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November 1, 2009
IN THE ZONE
It’s Sunday morning, November 1.
Like a few million other folks, I suppose, my attention has turned
once or twice to what might happen on those banks at Talladega this
afternoon.
To watch the Sprint Cup gang negotiate en masse the sprawling
superspeedway for 500 miles, often in perfect three-deep, row-by-row
formation, is beyond amazing. What a testimony to incredible driving
skills, mutual trust – and guts. There is nothing quite like it in
the world.
Obviously, this kind of spectacle could not take place at some 30-
or 50-lapper on a short track. However, short tracks have often been
host to another kind of driving exhibitionism, which might just be
called getting in the zone.
Sometimes a couple of racers, when both are really hooked up, seem
to be able to transcend the normal relationship between cars and
track. Incredibly, such was the case for four straight years when
Larry Dickson and Gary Bettenhausen offered up the “Larry and Gary
Show,” sharing the USAC Sprint Car title just among themselves from
1968 through 1971. Joyce Standridge writes about the phenomenon in
Win It or Wear It.
| …it’s difficult to
explain the magic that occurred. “It was a privilege to
watch Gary and Larry race,” says a contemporary. “…you
were just racing for third place and in awe of the show
in front of you. I don’t think they were ever pals – the
stakes were too high – but I doubt they respected anyone
on the track more than they did each other.”
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It can happen on a single night,
as well. In his new book I’ll Never Be Last Again, Bill
Wimble recalls pulling into Airborne Park Speedway in Plattsburgh,
N.Y., in the early sixties and seeing a buddy from distant race
nights past, Buck Holliday.
| Over the years
Buck and Floyd (Geary, Buck’s car owner) raced more in
the Northern Territory, while I traveled south after
NASCAR laurels. Buck and I came across each other
occasionally along the way, renewing our somewhat
unusual combination of friendship and rivalry. Several
years later, I was in the McCredy #33 on a Sunday night
and there was an extra distance race at Plattsburgh.
Buck pulled in the pits with the C-38, and did we ever
go at it, lap after lap after lap. It was as if no other
cars were there. Never had two drivers been farther on
the edge than we were that night on that wide and racy
dirt. I don’t know why we didn’t wreck, but somehow we
never touched. We passed each other over and over. In
the end I won – and it is one of the races I actually
remember winning. |
Tom Avenengo, the
Pennsylvania-based racing historian and all around good guy,
recently sent around the clip below from youtube.com. It’s likely
Australia in the late fifties or sixties. No question the two
drivers featured stretched rather frighteningly the normal zone of
human performance, much to the delight of the 35,000 fans.
Sure, they were not going 200 mph as the NASCAR boys will be doing
this afternoon in Alabama, and it was a five-lap match race, not a
500-miler. But those dudes down under had no cages over their
Cromwell helmets, no Randy Lajoie seats, no Nomex, no nerf bars, no
soft walls.
Which do you think is the better show?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyYxEMbndLo
© 2009 Lew
Boyd, Coastal 181
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