"The
Good Old Days"
Daytona 24 - 1983
Photograph
37
Our
friends at Klub Sport, Phil Bagley and John Singer (photographer),
were both present at this great race. Of course it was great
for Gunnar Racing because we won from the pole. They don't call
him "Brilliant Bob Wolleck" for nothing. Preston Henn
let us purchase this car from Andial because I told him if he
let me buy a good car, we'd start winning races...Bingo! We
got Bob Wolleck and then A.J. Foyt. This was the driver combination
including Preston himself, who did an hour in the car, and Claude
Ballot-Lena, who did a fantastic job, but he couldn't keep the
pace with Wolleck and Foyt. These guys were in another league.
Foyt had never driven a German car in his life, even though
this car was kind of built in Santa Ana, CA. Anyway...this picture
doesn't show a happy face in the group. From left to right its
Dieter Inzenhofer (Andial), Wolfgang Huffsted (Bosch), Ben Heaton
(Gunnar), hat dude -?, A.J. Foyt, Kevin (me), Stanley (Jim Bell's
best friend), and Tom Sutterfield (Gunnar). The reason the moment
looks so bleak is because we had a giant lead in the race and
it's rained so hard that they've red flagged it. I think that
this was only the second time the race was red flagged. The
first time was in the early 70's when the track fuel was contaminated
with water and all the cars started having problems. They stopped
the race to let the competitors sort the fuel problem while
the track changed tanks. The other time was our race because
it rained so hard that you couldn't see past the windshield
wipers. We're wondering how long this will last, we're wondering
how tough it will be on a semi-worn out engine to restart it
and run it hard again. It was pretty cold out and it seemed
to me it a few hours into sunup, so we had a lot of race to
go!!
Or, we had just found out that our room at the Holiday Express
was booked for the night.
We ended up winning with a giant lead. These frowns turned to
great smiles a few hours after this picture was taken by John.
I didn't know John at the time, but I thank Phil and John for
giving us this picture because it's a good memory for all of
us.
Happy 2007 Daytona 24!
<<
Previous Good Old Days |
More Good Old Days >>
|