Jack EAM built it.
• 42:39
  The rail went under the headers and then back up and over the car
• 42:43
  that ran the vest, they put the bar back in above the headers.
• 42:47
  The other car didn't have that.
• 42:49
  And he says, you gotta run 1100 bar in the right front.
• 42:51
  It's the only way it works.
• 42:52
  Getting to run both of them, I could see what he was talking about, but you
• 42:56
  had to run the other car different and so it would flex and the only way to
• 43:01
  get it out was to put the bigger bar in and kinda like preload the car.
• 43:05
  So from then on it's like the stiffer I can make the cars times it's,
• 43:09
  I can make it a hundred percent by just using the shocks and the
• 43:13
  bars and all the air pressures and stuff, or the car that flexes.
• 43:19
  If you're on a little track, maybe that might be better.
• 43:21
  But you go to a bank track, it's gonna flex too much and then you won't like it.
• 43:26
  So I was into building cars that were stiffer Okay.
• 43:29
  Or stronger when we designed some cars, and even if you look at the one on the
• 43:35
  back that we built in 77, I moved the Benzs in the frame where the top rail
• 43:40
  goes and made it a bigger space in between a lot of little things that made
• 43:44
  it stronger and it had X in the front, X in the bottom, and uh, that car won a
• 43:50
  lot of races, but it wasn't all so much about what a design, but it was probably
• 43:55
  about 250 pounds lighter than what everybody else was running at the time.
• 43:59
  Oh, okay.
• 43:59
  See, I pick up some things from Bobby Allen every now and then.
• 44:04
  Because this stuff's always lighter than anybody else's, or it was, yeah.
• 44:08
  One of the other things I thought was interesting.
• 44:10
  At one point, were you looking into Turbocharged v sixes?
• 44:13
  Yeah.
• 44:14
  Yeah.
• 44:14
  I had a deal going, you know, back when we were just starting to do that, the Indy
• 44:18
  Clear stuff, they had the Buick V six Fine Engine and the Turbocharged at that time.
• 44:23
  It didn't, there wasn't anything there that said anything about
• 44:26
  you couldn't have a turbo.
• 44:27
  How long did that last?
• 44:28
  Well, we never got started this time.
• 44:32
  I called Ted said, Hey, I got this corporate deal.
• 44:34
  You know, maybe you could get some money from GM and I could get
• 44:38
  these motors and, but I guess they didn't want to give him any money
• 44:43
  because before we ever got it off the ground, you know, there was a rule.
• 44:46
  No turbos.
• 44:49
  It was gonna be lighter.
• 44:51
  You know, there was a car that run up here that the Cook Brothers had
• 44:54
  that they ran quite a bit, ran pretty good, and it was definitely lighter.
• 44:58
  Yeah.
• 44:59
  But with the turbo, we could, you know, they, they were telling me how much
• 45:02
  boost they could make and, and make it live with a thousand horsepower.
• 45:05
  Well, at that time, that was like, you know, and you just got the no,
• 45:08
  you can turn a boost up and down.
• 45:10
  It's like, okay, well this is qualifying mode or this past mode.
• 45:13
  This is like race mode.
• 45:15
  It is like, we could cut it up and down.
• 45:17
  I mean, that would've thrown a big can of worms and stuff there.
• 45:21
  But that's one that never got off the ground.
• 45:24
  That never got off the end.
• 45:26
  Let's jump ahead here.
• 45:26
  1990 and 91, combine those two seasons, 69 wins.
• 45:33
  And among them, I think we got here Seals Grove National Open,
• 45:36
  that was 50,000 and a headdress.
• 45:38
  That was kind of goofy, wasn't it?
• 45:41
  You got a $50,000 check, you don't care what you're wearing.
• 45:44
  Yeah.
• 45:44
  When they come out and it's like, what's the, okay.
• 45:51
  Syracuse Nationals.
• 45:52
  Yeah.
• 45:52
  Won them twice.
• 45:53
  Yeah.
• 45:53
  Ohio speed week twice.
• 45:55
  There was a little thing called the Fram dash at North Texas
• 45:57
  Speedway paid 65,000 win.
• 45:59
  You took their money and ran.
• 46:00
  Yeah.
• 46:01
  That was the only two they had.
• 46:04
  I guess they, they got tired of, uh.
• 46:06
  Writing checks to you?
• 46:07
  I don't know.
• 46:08
  1990 of course was a big year here in Pennsylvania.
• 46:11
  'cause Bobby Allen, the hometown boy wins the Knoxville nationals.
• 46:13
  That was a dual with you.
• 46:14
  Tell us the story behind the oil leak was the TMC car.
• 46:18
  We were running Girdy motors back then.
• 46:21
  We had those barroso valve coverage that were stamped out there were pretty thin.
• 46:24
  You know, you had to be careful or you'd bend it too much,
• 46:27
  you could tighten it down.
• 46:28
  You know, you just had to be careful with it.
• 46:30
  Okay.
• 46:31
  And um, uh, they had some trouble with the gaskets.
• 46:33
  You know, they would try to push out or push in, you know, and if they pushed in
• 46:38
  a little bit, they'd hit the valve springs in the valve springs, like pull 'em on in.
• 46:42
  Wow.
• 46:43
  They decided they would make a gasket with a steel piece in the middle.
• 46:47
  I got some that they used a different glue on.
• 46:50
  Some run somewhere.
• 46:51
  Somebody grabbed the wrong sauce.
• 46:54
  Hmm.
• 46:55
  It slid in the, on the right side, so it was making a big mess.
• 46:59
  You were pretty well saturated.
• 47:01
  You couldn't see, 'cause it would blow up in your face and then
• 47:04
  it was just, uh, tear offs, so you're just wiping oil visor.
• 47:08
  Well then, but your hands would get so wet that on one yellow, they,
• 47:13
  I got 'em to get me some tear offs and then I threw my gloves out and
• 47:16
  they threw me some more gloves.
• 47:17
  I put them on under caution.
• 47:19
  Yeah.
• 47:20
  Wow.
• 47:20
  Yeah, I had some talented guys.
• 47:25
  That knew what I was talking about.
• 47:27
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 47:28
  Hand signals.
• 47:29
  But that was another one up there.
• 47:31
  I could've won fairly easily, but it got so bad and the steer one got
• 47:35
  so slippery that I was having to drive it, holding onto the spokes.
• 47:39
  I tried to run the bottom 'cause that's where Bobby was.
• 47:42
  I knew if I could just run the bottom that, but I couldn't see it good
• 47:45
  enough to hit it, you know, slid out.
• 47:47
  But I guess the lighting wasn't, the track lighting wasn't as
• 47:50
  good then as it as it is now.
• 47:51
  So that's gonna play into it when you Yeah, but have lifted this, you
• 47:55
  know, they, they paint their wall a lot up there, Knoxville, so I just
• 47:58
  follow the white line up at the top.
• 48:00
  But it was just a little more than I could, he was good enough
• 48:03
  to be better than my off day.
• 48:06
  Yeah.
• 48:08
  It wasn't very easy to drive, but I sure wanted the wind.
• 48:12
  I didn't crash.
• 48:12
  Ran second.
• 48:13
  Yeah.
• 48:13
  I remember watching that event and the thing I didn't consider at the time
• 48:17
  was, was how slick that steering wheel.
• 48:19
  Would've been between not being able to see and not being able to, hold on.
• 48:22
  Yeah.
• 48:23
  Yeah.
• 48:23
  Generally, you like to have both of those things planted in your favor.
• 48:26
  Yeah.
• 48:27
  Well, I was in the car and it was pretty ugly, me driving and bouncing, hitting
• 48:31
  this and that, but kept my foot down.
• 48:34
  There you go.
• 48:34
  1991. 92. World of Outlaws did a little experimenting.
• 48:38
  They ran some pavement races that played to your strength.
• 48:41
  You had three wins twice.
• 48:43
  You were a runner up and a top five.
• 48:44
  Was that partly because of, at the time you were doing some pavement racing?
• 48:48
  I don't know.
• 48:49
  I think that my take on running the tracks that get brokered up, you know, it's
• 48:54
  like you'll see a lot of guys that, that when a track gets locked down mm-hmm.
• 48:58
  You know, they're still wanting to gas it and have the back out a
• 49:01
  little bit and they, you see 'em, it looks nice, they're tired smoking.
• 49:04
  But I was always good at just finesse with the throttle and
• 49:08
  stuff to keep everything straight.
• 49:11
  And carrying a lot of speed.
• 49:12
  And so when we got the payment stuff that suited me, and I think
• 49:16
  that was another reason they may have decided not to do that.
• 49:19
  That, yeah.
• 49:20
  Uh, the other guy was having a trouble with, didn't win a race on payment.
• 49:24
  There was another guy.
• 49:25
  Well, he should be on your list.
• 49:27
  Yeah, no, I was just, I didn't know if you wanted to elaborate.
• 49:30
  We can come back to that later.
• 49:31
  Um, yeah, let's come back to that later.
• 49:34
  19, uh, 92 33 wins, including the King's Royal Silver Cup at Lerner V.
• 49:42
  And incidentally, this is your third consecutive year with 30 or more wins.
• 49:45
  And I'm gonna mention this one because I think our videographer, Steve
• 49:49
  Gigas, I think he has footage of this.
• 49:51
  You won at the Suncoast Dome in Florida.
• 49:55
  That was uh, earlier indoor race.
• 49:57
  Yeah.
• 49:57
  Yeah.
• 49:57
  That was different.
• 49:58
  Running in a baseball field.
• 50:00
  Is that what that was?
• 50:01
  It didn't pay very good.
• 50:02
  No, we didn't get paid at all.
• 50:08
  I'll go down in the Get us book Oral Records of whether the World
• 50:12
  Outlaw Race that paid zero $0.
• 50:16
  Another series I'd like you to talk about.
• 50:18
  Sammy, winner of 92, 93 and then again 93 94.
• 50:21
  And I remember when this hit television, diamond P Sports and Pat Patterson,
• 50:25
  that slick 50 Sprint car World Series.
• 50:27
  What did that do for the sport?
• 50:28
  Uh, well, it brought some live TV in, you know, I think there
• 50:31
  was some before with the TNN.
• 50:34
  Right?
• 50:34
  You know, it was just a deal that Pat Patterson put together.
• 50:37
  He got some money from SL 50 and was able to promote those races alive.
• 50:42
  It just gave another opportunity to do that.
• 50:45
  And, and, you know, TV brings in, it's a lot easier to, to get the
• 50:49
  corporate money when you're on tv.
• 50:52
  Yeah.
• 50:52
  I don't think that at the time it, the stuff they had or the way, you know,
• 50:56
  they could really do a, a great job with it and some of it they wanted
• 51:00
  to do it at a certain time so it wasn't the best time for a dirt track.
• 51:05
  Okay.
• 51:05
  Uh, 'cause a lot of what we were doing.
• 51:07
  You know, before the sun went down.
• 51:09
  But you know, it gave an opportunity to do sprint car races on live tv.
• 51:13
  Yeah.
• 51:14
  Was that January?
• 51:15
  Yeah.
• 51:16
  Okay.
• 51:16
  I believe, I believe it was So first year it was a Manzanita.
• 51:18
  You're in the TMC number one.
• 51:19
  I think you had three wins that year.
• 51:21
  Second season you had a victory.
• 51:22
  It was hosted at Canyon Speedway and then you were in uh, I
• 51:25
  think Jeff Gilliam's car.
• 51:27
  Yep.
• 51:27
  You talked about corporate money, you talked about exposure.
• 51:30
  That's something you were acutely aware of from the beginning.
• 51:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 51:33
  Presentation is part of the game.
• 51:35
  You gotta bring a quality product to the table, but a better look good as well.
• 51:38
  You got a better chance of bringing some money in.
• 51:40
  Yeah.
• 51:40
  Well that was from probably me going up to the speedway there at Indy
• 51:44
  and seeing Roger Penske stuff, and I decided I needed to be like that.
• 51:49
  Not a bad model.
• 51:50
  No.
• 51:50
  1995 you established Swindell Motor Sports.
• 51:54
  First off, it's the Hooters number one win.
• 51:56
  10 out of 48 starts that year, including five straight with the world of outlaws.
• 52:01
  Starting your own team.
• 52:03
  That's a pretty strong effort.
• 52:04
  Yeah, it was expensive too.
• 52:07
  But yeah, we did that that whole year.
• 52:09
  We had two cars and, and uh, one motor didn't get to run like a whole season
• 52:15
  with the Ls, but you know, I was able to run quite a few races following year.
• 52:19
  Channellock comes on board, and then in 1997 you claim your
• 52:24
  third world of Outlaws title.
• 52:25
  And I think significantly, that's no longer an issue, but at the
• 52:28
  time, people questioned whether you could do it at your age.
• 52:31
  Yeah.
• 52:31
  You were what, 41 going on 42?
• 52:34
  Yeah.
• 52:34
  And in the process became the first owner driver to win a World of Outlaws title.
• 52:39
  I never thought of that.
• 52:43
  You seem to take a great deal of pleasure in proving people wrong, proving that you
• 52:47
  can do what you set out to do, and I think that's, that's a great trait to have.
• 52:51
  Yeah.
• 52:52
  Well, this past year I ran 18 races.
• 52:55
  One six did I see you were out in Victor Lane pretty frequently.
• 52:59
  Were you out in Colorado?
• 53:00
  Am I remembering correctly?
• 53:01
  Yes.
• 53:01
  Mm-hmm.
• 53:02
  Okay.
• 53:02
  Whose car are you in there?
• 53:03
  I've been in different guys' cars out there, but I've been there
• 53:06
  five times and won four of 'em.
• 53:09
  Shoulda have won the fifth time, but.
• 53:13
  I started fifth and got a good run.
• 53:15
  I went to the top, so I was behind the guy that started on the front.
• 53:18
  Well, he spins out.
• 53:20
  There's a guy right underneath me, so there's no place.
• 53:22
  I just had to stop.
• 53:23
  So started 23rd and I think I run fourth, but it got rubber
• 53:28
  up, but it was hard to pass.
• 53:29
  But I was doing it and did more of the same this year.
• 53:32
  Well, no, haven't been out there since I've been 69.
• 53:37
  Dude, you gotta keep it rolling.
• 53:38
  You gotta keep your streak alive.
• 53:39
  Yeah, it's like at some point I'm gonna be too old.
• 53:43
  I don't think I've thought I'd ever hear you say that.
• 53:46
  Well, that's what everybody else says.
• 53:49
  Well, yeah.
• 53:49
  Okay.
• 53:50
  97, 7 straight winds on a West Coast swing.
• 53:54
  That's almost unheard of anymore.
• 53:56
  Well, that was right after losing another Knoxville National.
• 54:00
  Was that the Mark incident or am I misremembering man?
• 54:03
  It might've been.
• 54:04
  I don't know.
• 54:04
  There's a bunch of 'em.
• 54:06
  Too many.
• 54:06
  Yeah.
• 54:07
  But you did win your first Williams Grove National Open.
• 54:10
  Yeah, that was nice.
• 54:11
  It was swept the weekend.
• 54:12
  Oh, okay.
• 54:13
  That was a sweep the weekend and, and Sammy's defense.
• 54:15
  Let me share this and, and I think this is.
• 54:17
  Perfectly logical.
• 54:18
  He said, people will ask him from time to time about a certain
• 54:21
  event, certain race, that type of thing, and it just escapes him.
• 54:24
  But he has had so much success that sometimes it's difficult to remember
• 54:29
  everything that you have accomplished.
• 54:30
  Whereas if I'm a racer and I've got two big wins, I'm gonna be able to
• 54:35
  tell you every lap and who I beat, you know, what I ate for dinner
• 54:39
  that evening, that type of thing.
• 54:40
  But, uh, swept the weekend.
• 54:42
  Now let's jump ahead.
• 54:43
  1999, another $50,000 check for winning your Second Kings Royal.
• 54:48
  Well, I've always enjoyed running at Eldora.
• 54:50
  What is it about Eldora that you, is it go back to that whole
• 54:52
  Syracuse mindset, some of it, but that's where I got my nickname too.
• 54:57
  I'm listening.
• 54:58
  Well, you know what it is.
• 54:59
  I know what one is, but I, I was under the impression that slamming Sammy came
• 55:04
  from your father being swinging Sam and they started calling you, slamming
• 55:08
  Sammy when you were really young.
• 55:09
  No, no, no.
• 55:11
  We're gonna have to talk to Bob Mayes then.
• 55:12
  Yeah, well this was at El Dora and, um, Terry Bal I to announcer Earl son.
• 55:18
  And uh, I was one of the first people to run wide open around there.
• 55:22
  Okay.
• 55:23
  So that's where he was.
• 55:24
  I was slamming the corner, so.
• 55:26
  Okay.
• 55:26
  The nickname went from there.
• 55:28
  Okay.
• 55:29
  Yeah, there's a lot of 'em that could fit.
• 55:30
  So
• 55:33
  going back to high speed events, Bristol Motor Speedway, 2000, 2001, and this
• 55:37
  is ridiculous, you turned a qualifying lap of 1 38 0.44 and if I'm remembering
• 55:43
  correctly, and I could be off here, but I think that was faster than the cup cars.
• 55:46
  Yeah.
• 55:47
  Channellock wanted me to go up there since they were sponsoring event, asked
• 55:51
  me to go up there and run on the pavement.
• 55:53
  They had, it worked out where I could go out there right before the cup race
• 55:56
  started and there was a lot of guys there that didn't want me to do that.
• 55:59
  No.
• 56:00
  And uh, we just put some pavement tires on our car and went out, ran
• 56:04
  and, uh, on the pavement and it was.
• 56:06
  I might have run faster that day, but I wasn't the right gear in it.
• 56:10
  It's like, oh, it's like if I put a gear in, it'll run about 160.
• 56:14
  It should be okay.
• 56:15
  But it wasn't.
• 56:16
  It wasn't because it was about 8,600, about halfway down, so I was just
• 56:21
  pedaling it, but I still ran a half a second faster than the cup cars.
• 56:25
  Wow.
• 56:25
  A lot of guys came down there, officials and was looking at it because they were
• 56:30
  worried that I would crash or something would happen because their race was gonna
• 56:34
  go right out after I was on the track.
• 56:36
  Oh, okay.
• 56:37
  But I was friends with Gary Nelson at the time that was running, so
• 56:40
  he said, you're gonna be all right.
• 56:42
  I said, sure.
• 56:44
  It was different running on that because you know, when they put the dirt on, it
• 56:48
  went all the way down to the inside wall.
• 56:49
  So it was maybe, you know, I think they said 24 degrees or
• 56:54
  it's 36 up on the pavement.
• 56:56
  I don't know.
• 56:56
  Once I took off and kind of got rolling, it like can't see where the wall is
• 57:01
  'cause the winds and like leaning down, geez, when I'm coming off the corner to
• 57:06
  see, well it's coming up good to know when I come it's like, well I gotta
• 57:12
  think about that when we come back.
• 57:14
  But that was a blast just cruising around there and still going that fast.
• 57:19
  I was a little worried 'cause the tires I got were some super
• 57:21
  modified tires of Goodyear.
• 57:23
  That's all they had that they used to run like up in the northeast and I think
• 57:27
  they were probably 15 or 18 years old.
• 57:30
  Well that's comforting.
• 57:31
  So it's like, are we really gonna make it.
• 57:35
  Yeah.
• 57:35
  When we went there, we practiced the first Bristol Dirt event.
• 57:39
  When I was walking out later, there was a state trooper up there and
• 57:43
  he said, you're the fastest one.
• 57:45
  I said, oh, yeah.
• 57:46
  He said, got you on a deal.
• 57:47
  I said, how fast am I going?
• 57:48
  He said, 180 5.
• 57:51
  That's cool.
• 57:52
  That's cool.
• 57:54
  You won both of those shows.
• 57:55
  I remember the 2001 show I was there with SCN Radio.
• 57:58
  We covered that.
• 57:59
  Wayne Harper and I were there.
• 58:00
  Mm-hmm.
• 58:01
  Ridiculous Dual with Jeff Shepherd.
• 58:03
  He was just a pest for a while.
• 58:06
  For a while.
• 58:07
  Well, I did win, but no, I just mean Jeff's the guy that likes to stir the pot.
• 58:12
  That's all.
• 58:13
  I mean, yeah, we'd been riding motorcycles earlier the day.
• 58:16
  We were both friends with Les Stewart.
• 58:18
  Yeah.
• 58:18
  I didn't start him before I had start back, so I had to get
• 58:20
  through a couple cars pretty quick.
• 58:22
  But you know, I passed Jeff on one end and the other end he passed me back.
• 58:26
  We did that about three times and I said, okay.
• 58:29
  I'm gonna change this up.
• 58:30
  I'm gonna pass him at the end.
• 58:32
  He passes me, then he disappeared.
• 58:35
  He couldn't pass me back on the other.
• 58:37
  End out a rhythm out nowhere.
• 58:39
  Out of balance.
• 58:41
  Oh, let's go.
• 58:42
  2010, your second stint with Todd Queering, you'd filled in before
• 58:46
  for Terry MCC Carl, you win your second Williams Grove National Open.
• 58:50
  You set fast time that night.
• 58:51
  Couple things worth mentioning here.
• 58:54
  I was actually watching it last night on the vault on uh, dirt Vision
• 58:57
  pass on the restart for the lead.
• 58:59
  He went through the middle was brilliant.
• 59:01
  And that win ended a streak of nine consecutive wins by the posse.
• 59:06
  Sorry, Lee.
• 59:07
  Lee style for, uh, Greg Knick's mechanic is uh, here and they had
• 59:10
  won three or four straight I think.
• 59:12
  But that was a strong effort.
• 59:13
  I think Jason Myers was leading it.
• 59:15
  Yeah, he seen me on the bottom.
• 59:17
  So he moved over.
• 59:18
  I think you came from seventh that night.
• 59:20
  I know the night before it was like we had a late number, so we went out
• 59:24
  and made the rates, but we started to way back and my guys were like,
• 59:27
  what are we going do for tomorrow?
• 59:29
  And I said, nothing.
• 59:30
  We just gotta get a good number.
• 59:31
  And it's like I got the first one first out.
• 59:34
  That's right.
• 59:34
  You were first out fastest car.
• 59:36
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 59:37
  I forgot that.
• 59:37
  Yeah.
• 59:38
  I took a car that qualified like 28th or something the night before.
• 59:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 59:43
  And didn't touch it.
• 59:44
  Sometime you just need that little bit for everything to fall in place.
• 59:48
  Yeah.
• 59:48
  And you gotta take advantage of it.
• 59:49
  Take advantage of it.
• 59:51
  Let's talk about racing the posse.
• 59:52
  The fans historically get juiced when the world of outlaws come to town.
• 59:56
  Some of the drivers do likewise.
• 59:58
  And you took a lot of money home to Tennessee over the years.
• 1:00:00
  16 career wins at Williams Grove.
• 1:00:03
  They never victories at Hagerstown in the region here.
• 1:00:06
  S Grove, even out Lerner, uh, where you took the Silver Cup on numerous occasions.
• 1:00:11
  You've done well up this way.
• 1:00:12
  I've always enjoyed coming up.
• 1:00:13
  It was different, you know, when I first come up here, these were tracks
• 1:00:17
  like I've never been on before.
• 1:00:18
  Just the guys I got to race with.
• 1:00:20
  Think Lynn Paxton had a good relationship for a long time, you
• 1:00:24
  know, and Bobby Allen, um, smokey.
• 1:00:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:00:28
  Those a lot of guys we'd race and then we'd come in and they're all
• 1:00:31
  come down and we're talking, you know, it's like you didn't have that a lot
• 1:00:34
  of places, but, uh, there was just a lot of guys that was real friendly
• 1:00:37
  and they didn't like me beating them.
• 1:00:39
  But yeah, I don't know if they were coming down to talk to me
• 1:00:42
  or they coming down to just.
• 1:00:44
  Check out my car.
• 1:00:45
  Yeah, something that you would do, you would walk through the pits.
• 1:00:49
  I think I read somewhere you said where, you know, some guys might go down through
• 1:00:53
  the pits and they might look at tires, or they might look at this particular area.
• 1:00:56
  You said there might be like 30 things you're looking at.
• 1:00:59
  How do you take all that in just on a stroll through the pits?
• 1:01:02
  Well, you can't always see all that every time, but.
• 1:01:06
  There's things that might make a difference.
• 1:01:08
  You know, one thing that helped when I was running full-time or, or when I run
• 1:01:12
  with some of these guys, some there, there's guys that like their cars a
• 1:01:15
  certain way and there's guys that would run their cars other, you know, it's
• 1:01:19
  like I just paid attention to who was going fast at that time and I figured
• 1:01:24
  that if I could make my car like theirs, I had a 50% chance of beating them.
• 1:01:28
  It's always seemed to work, but you know, it's being able to race with guys
• 1:01:32
  a lot and they have their tendencies.
• 1:01:35
  One guy likes more right rear, one more guy likes more left rear.
• 1:01:39
  And you know, when guys jacked their cars up and stuff, you can look at
• 1:01:42
  it and see how it looks and it gives me an idea of which direction to go.
• 1:01:46
  And so if I'm off a little bit, I'll try to see cards.
• 1:01:49
  That's the fastest, not the slowest.
• 1:01:51
  Yeah.
• 1:01:52
  Yeah.
• 1:01:52
  It gives me a direction to go.
• 1:01:54
  Yeah.
• 1:01:55
  2012 King's Royal Win.
• 1:01:57
  That's your third and 13 world of outlaw wins.
• 1:02:00
  And you're doing all this at age 56.
• 1:02:02
  So the winning just continues.
• 1:02:03
  2014, retirement 2015.
• 1:02:07
  Unre Retirement didn't last long, huh?
• 1:02:10
  No, that was just a time came back filled in for Jason
• 1:02:14
  Johnson, I believe for a while.
• 1:02:15
  Yeah.
• 1:02:15
  I got the call for the second time.
• 1:02:18
  I think you got a lot of calls.
• 1:02:19
  Didn't I Filled in for, yeah.
• 1:02:20
  Yeah.
• 1:02:20
  A lot of, I was on the list a lot.
• 1:02:22
  When somebody couldn't make it, they called me.
• 1:02:24
  I don't think that's a bad call is it?
• 1:02:26
  For them?
• 1:02:26
  It wasn't.
• 1:02:28
  I. You filled in for Jason Johnson then, uh, got behind the wheel of the
• 1:02:32
  Chad Clemens car, swept the Jackson Nationals, and that's CJB number five.
• 1:02:37
  Following year 2016, you won the Knoxville 360 nationals with the ag and G range.
• 1:02:43
  3G In doing so, became only the second driver ever to win both four
• 1:02:48
  10 and 360 Knoxville nationals.
• 1:02:50
  Well, that's pretty good, I would think, given the list of entries.
• 1:02:54
  So, hey, I wanna talk about that other guy that we, that we
• 1:02:57
  touched on here a while back.
• 1:02:59
  2016 you won at Lebanon Valley in New York and what turned out
• 1:03:03
  to be Steve Kinzer's final race.
• 1:03:05
  Is that a legit rivalry?
• 1:03:06
  If he told me he was going to quit, I probably would've let him win.
• 1:03:11
  Really?
• 1:03:13
  But it's like we're out there and I won and he comes up and it's
• 1:03:16
  like, didn't know what he would be mad about, but then he retired.
• 1:03:20
  I was surprised.
• 1:03:21
  Yeah.
• 1:03:22
  There was a lot of stuff that we got along fine for a lot of things.
• 1:03:26
  Just every now and then it, it didn't work out.
• 1:03:28
  But you know, we were able to do a lot.
• 1:03:31
  The two of us being that young to be put in the spot that we were in for so long.
• 1:03:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:03:37
  We're sort of two different people Really.
• 1:03:39
  Yeah.
• 1:03:39
  And there's nothing wrong with that, but it worked out
• 1:03:42
  perfect for both of us really.
• 1:03:44
  There's a lot of things that we did together that people never believe
• 1:03:48
  or understand that we did, but it was always good for both of us.
• 1:03:51
  I think it was two guys whose passion to win was almost equal
• 1:03:55
  and neither guy was backing down.
• 1:03:57
  You know, I don't know what the percentage would be, but I think we got a real
• 1:04:00
  good percentage that finishing races, you know, uh, people wanna look at
• 1:04:05
  the part, well, this happened or this happened, but, uh, we, we did tank a
• 1:04:10
  couple times, but we never had a radio.
• 1:04:12
  We could talk to each other.
• 1:04:13
  So there's a lot of times he didn't know where I was going and
• 1:04:16
  I didn't know where he was going.
• 1:04:17
  And we met in the middle.
• 1:04:20
  Fair enough.
• 1:04:20
  We ran a lot of races together.
• 1:04:23
  You know, if, if you go back and add all that up, it's like, it's probably
• 1:04:26
  gonna have some pretty good odds.
• 1:04:28
  Yeah.
• 1:04:28
  That we got a lot of races that we ran together.
• 1:04:30
  I didn't get to run all these outlaw deals like he did.
• 1:04:34
  So he had the opportunity to run more races than I did.
• 1:04:37
  But it's the way it works out.
• 1:04:39
  But it, it was good.
• 1:04:40
  It was fun.
• 1:04:41
  I probably wouldn't have had a book if it hadn't been for him.
• 1:04:44
  And I hear he's got one.
• 1:04:45
  Yeah, he's working on a book right now with Dave Aride.
• 1:04:47
  Lemme promote his, that's very kind of you.
• 1:04:50
  2017, you become the first five time winner of the I 30 Short Track Nationals.
• 1:04:56
  The following year, 2018, you're now 62 years of age and you
• 1:04:59
  embark on the A SCS National tour.
• 1:05:02
  You had eight wins that season.
• 1:05:04
  48th consecutive year with a feature win.
• 1:05:07
  Yeah, it's, it's all been good.
• 1:05:09
  It's just some days are better than others.
• 1:05:12
  Uh, let's see here.
• 1:05:13
  You jumped into a car, uh, from a fellow in the upper Midwest, Brandon phone.
• 1:05:17
  You won an all star circuit of Champions race at I 34.
• 1:05:20
  You were 62.
• 1:05:22
  And then, dude, I gotta tell you, I love this and I'm sure anybody
• 1:05:26
  who was watching in home loved it.
• 1:05:27
  2019, you sat on the pole for the King's Royal at 63 years of age
• 1:05:32
  and they decided to interview you.
• 1:05:34
  Yeah.
• 1:05:34
  Before the race in the cockpit.
• 1:05:36
  And your response.
• 1:05:38
  I said, who is this?
• 1:05:39
  I didn't see that coming.
• 1:05:40
  That was great.
• 1:05:41
  Yeah.
• 1:05:41
  Tell the fans about that.
• 1:05:43
  And for those who may not have seen that interview, what happened there?
• 1:05:46
  I just got excited.
• 1:05:49
  It was like WWE e in the cockpit.
• 1:05:52
  Yeah.
• 1:05:52
  What's the, what's the guy's, the wrestler's name?
• 1:05:54
  Rick Flair.
• 1:05:55
  Yeah.
• 1:05:56
  Little Rick Flair.
• 1:05:57
  Yeah.
• 1:05:57
  Yeah.
• 1:05:58
  Fans loved it.
• 1:05:59
  Yeah.
• 1:05:59
  Eldora fans, they went nuts.
• 1:06:01
  Yeah.
• 1:06:01
  Yeah.
• 1:06:02
  I heard 'em and I don't hear good.
• 1:06:05
  Yeah.
• 1:06:07
  Talk for a little bit, if you would, Sammy, about your
• 1:06:09
  success at the Chili Bowl.
• 1:06:11
  You don't spend a whole lot of time wheeling a midget.
• 1:06:14
  You're the only five time winner.
• 1:06:15
  19 89, 92, 96, 98. And again in 2009, you know, if we go back to, I think
• 1:06:22
  it's 76, and I'm at Erie, Colorado.
• 1:06:25
  We're out there running Overrates with the Bobby Davis car.
• 1:06:28
  That's where they had the, they had the Rocky Mountain Midget
• 1:06:31
  Association and the one guy who got there, he asked me to drive his car.
• 1:06:35
  I said, I've never seen a midget, but I'll drive it.
• 1:06:39
  First night I won that, but not to take anything away, but it's like,
• 1:06:42
  you know, the sprint car is like, you're like riding a rocket and then
• 1:06:46
  you get in these lower class cars.
• 1:06:48
  It's just like things seem so slow compared to what you're doing, that you've
• 1:06:54
  got all this more time for me to think.
• 1:06:57
  You know about what I'm doing or how I'm doing it or what I need to change.
• 1:07:01
  I would think anybody would still say that, you know, if you get out
• 1:07:03
  of this card that's like just hauling butt and you get in one that's half
• 1:07:08
  as fast, it's gotta be easy because the things come at you so fast.
• 1:07:13
  It's like your brain or your computer's like going overtime
• 1:07:17
  and so when you get in something else, it's like just all goes down.
• 1:07:21
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:22
  It's, it's different.
• 1:07:24
  And I can see that everything I drove away, you know, like when I
• 1:07:27
  got that late model early, the first night I drove it, it was terrible.
• 1:07:32
  There was a lot of things, I mean, you had to pump the brakes and, and
• 1:07:35
  a lot of times I don't like that.
• 1:07:37
  I don't like that.
• 1:07:37
  We gotta change this and, and then we come back and did a few other things
• 1:07:42
  and then like won ever race, you know?
• 1:07:45
  But it's just, once you did this, the other stuff's easier.
• 1:07:48
  Okay.
• 1:07:49
  And it's not to take it away from anybody that does this or that, but
• 1:07:53
  you know, like when we first went to Tilly bowling or, or first time
• 1:07:57
  I even went to Ascot, it's like, these guys are backing in the corner.
• 1:08:01
  It's like, I don't think I need to do that.
• 1:08:03
  That's helped with doing some of these other things.
• 1:08:06
  That's the deal to win no matter what you get in.
• 1:08:08
  Yeah.
• 1:08:08
  Every time we figure out how to do it.
• 1:08:10
  But once you've run these super fast cars, the lower ones are a lot easier.
• 1:08:15
  Yeah.
• 1:08:15
  Everything else falls for me anyway.
• 1:08:17
  It's uh, it just gives you a lot of time to think.
• 1:08:19
  Well your success with the Chili Bowl historically now has
• 1:08:22
  made you a bit of a marked man.
• 1:08:23
  When you go down there, people see the swindell car and they get up on the wheel.
• 1:08:28
  Yeah.
• 1:08:28
  I think some of it is the people we race with have got a lot younger.
• 1:08:33
  Maybe some of their dads push 'em on, but haven't had very good
• 1:08:37
  luck there the last few years.
• 1:08:39
  Going back next year.
• 1:08:40
  Yeah, I'm gonna do that because I'm going to at least run a race when I'm 70.
• 1:08:44
  There you go.
• 1:08:45
  It might be the only one, but love it.
• 1:08:52
  I'm guessing you don't feel 70 some days.
• 1:08:56
  A lot of times I feel like I'm 35 or 40 with old plumbing.
• 1:09:05
  I feel like we've only scratched the surface of what Sammy's accomplished,
• 1:09:08
  uh, in open wheel, dirt track stuff, but it gives you a pretty good sampling
• 1:09:12
  of where the guy's been, what he's done in the remaining time we have,
• 1:09:15
  I wanna run through what he was doing while he was doing all that.
• 1:09:19
  1982, you passed your rookie test at Indianapolis.
• 1:09:23
  I mean, uh, you're fresh off of, uh, a couple World of Outlaws titles
• 1:09:27
  and you're dipping your toes into the Indianapolis swimming pool.
• 1:09:30
  1984, your first Daytona run with the Bush series in a Pontiac Ventura finished 12th.
• 1:09:37
  And I think, uh, your comments regarding your experience at Daytona were similar
• 1:09:41
  to what you experienced with the midget.
• 1:09:43
  You're wide open.
• 1:09:44
  You felt like everything was slow motion.
• 1:09:46
  Well, not that time, but, but then later on I went down and was asked
• 1:09:50
  to come down to do a test with, uh, Dick Mosos car, his cub car.
• 1:09:55
  After Robbie had passed, one of the older crew chiefs, you know, and he's talking
• 1:10:00
  to me and, uh, I come in, I took, well, the car's doing this, it's doing that.
• 1:10:04
  And he says, how make up cars you drove down here?
• 1:10:07
  I said, this is the first one.
• 1:10:09
  He says, how do you know all that?
• 1:10:11
  I said, well, when I get down to the corner, I just let go of the wheel
• 1:10:15
  and see which way where it goes.
• 1:10:17
  You know, whether it goes down or goes up, and then I can tell you exactly what it's
• 1:10:22
  doing because I have no influence over.
• 1:10:24
  He says.
• 1:10:25
  You take your hands off.
• 1:10:27
  I said, I don't put 'em behind my head.
• 1:10:32
  You just release it and let the car, because the Daytona is like,
• 1:10:36
  you don't wanna scrub any speed.
• 1:10:38
  If you got a death grip on it, you can't tell.
• 1:10:40
  But if you just relax and just track it so big, we're still going fast,
• 1:10:45
  but there's nobody else out there.
• 1:10:47
  Yeah.
• 1:10:47
  You got time to breathe.
• 1:10:48
  Yeah.
• 1:10:49
  But it's still really narrow when you get other guys out there.
• 1:10:52
  Yeah, sure.
• 1:10:53
  You just gotta let it flow.
• 1:10:54
  But I guess he wasn't ready for that answer.
• 1:10:58
  I wouldn't imagine So.
• 1:11:00
  Following year, 1985.
• 1:11:01
  You went back to Daytona.
• 1:11:03
  Here.
• 1:11:03
  Sammy Swindell, the innovator comes into play, I guess the year before.
• 1:11:07
  You had problems with the, what?
• 1:11:09
  The transmission tunnel with some heat on your leg?
• 1:11:11
  Yeah.
• 1:11:11
  And so what did you do to, uh, solve that problem?
• 1:11:14
  Uh, we just put the deals down to the Hold Your leg off?
• 1:11:17
  Yeah.
• 1:11:17
  An extension off the seat.
• 1:11:19
  The extension went all the way to the front on both sides.
• 1:11:21
  Who else was doing that?
• 1:11:22
  Nobody.
• 1:11:23
  But there was a lot of guys come over there and looked at that.
• 1:11:26
  And they had, they had 'em shortly thereafter?
• 1:11:29
  Yep.
• 1:11:29
  Because, um, I was in a car.
• 1:11:33
  It was an old car.
• 1:11:33
  It was one of the first front steers cars and, um, it wasn't quite right.
• 1:11:38
  We, but I had a buddy par helping me, so he was pretty good.
• 1:11:42
  He'd worked for quite a few Good guys.
• 1:11:45
  And we were having a little trouble figuring out, but
• 1:11:48
  I mean, we got it better.
• 1:11:49
  But you know, I was out running along.
• 1:11:52
  I come up behind Dave Marcus and got within about two and a half
• 1:11:56
  cars behind him and going into what's used to be turned three.
• 1:12:01
  His starter fell off.
• 1:12:02
  So this stuff just goes everywhere.
• 1:12:05
  You can't miss 50 pieces of stuff going.
• 1:12:08
  It just shrapnel everywhere.
• 1:12:09
  Ran over it.
• 1:12:10
  Well, it blew out the right front tire, and so I'm just trying to let it go
• 1:12:14
  up the hill to beat off some speed.
• 1:12:18
  And about that time, I guess Kyle Petty was coming while he hits me in the rear
• 1:12:22
  corner and turned to be 90 degrees.
• 1:12:25
  Into the wall.
• 1:12:26
  The first thing was, it was, um, you know, when it hit the wall it was pretty hard.
• 1:12:30
  And we had those goggles, you know, so I had You were open face helmet?
• 1:12:34
  Yeah, it was open face.
• 1:12:35
  Okay.
• 1:12:35
  But I had a nice pair of Scott motocross goggles.
• 1:12:38
  I think they hit the windshield, which is about three feet out.
• 1:12:42
  It doesn't matter which way I turned my head, it's gonna come back.
• 1:12:46
  Yeah.
• 1:12:46
  This is gonna hurt.
• 1:12:47
  Right.
• 1:12:48
  But that it was like, yeah, my feet dangled around too in that, so it's
• 1:12:53
  like when I ran, the next time we put those extensions in, I had a sprint car
• 1:12:58
  seat in there that we had to insert in.
• 1:13:01
  Had a lot of guys coming over looking at that stuff.
• 1:13:04
  But they didn't like my aluminum steering wheel.
• 1:13:06
  No, no inspector.
• 1:13:08
  Throw that one out.
• 1:13:09
  Oh, okay.
• 1:13:10
  I didn't know it wasn't working.
• 1:13:12
  I didn't know all the roles.
• 1:13:13
  Yeah.
• 1:13:14
  Yeah.
• 1:13:14
  That was your cup start in Atlanta, qualified 30th out of 50
• 1:13:17
  plus cars that same year, 1985.
• 1:13:20
  You drove Cliff Bar's.
• 1:13:22
  Number 11, modified for the Shafer 200.
• 1:13:24
  Anybody want to guess where he qualified on the pole?
• 1:13:27
  113 miles an hour.
• 1:13:29
  Never been in one before.
• 1:13:31
  Unbelievable.
• 1:13:32
  And they picked Syracuse.
• 1:13:33
  That's their mistake.
• 1:13:35
  Huh?
• 1:13:36
  It wasn't their mistake.
• 1:13:37
  I don't think so.
• 1:13:38
  Then the guy that was second quick was a sprint car guy.
• 1:13:41
  I can't think of his name.
• 1:13:42
  But anyway, he said I seen me go in that corner and didn't lift, and
• 1:13:45
  so I didn't go when he drove his.
• 1:13:47
  Yeah, we were, it was kind of weird.
• 1:13:49
  There's two sprint car guys on the front of the biggest modified race in the world.
• 1:13:53
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:13:55
  1985 Also.
• 1:13:56
  I think this was an eyeopener.
• 1:13:58
  You qualified 12th for the Michigan 500 IndyCar race.
• 1:14:02
  That was the race where you lost the right front wheel.
• 1:14:04
  But I think there was a lesson here about politics of the game.
• 1:14:07
  You had a teammate by the name of Fit Polty.
• 1:14:09
  Yeah, he's South America's biggest orange producer or family was
• 1:14:15
  Okay, so two time world champion.
• 1:14:18
  Nice enough guy, but he doesn't like to have somebody go faster than him.
• 1:14:23
  You out qualified him, right?
• 1:14:24
  Yeah.
• 1:14:25
  And then you passed him in the race.
• 1:14:26
  Yep.
• 1:14:27
  And then what happened?
• 1:14:28
  I got a call.
• 1:14:29
  Yeah.
• 1:14:30
  What'd the call say?
• 1:14:31
  I said I need to let him go back by.
• 1:14:33
  Why is that?
• 1:14:34
  Because he's racing for points and I'm not, probably didn't sit real well.
• 1:14:38
  No,
• 1:14:43
  we come down the front stretch and I told him to go ahead.
• 1:14:56
  You know what happened next?
• 1:14:58
  No, please tell me.
• 1:15:01
  My right front tire took a guy's windshield out in the parking lot.
• 1:15:04
  Oh, that happened right after that?
• 1:15:06
  Yeah.
• 1:15:07
  So you were going roughly how fast when the right front came off.
• 1:15:11
  Two 30 at the end of the back stretch.
• 1:15:13
  And the right front comes off.
• 1:15:14
  I'm sitting, I start to turn in the corner.
• 1:15:16
  It's like I'm gaining toe and it, you can see that you're
• 1:15:20
  processing all this in the IndyCar.
• 1:15:22
  The front tires are right here.
• 1:15:24
  Yeah.
• 1:15:24
  Yeah.
• 1:15:25
  Okay.
• 1:15:25
  And it's like, oh man, this is my first race.
• 1:15:28
  And when these things crash, they tear up people's feet.
• 1:15:31
  I just figured it out and drove it to my pit stall.
• 1:15:34
  Never crashed.
• 1:15:35
  Never crashed.
• 1:15:36
  That wasn't the last time that happened to you?
• 1:15:37
  No, when I was back, there was 86 when it drove John Bertera's IndyCar.
• 1:15:43
  Oh, I think it was 87.
• 1:15:44
  87. Yep.
• 1:15:45
  Yep, that's right.
• 1:15:46
  Go to Indy.
• 1:15:47
  And of, first I'm going down the front stretch and thing
• 1:15:50
  starts gaining toe again.
• 1:15:51
  I said, I've been here before.
• 1:15:54
  Geez.
• 1:15:56
  I kind of figured out, I just slowed down a little bit and um, the wheel came off.
• 1:16:00
  So we were trying to get the rookie deal done.
• 1:16:03
  You had the retest?
• 1:16:04
  Yeah, it was a retest.
• 1:16:06
  Okay.
• 1:16:06
  You know, since I didn't get the race the other time.
• 1:16:09
  So they come there, they wrap up the bottom of the car, gotta pick it up, gotta
• 1:16:12
  take it, takes about 45 minutes to get the car back and they put another wheel on it
• 1:16:17
  and try to tighten it up a little tighter.
• 1:16:19
  And then we go back out, we're run it again, run again.
• 1:16:22
  And it's like, whoa, here it.
• 1:16:23
  Goes again.
• 1:16:25
  Every time going into one, I don't know, it must be downhill or something.
• 1:16:28
  So the second time that tire comes off, I jump out, leave the motor
• 1:16:33
  running and go gather all the parts up.
• 1:16:36
  Then they get over there and I sit here, just pick this up and put it on.
• 1:16:40
  I'll drive it back to the pits.
• 1:16:42
  It got, gets on the radio and No, no, I can't do that.
• 1:16:45
  I said, here he can hold my helmet.
• 1:16:47
  I'm just gonna go slow.
• 1:16:48
  No, they won't.
• 1:16:49
  They had to pick it up and do.
• 1:16:50
  It's like we're burning up a lot of time.
• 1:16:52
  You know, my IndyCar experience is probably had the most right front
• 1:16:57
  tires fall off and never crash.
• 1:16:59
  It's pretty amazing.
• 1:17:00
  Yeah, pretty amazing.
• 1:17:02
  What else was going on?
• 1:17:03
  1985 you ran the Poco Do IndyCar race.
• 1:17:07
  That coincided with the Knoxville National.
• 1:17:09
  So you're flying back and forth.
• 1:17:10
  86 Cliff Barkum puts together a bush car.
• 1:17:14
  You ran 17th at Daytona, also in 86 Indie Lights, American Racing Series.
• 1:17:19
  You were fifth on two occasions.
• 1:17:20
  And again, folks keep in mind.
• 1:17:22
  He's still running sprint cars during this time and, and doing so successfully.
• 1:17:26
  There's just so much going on.
• 1:17:27
  Yeah.
• 1:17:27
  Well we need to back up Pocono with aj.
• 1:17:30
  AJ Ford.
• 1:17:31
  Yeah.
• 1:17:31
  Talk about that.
• 1:17:32
  Yeah.
• 1:17:32
  Well, I had a friend, Cecil Taylor from Kansas City and he, he was at, came
• 1:17:37
  to a lot of races, sprint car races, stuff, but, uh, he was always with, aj
• 1:17:41
  did all his tires for years and he was always trying to get me in the car.
• 1:17:45
  So it's like, come down and he says, Hey, uh, AG wants to talk to you.
• 1:17:49
  It's like, oh, okay.
• 1:17:50
  And I go down.
• 1:17:51
  He says, you wanna run the car?
• 1:17:52
  I said, sure.
• 1:17:53
  Just like that.
• 1:17:54
  Yeah.
• 1:17:54
  You wanna run the car?
• 1:17:55
  Yeah.
• 1:17:56
  But he says, you got a seat.
• 1:17:57
  And I said, I don't run these cars.
• 1:17:58
  I don't have a seat that'll fit in their, um, so what'd they do?
• 1:18:02
  We just put towels or blankets, corporate blankets and stuff in
• 1:18:05
  there and filled it up the past tech.
• 1:18:07
  Well, nobody ever checked.
• 1:18:09
  Okay?
• 1:18:10
  He comes there and he tells me to pull the car out.
• 1:18:13
  We get, I get situated in there, take it out, and he says, okay, we'll go
• 1:18:16
  out here, run it in this gear, go this one, then go up to this gear and warm
• 1:18:21
  this up, make a lap and come around.
• 1:18:23
  And then when you come back around the next time, pick the
• 1:18:25
  throttle up there in three.
• 1:18:27
  We didn't have a radio or anything, so we'll have on the board for you.
• 1:18:30
  He asked his guys, gimme a timing sheet and he says like, look, uh, when
• 1:18:34
  you get to a two 10 average, we're gonna put you in the qualifying line.
• 1:18:38
  So it was like, I made my slow lap, went around and made the lap.
• 1:18:41
  When I come back around, it's in and it's like, well, what's going on?
• 1:18:44
  They're waving you in at this point?
• 1:18:45
  Yeah.
• 1:18:46
  Okay.
• 1:18:46
  After one lab?
• 1:18:47
  Yeah, I guess so.
• 1:18:48
  But you know, I had to come all the way around.
• 1:18:50
  So then I, then I had to run the threequarter lab, pull
• 1:18:52
  in and say, what's wrong?
• 1:18:54
  Oh, you just run two 13?
• 1:18:58
  Okay, we're gonna put you in the qualifying line.
• 1:19:00
  Well, what's it's like, well just stay here and, and we'll get over there and
• 1:19:03
  we get, you get back in and you go out.
• 1:19:06
  And so I go out and make my two laps qualifying.
• 1:19:10
  It comes in and he says, what do you think of the car?
• 1:19:13
  I said, well, it's a little tight.
• 1:19:14
  The front's pushing.
• 1:19:15
  He said, well, my car's not.
• 1:19:17
  And I said, well, look at me and look at you.
• 1:19:21
  And we're sitting on the front tires.
• 1:19:23
  You know right up front.
• 1:19:24
  Yeah.
• 1:19:24
  It says, oh yeah, yeah, that might make a difference.
• 1:19:29
  Jesus says, you're ready for the race.
• 1:19:31
  So it's like, I've got three laps and I start a 500 mile race.
• 1:19:35
  They only have one pit crew that for both teams, so they gotta run back and forth.
• 1:19:39
  Well, our first stop, I come in to get some fuel and they
• 1:19:42
  couldn't get the nozzle.
• 1:19:43
  They're messing, and they'd send me back out.
• 1:19:45
  Well, they had to change it.
• 1:19:46
  And then I come back in and they thought it was gonna run out, but
• 1:19:49
  they didn't tell me till later.
• 1:19:51
  I didn't have a radio, so I had to watch for the So you're running
• 1:19:54
  the whole show without a radio?
• 1:19:55
  Yep.
• 1:19:56
  And we can only do hand signals for the pit, you know, whatever.
• 1:19:59
  It's like I just gotta drive the car.
• 1:20:01
  Whatever it is, it's what it is.
• 1:20:03
  I'm just trying to stay outta trouble, go as fast as I can.
• 1:20:06
  And I didn't know until after the race, but they said Goodyear was gonna make 'em
• 1:20:09
  stop because they'd never run a set of tires 250 miles before the halfway point
• 1:20:15
  that I was gonna have to put tires on.
• 1:20:17
  So they had to go get another set of tires.
• 1:20:20
  Mounted up.
• 1:20:21
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:20:22
  And so I ran half the race on one set and half the race on another.
• 1:20:26
  Or the other guys are using TID sets every time they come in they put new tires on.
• 1:20:32
  Yeah.
• 1:20:32
  I talked with Rick Meers earlier.
• 1:20:33
  I said, well, I got three laps in.
• 1:20:36
  What am I gonna expect?
• 1:20:37
  He said, well, the tires fall off after about 30 laps, so, so it's like 200 laps.
• 1:20:42
  I'm still going on the same ones.
• 1:20:45
  Floyd says, well, that's the best he's ever had.
• 1:20:46
  Two cars finish in probably 30 years where he finished fourth and I finished ninth.
• 1:20:51
  That was an adventure.
• 1:20:52
  Uh, you mentioned little John John ERO in 1987, qualifying for the Indy
• 1:20:57
  500 qualified four laps at 2 0 1 0.84, and got bumped about 25 minutes
• 1:21:03
  remaining in qualifying same year.
• 1:21:06
  Ran an SCCA race at Memphis International Qualified six.
• 1:21:10
  You were third coming off the final corner and there was
• 1:21:12
  some sort of mechanical issue.
• 1:21:14
  It just turned off.
• 1:21:15
  Is that what it was?
• 1:21:15
  Yeah.
• 1:21:16
  Coasted, but it was uphill.
• 1:21:18
  Oh.
• 1:21:19
  A little bit.
• 1:21:20
  Uh, but that was, that was cool to drive a road race car, TransAm car,
• 1:21:24
  and to get in and like we practiced and, and when I stopped, the guys
• 1:21:28
  were, we're in the fast five.
• 1:21:29
  We're in the fast five.
• 1:21:30
  And I said, what is that?
• 1:21:34
  We get to race for the bull fastest.
• 1:21:35
  Five cars.
• 1:21:37
  Must been all right.
• 1:21:38
  Yeah.
• 1:21:38
  Never been in one making it happen.
• 1:21:41
  91. You ran.
• 1:21:42
  Uh, Dick Mosos Olds in the Daytona 590 3-year-old buddy Harold Annette
• 1:21:47
  from, uh, Des Moines puts together a NASCAR Bush team ran Darlington, Dover
• 1:21:51
  Milwaukee, and IRP 95 NASCAR Truck series with Channel lock five top fives.
• 1:21:57
  Best finish a fourth at Bristol.
• 1:21:59
  Another good outing at Bristol.
• 1:22:01
  Yeah, should have won that one.
• 1:22:02
  Didn't have a very good motor, but the car was great.
• 1:22:05
  They hired a guy that tested a lot there, Roland Bka, and
• 1:22:09
  he said, we'll be on a pole.
• 1:22:11
  And it's like, okay, that's fine with me.
• 1:22:13
  But we were second, but we didn't get any practice because the oil tank was leaking.
• 1:22:18
  That was when you, everybody ran the bottom.
• 1:22:20
  But if I could get five laps in, then the front cross member quit
• 1:22:23
  hitting, hitting, going in the corner.
• 1:22:25
  It would hit scoot up.
• 1:22:27
  You know about a foot?
• 1:22:27
  Is that tire pressure thing front?
• 1:22:29
  Yeah.
• 1:22:29
  Okay.
• 1:22:29
  Yeah, some of it.
• 1:22:30
  So we had whatever the few laps to go, well, I could just pull
• 1:22:33
  away when we get to the traffic.
• 1:22:35
  I didn't know any better.
• 1:22:36
  They all stayed on the bottom.
• 1:22:37
  I just go around the outside of the.
• 1:22:39
  The lap cars and we'd get so far ahead, but then they'd line us back
• 1:22:43
  up to put the guy right behind you.
• 1:22:45
  So going in the first corner, he just drove in there and nailed me.
• 1:22:48
  Mm. So I slid up.
• 1:22:50
  It was all cup guys ahead of me.
• 1:22:51
  If I could have got through them first 2, 3, 4 laps, I was gone again because
• 1:22:56
  I, I was running almost wide open.
• 1:22:58
  If you were down on power, that would make sense.
• 1:23:00
  You could do that.
• 1:23:01
  Good.
• 1:23:01
  Yeah.
• 1:23:01
  Yeah.
• 1:23:02
  I know we're getting toward the end.
• 1:23:03
  'cause see, I wanna wrap up with, tell you what, two things here.
• 1:23:08
  Another quote.
• 1:23:08
  To be completely secure, you've got to be the one who controls the money.
• 1:23:12
  That's what I'm talking about.
• 1:23:14
  You know, the IndyCar thing with the fedal worked pretty hard.
• 1:23:17
  First I started, went to Patrick's 'cause there's a lot of guys that worked on the
• 1:23:21
  sprint cards and stuff that worked there.
• 1:23:23
  So I, I got him to first talk to him and then let me come there and
• 1:23:26
  just leave my trailer and we'd come work, do some work at the shop.
• 1:23:29
  Yeah.
• 1:23:30
  Okay.
• 1:23:30
  While we were up that way, team man or come by.
• 1:23:32
  So he, he'd let me go test sometime.
• 1:23:35
  Well finally we, we run into that.
• 1:23:37
  But it was too an odd way.
• 1:23:39
  Their new car coming from England from March chassis company over there.
• 1:23:43
  They were trying to get it flown in so they could test it.
• 1:23:46
  Midland, Texas and Chicago was like all froze up or the airport was closed.
• 1:23:51
  So he asked me, he said, you got a shop down there?
• 1:23:54
  And I said, yeah.
• 1:23:55
  I said, I got a nice shop, big shop.
• 1:23:57
  And so they flew the car in down there, assembled it at my shop.
• 1:24:02
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:24:02
  Their new car and let me go out.
• 1:24:05
  Emerson started running, ran laps in the old car to get a base
• 1:24:09
  deal and then he ran the new one.
• 1:24:11
  And then when he left, they let me drive the old one.
• 1:24:14
  What happened?
• 1:24:15
  Well, I guess I did all right.
• 1:24:16
  'cause they asked me to come to another test.
• 1:24:20
  I'd never been in an Indy car, never been on a road course.
• 1:24:22
  Never been at that place.
• 1:24:24
  Yep.
• 1:24:24
  And I was only.
• 1:24:26
  Four tenths off what he ran in it.
• 1:24:28
  Yeah.
• 1:24:28
  And so they let me go there.
• 1:24:29
  We went to Phoenix and I think Poncho Carter drove the car.
• 1:24:34
  I got in it the next day and went faster than him, just like it was right off Then.
• 1:24:39
  One world outlaw race, said Aberdeen, South Dakota.
• 1:24:43
  Okay.
• 1:24:43
  Team manager calls me up, Hey, can you come to Michigan and test
• 1:24:47
  Emerson's been here for four days and uh, they had another guy,
• 1:24:51
  Bruno Elli or something like that.
• 1:24:53
  Okay.
• 1:24:54
  He'd never run on an hole and the bumps and you know, can you come here and run?
• 1:24:58
  Said, sure.
• 1:24:59
  Just figure out a way to get me there.
• 1:25:01
  Go out.
• 1:25:01
  The first time they said, well, Emerson did this.
• 1:25:03
  You can run it wide open.
• 1:25:05
  You can do, you know, we put more wing on it, it'll be a little slower, you know?
• 1:25:09
  But then I wound up running in five laps.
• 1:25:12
  What?
• 1:25:12
  He ran in one with a less wing.
• 1:25:14
  Then they started talking, what do you think?
• 1:25:16
  What do you think?
• 1:25:16
  I said, well, if I was at Eldora, I would do this, or I would
• 1:25:19
  change the weight this way.
• 1:25:21
  Or change this pressure and stuff.
• 1:25:22
  And even with still with more wing on it, we went, kept going faster.
• 1:25:27
  Yeah.
• 1:25:27
  So then they decided they would invite me back for the race, but I didn't
• 1:25:31
  know they weren't gonna let me win.
• 1:25:33
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:34
  No fun there.
• 1:25:35
  Your tires have to stay on.
• 1:25:39
  Yeah.
• 1:25:39
  I don't know, man.
• 1:25:40
  I thought about that after I read that a couple times.
• 1:25:42
  I'm like, that's just amazing.
• 1:25:44
  Being able to bring that car back in one piece, and not only once,
• 1:25:47
  but a handful of times there.
• 1:25:48
  Yeah.
• 1:25:48
  Later on down the road.
• 1:25:50
  Well, Sammy, uh, we certainly appreciate you coming by today.
• 1:25:53
  I'm really looking forward to this.
• 1:25:55
  I tell you what, to close things out earlier today, we dedicated to Kevin
• 1:25:58
  Gore Gallery, gore Family's here.
• 1:26:01
  There was a nice display in there dedicated to Kevin.
• 1:26:03
  You had an opportunity to race with Kevin.
• 1:26:05
  We lost him September 24th, 1999.
• 1:26:08
  You ended up sweeping that weekend.
• 1:26:10
  I think you provided a very nice tribute to him.
• 1:26:13
  If I understand correctly, in Victory Lane on the, the second
• 1:26:16
  night of the program, if you would, a couple remembrances of Kevin Gore.
• 1:26:20
  Never had a problem racing with him.
• 1:26:22
  Never had any problems and we always had some good talks the few that we had.
• 1:26:26
  This is just a shame things happen, but sometimes things happen for a reason.
• 1:26:30
  I think maybe the common ground for the two of you would be
• 1:26:32
  the passion and the work ethic.
• 1:26:34
  It, it seemed we were kind of the same, but I wasn't around him a lot.
• 1:26:38
  Sure.
• 1:26:38
  To really, really knowing him that that well, but kind of a lot on the same page.
• 1:26:42
  Same deal, same thing.
• 1:26:43
  You know, we could have got along for a long time.
• 1:26:45
  Yeah.
• 1:26:46
  Well, I appreciate the thoughts.
• 1:26:48
  Victory lane's that second night of the program.
• 1:26:51
  Did you put a special hat on that night?
• 1:26:52
  I think somebody said you may have dawned an amaco cap in Victory Lane.
• 1:26:55
  Does that sound right?
• 1:26:56
  Yeah.
• 1:26:56
  Yeah.
• 1:26:56
  Nice tribute.
• 1:26:57
  And then, uh, Sammy, I know you've got to get up the road here
• 1:27:00
  soon, but you got time to sign some autographs Oh, and whatnot.
• 1:27:03
  Yeah.
• 1:27:03
  Yeah.
• 1:27:08
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