Courtney Force Drag Racer
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/drag-racing/825905-courtney-force-first-time-first-win.html

First race
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/d...irst-race.html

https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/drag-racing/825904-courtney-force-record-fastest-funny-car-1-000-feet-322-mph.html

Go Pro
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/drag-racing/825902-go-pro-courtney-force.html

Pomona
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/d...ce-pomona.html

100th pro woman win
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/drag-racing/825898-100th-pro-win-woman-courtney-force.html

Wins FC Nitro Shootout
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/drag-racing/825389-courtney-force-wins-fc-nitro-shootout.html

Visit from Courthey
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/d...ney-force.html

Arizona Nationals
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/drag-racing/825899-arizona-nationals-courtney-force.html

ESPN Body Issue
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/drag-racing/825897-courtney-force-espn-body-issue.html

Taking out dad
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/d...ohn-force.html

First Family
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/d...ag-racing.html

 

Connie Kalitta Drag Racer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a7ZZy3Mq8Y by Steve Klemetti

https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/d...ml#post9381889

 

Don "The Snake" Prudhomme Drag Racer NHRA Today

 

For anyone going to Hot Import Nights type the code HOT in any promo code box.
Feel free to pass this around.


HIN returns to the Tampa Convention Center on Saturday November 19th, 2016.

 

Bruce McLaren Can-Am Racer, Indy 500, F5000, car designer



[h=2]EXCERPT: Can-Am's darkest day[/h] George Levy / Images by Pete Biro

Monday, June 1, 1970. Bruce McLaren is flying in every sense of the word. Everything seems to be going his way. The first Can-Am race of the season is 12 days away, which he and his team will enter as defending champions. At the moment he is on a plane back to England from a landmark success on yet another battlefront, Indy car racing. The new M15 had wowed the Americans. By the time the race was over, other teams were lining up to buy ones of their own.

Bruce spent part of the flight with M15 designer Gordon Coppuck, discussing ideas for their 1971 Indy challenger. The rest of it with former Cooper teammate and three-time world champion Jack Brabham.
"Bruce talked about retirement from driving," Brabham recounted to Eoin Young in McLaren Memories, "and said perhaps he would give up Formula One and just do testing and the Can-Am series."
He'd been contemplating cutting back for some time. As the previous season had drawn to a close, he'd had discussions with Chris Amon and Jochen Rindt about replacing him as Denny's F1 teammate. Neither came to pass - in part because they wanted to do the Can-Am as well, and Bruce loved the big bangers too much to give them up just yet.
The next day, Bruce was at Goodwood testing the team's new series challenger, the M8D, a car immediately dubbed the Batmobile because of its squinty-eyed resemblance to the car in the 1966–1968 ABC TV series. McLaren mechanics Alastair Caldwell and Jimmy Stone watched it exit the pits.


A few minutes later, Bruce was dead.


"We were testing the Formula One and Can-Am car at the same time," says Caldwell, "which was quite normal for us.
"He was running the Can-Am car and I saw the body come off, or the car appear with the [rear deck] off, up in the air. Then he went out of sight and slammed into the marshal's stand, which was like an earthen redoubt. The car stopped instantaneously at a high speed."
Caldwell and Stone raced to the scene. When they got there, there was a fire, which they quickly extinguished.
"The fire had no effect on him. It had burned his face a little bit and melted the visor, but that's not what killed him. What killed him was the impact. It was like a rag doll. I think every bone in his body was broken.
"I took him out of the car and held onto him until the ambulance came."
The consequences of the deck coming off were more devastating than they would have been in previous years because of a rules change implemented at the end of the previous season. The SCCA had banned tall, suspension-mounted wings, bowing to pressure from the FIA. So Bruce and the gang installed a low, body-mounted wing between the M8D's tailfins. For the rest of his life, McLaren's Teddy Mayer would hold the rules change accountable for his friend's death.
"When I said the wing ban led to Bruce's death, okay, it was a mechanical failure or whatever you want to call it," Mayer told Pete Lyons in Can-Am Photo History.
"However, if the rear wing had been mounted directly on the suspension uprights, as in 1969, when (it) came off, you presumably wouldn't have had the huge change in the center of aerodynamic pressure that put him out of control.
"I think they were banning the wrong thing."
What should they have banned?
"Bad engineering."
There was much to Mayer's argument. Hall and others had run wings safely and effectively the past three seasons. McLaren had run a tall, suspension-mounted wing the entire 1969 Can-Am, sweeping all eleven races.
There are to this day varying accounts of why the deck came off. Caldwell believes it was human error. In the rush to send the car out, the retaining pins weren't inserted. These things happen. Others say they were inserted and simply worked loose. Either way, the result was the same.
The news rocketed across the racing world. Former teammate Chris Amon was driving back to London when he heard it on the radio. "Bruce was sort of the last person you expected it to happen to. He was a guy that made very few mistakes as a driver, which made it all the more unexpected."
Tyler Alexander was eating breakfast in Indianapolis with Dan Gurney when Mayer found him. "The shock of what Teddy had just said - and the look on Dan's face when I told him - tended to take your breath away."
Howden Ganley got a call from Bruce's neighbor Barry Newman, who was sponsoring his factory McLaren F5000 car.
"People ask me, 'Do you remember what you were doing when you heard that JFK had been assassinated?'" Ganley wrote in his fine autobiography. "Yes, I can, but even more clearly I can remember what I was doing when I heard that Bruce McLaren had been killed."
Dr. Frank Falkner, the world-renowned pediatric expert and lifelong racing insider who had helped get the Can-Am off the ground, said in his Road & Track eulogy, "Can there have been in the history of the sport a more universally loved character?"
Can-Am 50th Anniversary is available for a limited time at QuartoKnows.com for $36 with promo code LEVY16. It features over 300 period photos by star lensman Pete Biro and text based on George Levy interviews with over 75 original participants. A hand-signed 1-of-300 Collector's Limited Edition, including slipcase and 4 8x10 art prints is available directly from the authors for $150. Contact george@georgeplease.com

 

Robert Yates NASCAR team owner, engine builder



[h=2]NASCAR: Robert Yates battling cancer[/h] Monday, 31 October 2016


RACER Staff

NASCAR engine builder and former team owner Robert Yates has begun treatment for liver cancer, his family has announced.
News of Yates's illness was revealed by his son Doug via Twitter on Monday.
Yates spent 21 years as a team owner at NASCAR's top level, earning 57 race wins, 49 poles, and the 1999 championship with Dale Jarrett in the No.88 Ford Thunderbird. His cars also won the Daytona 500 three times – twice with Jarrett (1996 and 2000), and once with Davey Allison (1992).
He also enjoyed immense success as an engine builder: cars fitted with his motors made 77 visits to Victory Lane, and helped Bobby Allison to the 1983 title with DiGard Racing.
Roush Yates Engines, headed by Doug Yates, operates in present-day Cup as the engine supplier to Ford teams.

 

Jimmie Johnson NASCAR Stock Cars
Photo
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/photography-graphics/825692-jimmie-johnson-nascar.html

Getting a shot toward championship #7
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/a...ml#post9382163

 

Juan Pablo Montoya Indy cars and others
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/a...ml#post9382189

 

Alexander Rossi Indy Cars

https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/a...der-rossi.html

 

Austin Coil Drag Racing Legend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMoKEomLsu0

The image of Austin Coil as a cool and calculating puppet-master is debunked in this episode of Legends: The Series, Season Three in which the man who won a record 17 NHRA Championships as Funny Car crew chief to Frank Hawley and John Force owns up to what was happening beneath that seemingly calm exterior.

“I was a nervous wreck,” Coil says. “I had stomach problems. I ate Rolaids like they were candy. I was upset most of the time. I just felt like it was unprofessional to stand on the starting line and scream like a raving maniac (but) some of the old guys I worked with nicknamed me ‘The Tyrant.’ I don’t think it’s because I was so mild mannered.”

With a shout out to the late “Jungle Jim” Liberman, with whom he shared a special bond, Coil relives the era of Funny Car match racing in which the Chi-Town Hustler he campaigned with John Farkonas and Pat Minick made as many as 96 different appearances in a single season, sometimes racing five straight days at five different race tracks.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t until he hooked up with John Force in 1985 that Coil’s true genius was exposed.

“After two world championships we were on the verge of having to quit,” he remembered, “because our team did not have the ability to talk people out of their money. Force had the ability to get some sponsor money and not much ability to win races. It seemed like it could work (but) it was three years before we won a single race.” The rest, as they say, is history. - Dave Densmore