Mario, I understand.
An article for the Keystone Motor Club
"The engine sounds, they are my song" - Andretti
Image by Campsite Media House
By:
RACER Staff | 4 hours ago
“I look at a photo or a trophy today, and you know what? It’s more than a memory. I get the feeling. I can hear it. Those engines, those sounds, they are my song. Stock, NASCAR, Formula 1 — they all played a different sound. And I loved them all. And I still do.” – Mario Andretti
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Mario, I understand.
It was years ago I was at Sebring shortly after they made two race tracks.
It was dark, late at night, and I wanted to see what the new track was like.
After I walked the new track,, I decided to walk the track I had known to be the original track.
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I remembered my first year there and white short tailed Porsches. Long tailed prototypes had been run at Daytona 24 hours
only a few weeks before.
I remember the first time I saw disc brakes so hot that they were glowing red, almost yellow as the cars went by.
I remember one night when the sky to the North was lit up and I thought it was some kind of storm, but later learned
that the Air Force did night time bombing runs in Avon Park, and the whole Northern Sky was lit up.
I could faintly hear the sounds of the cars from the days when they raced in T-shirts, no roll bars, no guard rails, with telephone poles right next to the infield pavement.
One year I saw the original Grand Sport Corvettes......dark Sunoco Blue with Yellow side exhaust pipes......I thought how hokey it looked with yellow
side pipes.......before I knew that 12 hours of bare flames traveling down the 4 inch pipes was so hot that the steel changed to yellow on it's own
......and stayed that way.
I remember the year that a red Ferrari street car came blasting the horn, flying down pit road too fast, being late to line up for the start, without regard for the spectators who were walking packed in the roadway. Because of that one rich jerk, Ferrari lost a lot of respect in my eyes.
The Ford GT 40's had to have "luggage space" and the officials used a wooden Coca Cola crate slid into the back end of a cooling
air passage to be the "official suitcase".
Roger Penske's Camaro "won the race, and Porsche was first in class" according to Car and Driver magazine.
I have the poster from that year. I have a lot of Sebring posters, One with the Chaparral, The GT 40's,..................... bunches of them.
That Camaro engine was built by TRACO, Travis and Coons near the Penske race shop. It was a show engine......It had an excellent engine breathing system.
I remember that every year there was less and less spectator area and more and more spectators. Over the years, I acquired a collection of driving lights and headlights from race cars, that found their way onto some of my street cars. I could see first hand when the race cars were inspected, I got a lot of ideas, and my autocross car had ducting from the headlight to the carburetor.
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I remember when Mark Donohue did not slow down when there was ankle deep water on the course. I thought that was remarkable that when I could barely see,
Mark was still racing. I later figured it out........ As he was driving onto the Runway to head South, he swung wide in the rain, and actually drove BESIDE the runway as he raced South while others couldn't see either, and others had slowed down. Years later when I was racing sailboats, when conditions got really bad and wind was 50 mph, others were surviving.......but I was still racing. I recall one sailboat race when I was out front leading..... and dumped the boat over! I had rigged lines on the boat so I could bring it back up faster........I had drilled holes in the Hobie Cat metal frame so the water would dump out faster and get going again. I caught the pack, and dumped it again!.....brought it up and passed the pack again.... I dumped the boat 5 times in one race, caught and passed them each time and won the race! Like Mark Donohue, I learned that bad conditions are always worse on the other guy.
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I saw how the race cars set their suspension alignments. I drove to Jacksonville one Sunday morning and measured every Hobie cat.
I toed my twin hulls slightly in and the boat went faster. I epoxied the frame, made a stainless steel brace and added extra bolts to stop frame flex and the boat went faster.
When the wind would spurt, my boat instantly accelerated, while others took out the slack before moving.
I adjusted the rear twin rudders, so my boat would turn quicker and put a little negative camber into those rudders. I could tilt the mast forward and it would accelerate, tilt it back and it had more top speed. Sail it with one rudder out of the water, and it went faster....Tilt the boat onto one hull and it went faster.
I beat the Hobie Cat World Champion 5 times on the same day, and no one had ever done that before me or since then.
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That night
I could faintly hear the sounds of the cars from the days when they raced in T-shirts, no roll bars, no guard rails, with telephone poles right next to the infield pavement.
As I walked past the pits I could see Team Penske physically pushing the Sunoco Blue, Kirk F White Ferrari at every stop, when it went back out.
Pretty soon every team was pushing their cars as they were accelerating out of the pits.
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The sounds of the cars that night were getting louder as I walked past the pits, the voices were getting louder.
The ghosts of Sebring will always be with us.
Mario, I understand..................... Thanks for listening.
-Bob Vail
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