the 1960 Indy winner, and crew... the Ken Paul Special, with Smokey Yunick

Bill loaned me a couple videos... of the 1st Daytona 500, and the 1961 Indy 500, here are some things I found interesting

 here's the coverage that showed how hard ot was for fans to watch the Daytona race when it was on sand

 not very fun

 the #59 was a T Bird, and that is why I enjoy old Nascar, the cars were identifiable as something you could buy at a dealership or used car lot, and take racing yourself

 Helicopters over the corners

 Smokey Yunicks team was in the pits crewing on Firebalkl Roberts' Pontiac

 And these windscreen / airfoils are something I've not seen or noticed before

and in this old film, he wasn't called Richard Petty, he was call Dick Petty. More interesting than that is the nickname painted on the door, "Squirrel Jr". Richard was 22 years old

 He was in the pit row watching other cars race because he'd damaged the engine trying to keep up with the  sedans... they had a 10 mph advantage over his convertible

In the Darlington / Southern 500 he drove this Plymouth

 Dual shocks, and 9 plus leave springs

 above is a kids pedal car from the pre race parade, and it's telling t-birds to get out of it's way

and fueling was very dangerous, on the left of the screen are TWO guys with 50 pound CO2 extinguishers while the guys on the right are holding the fuel nozzle on the gas tank

 and at Indy, helmets were not boring, they had flying eyeballs, or sponsor stickers, or Dean Jeffries pinstriping

The best stories about NASCAR cheating

http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/vintage-speed/top-nascar-engineering-cheats
read all three pages, it's worth hitting the "Skip the ad" button.

Found on http://www.dogfightmag.com/blog

If you like this kind of thing, read more about Smokey's tricks http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2006/12/new-smokey-story.html

For a visual on how flagrant the cheating was, look at the side by side comparison of Jr Johnson's Galaxie http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-junior-johnson-made-1966-ford.html

or Richard Petty's 1968 Roadrunner http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2010/01/natl-assoc-of-what-cars-heres-another.html

Smokey Yunick's early race cars

found on http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=428585

New photo of Smokey Yunick's Boss 302, not many photos of this on the internet!

For the previous post that had the information about this rare car:
http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2006/12/smokey-yunicks-boss-302.html

Photo from that amazing treasure trove of rare photos of the coolest race cars: http://magneticbrain.blogspot.com/

above 2 found on http://us-muscle.tumblr.com/

Apollo 12 astronauts (and others) were near hero's and GM loaned them Corvettes and a Smokey Yunick connection

The video above and the vette below belong to Danny Reed, who has owned it since 1971

Above image from
http://www.corvetteactioncenter.com/forums/c3-general-discussion/107644-blast-past-apollo-12-1969-corvette.html



For more photos and the full story : http://www.vetteweb.com/features/vet1101_1969_chevrolet_astrovette_stingray/index.html

Crew of the Apollo 12 space rocket (Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon, Al Bean) each receive a gold Corvette coupe with 427-ci engine.

Through a special General Motors lease program, astronauts were allowed to drive any car for a year for $1. Bean and his Apollo crew ordered matching Corvettes distinguished by the black "wings" and red, white and blue logos on the front fenders reading "LMP" for lunar module pilot.


Why did they have black rear fenders?

The article states that those cars and the lease program had been arranged by Jim Rathmann, in co-operation with Ed Cole. Rathmann owned a Chevrolet Dealership in Melbourne, Florida.

We know that the Gold & Black combination is typical for Smokey Yunick's cars. And Yunick was crew chief for Rathmann for three years in a row (1960 to 1962) at Indianapolis. When Rathmann won the 1960 Indy 500, his car, named "Ken-Paul Special", was blue. But in '62, he drove the "Simoniz Vista Special" (car #44) which was sporting Yunick's Gold & Black.

Thus the colors of these three "Apollo 12" Corvettes, in the most likely possibility.

CORVETTE NEWS Feb/Mar 1970 p.16-17 "The magnificent men and their flying machines". Large picture (courtesy of Ralph Morse - Life Magazine), showing the three '69 Vettes with Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon and Al Bean sitting on the T-tops.

One interesting detail in the text deserves a quote: "...Especially Pete Conrad. His checklist of things to do before the flight of Apollo 12 included a call to a friend in the Central Florida Region of the Sports Car Club of America to make sure that all systems were go for his SCCA competition license. Conrad was reported to have said: I'd sure like to have it when I get back from the moon . And he was obliged by being issued 1970 license number 12 in honor of the flight..."

http://www.digitalcorvettes.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-118283.html

Every astronaut had a Corvette of the day. Every one "made full advantage of the social opportunities".

Every one except John Glenn. Glenn drove a Hillman Minx, and lectured the rest about "keeping it zipped up for the good of the program". http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=258763

I didn't know it, but Nik did a post on these 2 months ago: http://carrosantigos.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/the-astrovette/ and thourougly explained the astronaut/corvette association, and far better than I could, Nik is a far better writer. His blog is in Portugese, but you ought to install Google toolbar if you haven't yet, and that is because it will instantly translate any website from another language to your own.

Smokey Yunick's Hurst Floor Shift Special photos I've never seen before (1964)

Via http://s133.photobucket.com/home/racerdog45 for the best photo of it, with the coolest bumpers: http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2009/12/greatest-innovation-in-bumpers-ever.html