Showing posts with label race cars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label race cars. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 09, 2026

Happy birthday to David Hobbs! He started racing in 1959 in his mom's Morris Oxford. Within three years, he was at Daytona driving someone else's Jaguar and lending his own Lotus Elite to Jimmy Clark.


The career that followed touched every corner of motorsport. 

Formula 1 for Honda, McLaren, and BRM. 
Sports cars in the Ford GT40, the Mirage, the Ferrari 512M, and Porsche 917s and 956/962s. 
IMSA Camel GT for BMW. 
Fifth place at the Indianapolis 500 in a McLaren. 
Championships in Formula 5000 and Trans-Am. 
He even led the Daytona 500 in a NASCAR stock car. 




A British driver leading the biggest stock car race in America. In the same career where he raced a Porsche 917 and a Ferrari 512M. 

 Twenty starts at Le Mans. Two third-place finishes. 
Two decades of returning to the same race, in different cars, for different teams, across different eras of the sport. 

After the driving Hobbs joined CBS in the early 1970s and became one of the most recognizable voices in American motorsport television, eventually working with SPEED.

Saturday, July 12, 2025

great looking race car, 1947 Indy 500 Novi Governor Mobile Special, a Kurtis Kraft of course. With a gear driven supercharged engine designed by Bud Winfield, brother of famous engine building icon Ed Winfield

 



When they showed up to Bonneville in 1947, salt flat racing pioneer Ab Jenkins wasn’t feeling well, so he decided to pass his driving duties of the Novi Mobile Special onto his son Marv to race that day.

 The canopied version of the Kurtis Kraft car looked beautiful, but she had a troubled past.

 At the Indy 500 earlier that year, Herb Ardinger started and finished in 4th place with his #54 Novi Governor Mobil Special. Teammate Cliff Bergere drove the #18 Novi Governor Mobil Special with mixed results however, spinning out during qualifying, then starting in 2nd position only to a piston on lap 62 of the race.

Thursday, May 09, 2019

I didn't know that Smokey had an AAR Eagle! It only raced once, then sat for 30 years in his shop, partially dismantled


Only four of these cars were built in 1969, with the car shown here being delivered to legendary racing team owner and master of racing engine trickery “Smokey” Yunick. It was equipped with a 159-cubic inch DOHC turbocharged Ford V-8, producing upwards of 800 brake horsepower! Numbered as the #44 “City of Daytona Beach” car, it qualified 11th for that year’s Indianapolis 500.

Veteran Joe Leonard qualified Smokey's gold speedster 11th and ran as high as second before mechanical issues. Finished sixth despite having to change the radiator


Equipped with Hilborn fuel injection, four-speed Hewland LG500 transmission, rack-and-pinion steering, front and rear independent double-wishbone suspension with adjustable coil-overs

The Santa Ana, the second Indianapolis car created by British designer Tony Southgate for Dan Gurney’s All American Racers (AAR), was named after AAR’s hometown. Based upon the original Eagle design, it featured a wheelbase extended by 3½ inches, with an all-new chassis and extended offset bodywork, making it the lowest and widest AAR racer to date. USAC rule changes required the use of wider wheels, now 10 inches in front and 14 inches in the rear, while other new features included ventilated disc brakes, an improved roll bar design, and Gurney’s brilliant helical-toothed steering box, which provided more rack-and-pinion travel.


During the race, Leonard moved up through the field to 2nd and was chasing the leader, Mario Andretti, when an errant hose clamp punctured a hole into his radiator. Living up to his slogan, “The Best Damn Garage in Town,” Yunick had his car and driver back on the track within 14 minutes, and Leonard would finish the heated race 6th overall. Nonetheless, Smokey was disgusted that the aforementioned hose clamp had cost him the race and took the Eagle Santa Ana back to his shop. There, after only one race, it was partially dismantled and then left to sit for the next 30 years.

It wasn’t until just before his death in 2001 that Yunick agreed to sell #44. The Eagle was then fully restored by a team that included famed Indianapolis car builders A.J. Watson and Willie Davis

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