by Steve Holmes » Wed Mar 26, 2014 9:50 pm
This isn't so much a quote, its actually a small section from the brilliant Smokey Yunick book Best Damn Garage In Town. If you've not read this book, I highly recommend it. Smokey was one of those right there at the beginning of Nascar, and he tells holds no punches. He talks about his childhood, his time in the war, and his time spent in Indycar racing and Nascar. Its over 600 pages long, with very small text. Its a bit like reading a large exercise book. But its very funny, and provides an excellent insight into what Nascar was really like in the early days, which many prefer to avoid now, given its clean-cut image. Here is a small segment:
"The early newspaper and magazine reports didn't know a damn thing about auto racing, and didn't want to know. I had an idea that being sent to a race track to report was then a form of punishment for a reporter who fucked up. I can remember George Moore was a reporter for an Atlanta paper. He interviewed me and printed that we, "removed and threw away shocks as part of preparation for racing". At the time George was totally ignorant technically (He eventually became very good at race reporting).
"In 1964, he interviews me at Atlanta. I'm really way too busy, and he's too goddamned dumb to notice it. He asks about a car I built to run Indy, that originally was to have a turbine engine in it. He kept calling it a rocket engine. No matter how much I tried to get him to understand there was a huge difference, he would not listen. So he says, "Why did you change your mind and put a regular engine in instead of the rocket?" (The real reason was that I thought I was getting engine free to use, but they wanted $36,000 in advance for a rebuild cost when I finished and at the time I couldn't have handled $3,600, but I did have a good Offenhauser).
"Anyway, I'm really up to my eras with him by then, so I said, "You know how they make the rocket fuel here close by Atlanta?" (And they did, I don't remember the town) He said, "Yes, he knew." I said, "We found out all rocket fuel was made in square shapes and there were no small enough fuel lines manufactured in square shapes, so for lack of fuel lines, we switched to alcohol and an Otto cycle engine." He printed it".
This isn't so much a quote, its actually a small section from the brilliant Smokey Yunick book [i]Best Damn Garage In Town. [/i]If you've not read this book, I highly recommend it. Smokey was one of those right there at the beginning of Nascar, and he tells holds no punches. He talks about his childhood, his time in the war, and his time spent in Indycar racing and Nascar. Its over 600 pages long, with very small text. Its a bit like reading a large exercise book. But its very funny, and provides an excellent insight into what Nascar was really like in the early days, which many prefer to avoid now, given its clean-cut image. Here is a small segment:
"The early newspaper and magazine reports didn't know a damn thing about auto racing, and didn't want to know. I had an idea that being sent to a race track to report was then a form of punishment for a reporter who fucked up. I can remember George Moore was a reporter for an Atlanta paper. He interviewed me and printed that we, "removed and threw away shocks as part of preparation for racing". At the time George was totally ignorant technically (He eventually became very good at race reporting).
"In 1964, he interviews me at Atlanta. I'm really way too busy, and he's too goddamned dumb to notice it. He asks about a car I built to run Indy, that originally was to have a turbine engine in it. He kept calling it a rocket engine. No matter how much I tried to get him to understand there was a huge difference, he would not listen. So he says, "Why did you change your mind and put a regular engine in instead of the rocket?" (The real reason was that I thought I was getting engine free to use, but they wanted $36,000 in advance for a rebuild cost when I finished and at the time I couldn't have handled $3,600, but I did have a good Offenhauser).
"Anyway, I'm really up to my eras with him by then, so I said, "You know how they make the rocket fuel here close by Atlanta?" (And they did, I don't remember the town) He said, "Yes, he knew." I said, "We found out all rocket fuel was made in square shapes and there were no small enough fuel lines manufactured in square shapes, so for lack of fuel lines, we switched to alcohol and an Otto cycle engine." He printed it".