This is related to a local racer and local racing history. While there are many dead drag strips, Lemans, Sebring and Daytona are still around. If it offends you, don't read it. -Bob
Here's the thread that inspired this post:
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/ge...-liveries.html
I knew Dave Heinz, whose racing number was Heinz 57.
I saw him run the Corvette in the 24 hours of Daytona. I liked the car's looks and when I designed the jacket patch to be sold at the track that year, I put his car on the jacket patch. I probably have the only one left........on my MacDill Sports Car Club jacket.
Dave Heinz was a car dealer from Tampa....started with small British
BMC Sprites, Midgets, etc.........then he sold more expensive exotics....moved his dealership to Hillsborough Ave....Dave won the "Cannonball Baker Sea to Shining Sea" race sponsored by Car and Driver Magazine.......Later on, spoofs of the Cannonball Baker were named "Gumball Rallye"
and "Cannonball" in 1976.
When Dave Heinz passed away from cancer, one of the guys in the shop knew the value and the significance of that trophy and took it home with him..........I don't know what happened to his other trophies..... If anyone knows a Native American Indian named Ed MacDonald, he probably knows more than I do.
2016 Update:
Dave Heinz, local car dealer from Tampa Florida was a winner one year
and his trophy was rescued from a storage room at his car dealership on Hillsborough Avenue, Tampa by one of his employees when he passed away from lung cancer. The location of that trophy is unknown today 1 January 2016........but one day it will resurface.......
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How not quitting won a championship.....
I was at Road Atlanta the year Dave Heinz won the SCCA National Championship in Formula A.
That car had more power than a human could control. When you floored the gas, the car jumped sideways.....427 fuel injected Chevy V8.........at the halfway point in the final championship race, he was so far behind in 3rd place that the guy next to me said " Dave Heinz should just give up." Always optimistic, I said "What for? The other guys could always break".
The cars in first and second place did not break.....
They both spun out......and Dave Heinz drove to a National Championship.
From then on, his stationary and his business logo had a line across the
page left to right and a tiny winged Formula A car at the right edge......
That's when Dave got the Corvette......It was raced all over the country as well as Daytona, Sebring and Lemans. The huge fiberglass fender flares were made in a small shop on Lauber Way in Drew Park, Tampa by Rick Jellison.
Dave Heinz once told me that you could win plenty of races. You could win National Championships. You could be one heck of a racer, but until you drive a Corvette, no one knows your name.
Once you drive a Corvette..........EVERYBODY knows your name.-Bob