One of those photos is incorrect (possibly one from each of the two attempts to run the race). The pole position photo clearly shows a hardtop while the Getty photo has a convertible. My guess is that the Getty photo is wrong. Tim's report says that Baker was in 5th in a Chrysler; there's a Chevy there. He also expressed surprise that the book didn't mention the front four were ragtops.
(CNN) -- A car lost control and slammed into the pits at a racetrack in California on Saturday evening, killing two spectators, authorities said. The crash took place during warmup laps -- an hour before the race -- at Marysville Raceway Park, about 40 miles north of Sacramento. "It appears the driver had a stuck throttle," said Steven Blakesley, an announcer for sprint car races. He was at this race, however, as a spectator. Saturday's race was the season opener for the California Sprint Car Civil War Series.
Jeff Gordon test drives a Camaro
Eight dollars was a heck of a lot of money in 1967-68. That's like fifty bucks today! The public has been spoiled by CBS/NBC/FOX and would never pay that kind of money today. Even for the Daytona 500.
They might pay that much to have DW taken off the air.
Marty Beckerman is an associate editor for MTV's Guy Code blog, an extension of MTV2's "Guy Code" television series, which takes a humorous look at "the laws of manhood." He was covering last weekend's NASCAR events at the Daytona International Speedway and spoke to several drivers.
"I was there to do a fish-out-of-water story about going to NASCAR and having a wild, crazy weekend. And, we were doing interviews with many of the drivers, and I was on the way to another interview we were looking for [driver] Johanna Long's trailer and the NASCAR publicist called Mr. Clements over and asked him for help finding her," Beckerman said. "He walked us toward where she was, and on the way over, I explained to him that Guy Code is rules for guys, how you treat your friends, how you treat your ladies, things like that. I was there to do a humor piece, so I asked him what would be Guy Code for race car drivers, and he blurted out [a phrase that used the n-word]."
Beckerman said that Clements didn't use the phrase in reference to any specific driver, but was instead illustrating that "if you drive roughly, you'll be treated roughly." He wrote the quote down in his notes (the conversation was not recorded) and, since he was in the presence of a NASCAR publicist, continued to speak with Clements for a few more minutes, before going to interview Long. Then, on Thursday morning, as the story continued to unfold, Clements called him to discuss the quote and let it be known that he regretted making it.
I don't see why we needed carbon fiber hoods and deck lids. There's some justification for standard issue decklids because teams can modify them for extra downforce as the article states. But carbon fiber is expensive, and like I said, it breaks up into slivers that cause punctures. Maybe they were afraid of a metal parts going into the stands but I think fiberglas would have been OK. A higher catch fence would be helpful and as I've said before, they gotta get people farther away from the fences before Carl and Brad go at it again.
True, the other major series use carbon, but those are monocoque bodies, not sheetmetal hung from a tube frame. They also aren't supposed to represent street cars. They don't hit things as often. And they aren't wedded to Sixties technology like NASCAR is. I also agree with Randy; some France crony is making money on the deal.
You need to do some reading about carbon fiber. In the state that Carl's hood was in, it would be like being hit with a cardboard box. It's not going to slice through a metal fence but you may be hit with silver dollar size pieces that went through the gaps. Indy car and Formula One drivers are surround in carbon fiber. You never hear of any of them being cut open.
Because it shatters into little pieces and the tether would end up restraining a two by three inch piece of the hood. The need to keep everything locked down is also reduced by the fact that carbon fiber weighs very little. It does leave lots of thin shards on the track to cause punctures though. Given the number of wreck in NASCAR, it seems unproductive to make body panels out of something that's difficult to clean up.
I don't guarantee that the hoods are carbon. But if I attributed all of the flying parts correctly then the hood lost all of it's integrity and started flapping around like a sheet before tearing into smaller pieces. To my eyes, that action looked more like carbon fiber than fiberglas. The deck lid flew off late in the action and stayed more or less intact.
