Road Atlanta Can-Am

1970

50th Anniversary Edition

Text and photographs by Harry Hurst
1
Foreword by Vic Elford
 “It was one of the craziest races I’ve ever been in -
never to be duplicated. It never happened before
and there was no chance of it happening at any other track,
anywhere, except Road Atlanta in 1970.”
– Bobby Brown
#3 McLeagle - Chevrolet

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 Road Atlanta Can-Am
Published by:
Hurst Communications Inc.
1970
2138 Lombard St.
Suite 4A The story of one race and the cars and drivers that made it great.
Philadelphia, Pa., 19146
610-725-9600
www.GloryDaysOfRacing.com 50th Anniversary Edition
©2020 Hurst Communications Inc.
All photos ©1970, 2020 Harry E. Hurst
No text or photos in this publication may be excerpted, copied or reproduced without the
permission of Hurst Communications Inc. Text and photos by
First Edition, 2020 Harry Hurst

Foreword by Vic Elford

With comments by Vic Elford, Jim Hall, Roger Bailey, Brad Niemcek,
Charlie Agapiou, Lothar Motschenbacher, and others who were there.

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 Foreword.

The Can-Am was very special. The cars we raced were the fastest in the world, even faster than the
Porsche 917 I loved in endurance racing. And despite its name, the series was purely American in spirit – big,
loud and exciting.

We all came to Road Atlanta in 1970 never having turned a lap on the new course. I found the circuit to
be very similar to European circuits, with dramatic elevation changes and a variety of high and low-speed
turns. I really liked it, but then I had a big advantage: I was driving Jim Hall’s fantastic 2J “Sucker Car” which
cornered like it was glued to the track!

I took the pole rather easily but things didn’t work out quite as planned in the race. I won’t give away the
story here; I’ll let Harry’s photos and the voices of many friends from those days do that.

I hope you enjoy reliving this very special time in motorsports history!

Vic Elford
Plantation, Florida
August, 2020

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 Acknowledgements.

Harry Hurst

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 Dedication.

“The Can Am produced the fastest, most powerful

road racing cars that had yet been seen anywhere.
The men who drove them during the life of the series
were the best race drivers in the world.

“It was very special, and the racing community and

race fans knew it. It was a once-in-a- lifetime experience
that is not likely to ever be repeated.”
- Jim Kaser
SCCA Director of Competition
1963 - 1970

To Jim Kaser, the man who made the Can-Am.

10 Photo: Sports Car Club of America Archives/International Motor Racing Research Center.
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 Introduction.
The first race I ever attended was Sebring in 1965, the infamous “downpour” race that
Jim Hall won in his Chaparral. After that, Sebring was my home track and I became track
photographer there in the late 1960s. I loved Sebring for its history, but its setting and
facilities left a lot to be desired. When I also started going to Daytona for the 24-hour race,
I was impressed by the facility, but it wasn’t really a road racing course like bucolic ones I
had seen in the magazines: Watkins Glen, Laguna Seca, and Lime Rock.
Road Atlanta changed that for us road racing fans in the South. I’ll never forget driving
Photo: Bob Shapiro
into the paddock for the first time for this race. No one knew what to expect except it was a
new road course in the rolling hills northeast of Atlanta. What we found was heaven.
I had driven up from Tampa alone but had met a friend, George Whiteley, at one of
the races who lived in Atlanta and gave me a place to stay. While I was at a gas station in Gainesville, Ga., I saw Bill
Warner, who I had shot with at Sebring and Daytona, next to me filling his car. I said, “Hi,” and he recognized me,
responding with, “Do you have photo credentials? I have a spare if you need one.” I was just planning to get in with a
regular ticket and jumped at the chance. Thanks, Bill – these photos could not have been taken without you!
Being at a new track meant learning where were the good places to take photos. In the past I would study the
photos of other photographers I admired and try to emulate their shots. But here, we were all novices and would
have to find the best places. We also had to learn how to get around the circuit. At Daytona and Sebring, flat tracks
where you could see the oncoming cars from a distance away, we could just run across the track when there was a
break. Not at Road Atlanta!
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During a lull at practice, I tried to take a shortcut from the pit/paddock area to the infield by crossing the track
at the start/finish line and found myself going down into a gorge with a stream! I very sheepishly had to backtrack
and go the long way around like everyone else.
I ended up going back to Road Atlanta several times over the years: for the next year’s Can-Am; in 1974 as a crew
member in the six-hour Camel GT race; and the last time in the 1980s representing my client, Black & Decker, at an
IMSA support race for the Renault Cup (whose series manager was Vic Elford!)
But this race was my favorite. I did not appreciate the significance of what happened there on September 13,
1970, until I started putting this book together. Originally, I did not think I had enough photos to do a complete book
of just my shots, but as I dug through the files I found I had shots I did not even remember taking.
This book is done in the same format as my other two Sebring books; a style I feel conveys the human side
of racing and gives an opportunity for people who were involved to tell their own story. In one way this book is
different from the other two. Here I was able to contact many of the crewmembers of the teams for their stories. I
found that I had taken photos of many of them – I’m not sure why, since I did not know who they were at the time.
But through people like George Levy and Roger Bailey, I was able to identify them and set up interviews. Many were
hilarious. I loved hearing what life was like behind the scenes of big-time auto racing in that era.
I hope you enjoy their stories and the pictures that accompany them as you take a “trip back in time” to the 1970
Road Atlanta Can-Am.
Harry Hurst
Palm Harbor, Florida
August, 2020
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 The Contributors.
Much of the text in this book is remembrances of people who were at, or involved with, the 1970 Road Atlanta
Can-Am. A brief identification of these individuals is below, along with the role they played in the race. I thank them
for their contributions.
Charlie Agapiou is well known for the role he played in helping Shelby American win the World Manufacturers’
Championship with the Cobra and winning Le Mans with the GT-40s. In 1969-71, Charlie and his brother Kerry
campaigned the Ford G7A in the Can-Am. Today he owns a Bentley/Rolls-Royce repair service in Beverly Hills.
Tyler Alexander was an American mechanic who came to be a pillar of Bruce McLaren Motor Racing. His skills
as a fabricator were legend and he trained a legion of mechanics. When Bruce was killed, Tyler was one of the major
forces who stepped up to fill the void. He died in 2016. His quotes are from “McLaren From The Inside,” David Bull
Publishing.
Tony Attard was an Australian who joined McLaren Racing at the beginning of the 1970 season to be a crew
member on Bruce McLaren’s car. When Bruce was killed before the season started, he moved over to Hulme’s car. He
left motorsports to go back to college and today is Dr. Anthony Attard, PhD., nuclear physicist.
Roger Bailey has a racing resume that reads like a “who’s who” of motorsports in the 1960s: Cooper, Shelby,
Penske, McLaren, and was on the crew for George Eaton’s BRM at this race. He was Jackie Stewart’s mechanic at
Tyrrell when he won the Formula 3 Championship in 1964 and the first non-Italian to be a factory Ferrari mechanic.
Roger went on to a long career with IMSA and then helped create the Indy Lights Series.
Jack Baldwin was one of the first hires at the then-new Road Atlanta track, as a driving instructor for the
performance driving school. Jack went on to a racing career that encompassed 5 professional championships and over
30 major pro races, including one Daytona 24-hour win and two 12 Hours of Sebring wins.
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Bobby Brown has had a colorful racing career, participating in almost every form of road racing including
Sebring, Daytona, Formula 5000, and the Can-Am. The owner of a Chevrolet dealership on Long Island, Bobby was
racing the ex-Dan Gurney “McLeagle” at Road Atlanta in 1970.
Don Cox was a part of the famous GM R&D “skunkworks” in the 1960s exploring the limits of vehicle dynamics.
Don went on to a distinguished career with Penske Racing, including being the chief engineer on the Can-Am
championship-winning Sunoco Porsche 917/30.
Jack Deren got into racing with Roger Penske when Roger was still driving, and then started supporting the Can-
Am racing efforts of Oscar Koveleski, the Auto World king in Scranton, Pa. Jack would later be known for his work on
the Red Lobster IMSA cars. Jack still works on racing cars today in Carbondale, Pa.
Vic Elford, nicknamed “Quick Vic” by his peers, was one of the world’s great sports car drivers – one of only four
drivers ever to record six major victories at the Nürburgring. He was especially noted for his mastery of the difficult
Porsche 917 and won the 1971 Sebring 12-hour race driving the Martini 917. He was at Road Atlanta to drive the
innovative Chaparral “sucker car.” He lives in Florida with his wife, Anita.
Graham Everett was a young English racing mechanic who was asked to join Tony Dean’s racing team as it
contested the 1970 Can-Am in North America. Today he operates a Porsche service facility close to the Road Atlanta
track that would provide great memories for him in 1970.
Alec Greaves was a member of the McLaren “family” and was one of the crew members on Bruce McLaren’s car
in 1969. He was classified as a “fabber,” a fabricator who could improvise and repair body and structural damage with
a minimum of resources. In 1970 at Road Atlanta, he was the number one on Peter Gethin’s car. He still works on cars
today at his shop in Wisconsin, restoring the racing sports cars he helped build in the 1960s.
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 Jim Hall pioneered many aspects of racecar design that are taken for granted today, including the use of
composites for chassis construction and the harnessing of aerodynamic downforce. The Chaparral 2J was the first
“ground effects” racecar ever built. Hall retired from driving in 1968 after a serious accident, and turned his attention
to managing the Chaparral team in Formula 5000, and winning the Indy 500.
Jim Kaser was Competition Director for the Sports Car Club of America in the mid-1960s when he and John
Bishop developed the concept for the Can-Am. Jim was the major force behind getting the independent track owners
to agree to the substantial financial commitment required to make the series a success. Kaser left the SCCA shortly
after the Road Atlanta event and eventually became part of Campbell & Company, providing promotional services to
Ford. He died in 2014. His quotes are from his article, “Creating History, How The Can-Am Series Came To Be.”
Phil Kerr was a close friend of Bruce McLaren and a director of Bruce McLaren Motor Racing. When Bruce was
killed, Phil was one of the close group of employees who rallied together to keep the firm on its winning path. He died
in 2014 in his native New Zealand. His quotes are from “To Finish First,” MRP Publishing
Oscar Koveleski was a noted amateur racer in the 1960s, based in Scranton, Pa., that was also home to his
model car/slot car company Auto World. Oscar, ever the promoter, was also the founder of the Polish Racing Drivers
Association, and would gladly give a membership to anyone who would ask. He was at Road Atlanta racing his #54
Auto World McLaren. His quotes are from an Auto World article, “October at Road Atlanta.”
Lothar Motschenbacher worked as a Mercedes-Benz mechanic, eventually establishing his own shop in Southern
California. He had the distinction of being the only driver to have started every race in the Can-Am series until injuries
he suffered in a shop fire forced him to leave the series midway through the 1972 season. At Road Atlanta, Lothar had
been forced to switch back to his 1969 car, a McLaren M12, when his ex-Team McLaren M8B was damaged.
Brad Niemcek was an account executive at the public relations firm, Carl Byoir & Associates in Chicago when he
was asked to help on the S. C. Johnson account with the Can-Am sponsorship. This led to a multi-year involvement
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promoting the J/Wax sponsorship and later to a career in motorsports PR. He is also noted as being one of the early
participants in the “Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash.”
John Radosta was the racing correspondent and wrote the “About Motorsports” column for the New York Times.
Jennifer Revson is the sister of Peter Revson, the driver who was racing a factory Lola at Road Atlanta in 1970. he
would go on to win the Can-Am championship the next year with McLaren. She describes herself as a “racing enthusiast.”
Rodney Rogers was a teenage son of Troy Rogers, one of the key members of the Chaparral team. His summer job
was to help around the shop and, occasionally, travel to the races. He had a front-row seat for the 1970 Road Atlanta
Can-Am as a member of the 2J crew.
Linda Vaughn is known as the “First Lady of Motorsports” for a good reason: perhaps no other woman is as
recognizable or has done as much for auto racing as Linda. She was present at all forms of racing to not only represent
Hurst Performance Products but the racing family as a whole. Her quote is from “First Lady of Motorsports,” CarTech.
Earl Walker was one of the founders, along with Dave Sloyer and Arthur Montgomery, of Road Atlanta. Earl shared
with them the vision to bring a world-class racing venue to Atlanta and in 1970 the track opened, with this Can-Am as its
first event. Today, he sells real estate in North Carolina.
Bill Warner was a photojournalist for Sports Car Graphic and Road & Track for many years, recording the images
and stories that were, for many of us, our monthly exposure to motor racing. Bill is the driving force behind the Amelia
Island Concours d’Elegance, one of the premier car events in the world.
Eoin S. Young came to England from his native New Zealand following his countryman Bruce McLaren. He became
a director of Bruce McLaren Motor Racing but left to return to journalism, penning a column in Autocar for 30 years.
He died in 2014. His quotes are from “Bruce McLaren, The Man and His Racing Team.”
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 The Can-Am.

The Can-Am was the perfect reflection of its time. If sports car road racing in the 1950s
could be compared to the balanced nuance of jazz, the Can-Am of the late 1960s was acid
rock. And it came at a moment when America was looking to assert itself as the leader in
international motorsports.

Sports car racing was becoming big business in North America. In 1963, the Sports Car Club of America
(SCCA) – an organization founded to promote amateur racing – recognized the need for a professional series and
launched the United States Road Racing Championship (USRRC). While it was very popular, John Bishop, head of
the SCCA, and his Director of Competition Jim Kaser wanted something with more international flavor; a series that
would attract the top Grand Prix drivers the way Sebring and Daytona did for the endurance races.

The new series for the “Canadian-American Challenge Cup” was announced on February 9, 1966, with the first
race scheduled after the F1 season was over, in September, at St. Jovite, Quebec. At its heart was the philosophy that
“there was only one rule: there are no rules.” In reality, this wasn’t strictly true – the cars had to have two seats, four
wheels and enclosed bodywork. Other than that, the teams were largely free to do whatever they wanted.

This resulted in the fastest, most powerful race cars ever built - cars that weighed less than 1500 pounds powered
by monstrous 8-liter, V-8 engines producing more than 700 horsepower that could accelerate to 100 mph and come to
a complete stop in under 10 seconds. By the mid-1970s, that horsepower figure had risen to over 1200.

While the unbridled power of these cars excited the fans, what got the attention of the teams was the prize
money. S.C. Johnson had agreed to pony up a substantial sum towards a points fund, making the Can-Am the most
lucrative series in racing. And, they committed to a sizeable promotional budget to help publicize it, since they wanted
to use the races to promote their new line of car wax.
The Can-Am set new standards of professionalism in motorsports for the way it was promoted. This is from an early press kit.
The greatest era of racing was about to begin.
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 The Johnson Wax involvement with the Can-Am was, to my knowledge, the first time an American company had
agreed to sponsor a series of professional events – in any sport. This is directly attributable to Robert Henkel, who
was the Carl Byoir & Associates agency executive on the S. C. Johnson PR account. They had already signed Stirling
Moss as spokesperson for the introduction of J/Wax, the company’s new line of car polish, and Bob thought this
would give him a great platform to promote the product.
- Brad Niemcek

During a number of further meetings with Henkel we worked out an arrangement under which we would
call the series the “Canadian- American Challenge for the J/Wax Cup.” Stirling Moss would be named the Can-Am
commissioner, an honorary title. They would agree to mount a major promotional effort to publicize the Can-Am,
along with their product, and would produce a suitable trophy, the Cup. They would have full access at the events,
and we would include J/Wax in our publicity. To the best of my knowledge, the agreement with S. C. Johnson was
the first corporate sponsorship of a major racing championship series. Its significance was not lost on Bill France at
NASCAR.
- Jim Kaser

The “floatile” Johnson Wax Trophy Stirling Moss is admiring was designed by Venezuelan sculptor Alberto W. Collie. The trophy,
as described in Competition Press (in terms Moss could appreciate), “[is] made of magnesium and aluminum, [and] is given its
upward thrust by the ‘repel’ action of powerful ceramic magnets in it and the black ‘launching pad’ of its pedestal.” Space-age
stuff! On the right, the trophy on display at a 1967 event.
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 The Place.

The 1970 Can-Am was the first professional race at Road Atlanta, a picturesque track
built about 50 miles northeast from the downtown of its namesake city. The track was the
brainchild of two men, using the financial resources of a third. Dave Sloyer and Earl Walker
were both engineers with Lockheed in Atlanta who shared a love of racing sports cars on
the weekends. Amateur SCCA racing had grown significantly since its inception in the early 1950s but the
South was still known as being NASCAR country. They felt Atlanta needed a road racing venue.

Using their own money, they originally bought a large tract of land west of Atlanta and had a ground-
breaking featuring Peter Revson. But while they were astute engineers, they were not yet savvy to the value of
local connections. A lawsuit filed to enforce “blue laws” against any entertainment on Sunday doomed the venture.
Undaunted, Sloyer and Walker looked elsewhere and soon found a 360-acre tract in the rolling hills of Hall County,
northeast of Atlanta. To get the money to make their dream a reality, they convinced Arthur Montgomery, who
owned the Atlanta Coca-Cola Bottling Company and a fellow racing enthusiast, to help raise the needed capital.

They asked many notable drivers and racing experts for their thoughts in the course design, but largely let
the existing topography determine the final configuration. Work began in late 1969 on the 2.52, 12-turn (in its
original shape) course and by mid-1970 the construction was well along. The first race, an SCCA regional, was held
the weekend of August 22-23 and was a huge success with 187 entries – one of the largest events ever for the SCCA
Southeast division. In July severe rains damaged the Bridgehampton track on Long Island and the SCCA needed to find
another track to take their September Can-Am date.

Walker and Sloyer were more than willing to oblige.

No one coming to Road Atlanta for the first time was prepared for the luxury of the facilities and the beauty of the scenery.
Compared to tracks like Sebring, this was heaven.

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 Earl Walker, with Dave Sloyer in background, gives a trophy to James
Reeve, a winner at the first races at Road Atlanta in August, 1970.

Dave and I were both racing at Roebling Road down by Savannah one weekend and I had a guy who was on
my pit crew that also was in the construction business. I asked him what would it cost to build a track like this. He
said, “Oh, about $25,000.” When we got back to Atlanta, Dave and I started talking about building a track. The next
weekend we were racing at Mid-Ohio where they had a great crowd in attendance. That spurred us to get serious.

To defray some of the construction costs, I was able to convince a local contractor to do the road grading in
exchange for the land we had originally bought. To lay out the course, we just walked through the woods and put
stakes where we thought the terrain told us the road should go. The biggest challenge we had was the large granite
rock under the main straight. It was too massive to take it out. We just filled in the dip as best we could.
- Earl Walker

Walker and Sloyer used the existing terrain to dictate the course layout, resulting in a racetrack more like European circuits than the
typically flat tracks of the Southeast. The photo on the left looks down the front straight and pit lane, the right down from Turn 5.

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 Dave and Earl built Road Atlanta by literally following the topography of the land. They couldn’t afford to move
a lot of earth, so they walked around through the hillside and put flags on trees. And depending on where the creek
was, and this and that, was how the track ran. That’s why you got the over the hill and down through the esses, and
things like that. This is how older tracks were built in the day and why they are so good.

It’s always been a fast track – that was how Dave and Earl wanted it. They were amateur racing drivers who liked
to drive, liked to have fun on the track. In its early days, the track was very dangerous. It was very narrow and had
little runoff area. The earth banks were right there! That banking would destroy a car and there’d be just be a little
tiny dent in the clay. The clay was worse than concrete because it would grab the car – the car wouldn’t glance off like
it would with concrete. They tried to smooth out some areas of the track, like the “hump” where the cars used to get
airborne and flip over. It took out Donohue, Hulme, Bill Auberlen. Hurley Haywood almost killed himself there while
testing. Dave Sloyer and I got there in time and saved his life. Don Panoz chopped that out when he bought the track.
- Jack Baldwin

You brake deeply into turn 11…and the apex is on the right, just under the bridge. The turn is on the top of a hill,
the car is badly out of balance and can go from understeer to oversteer at any point if you don’t have the throttle on
or off at the right spot. As soon as you approach the turn with the brakes on, in third gear, you see the biggest patch
of sky you ever saw in your life, because the WHOLE ROAD disappears and it looks like you are going to FLY into
outer space. But that doesn’t happen (unless your throttle has stuck on) because the nose of the car immediately
drops (as in a stall in an aircraft) and you find yourself looking down, down at what must be the side of the Empire
State Building and you’re driving down it. (Others say that it’s like flying a P-51 Mustang in a power dive).
- Oscar Koveleski

“Hold on!” George Eaton rides his BRM down the roller coaster after Turn 11.

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 We asked a number of leading drivers for their advice on how we should design the course. Mark Donohue simply
said, “Make it fast!”
- Earl Walker

I liked Road Atlanta because it reminded me of European circuits like the Nürburgring. It was a natural road circuit.
I thought it was fairly safe except for perhaps going down the hill after the bridge.
- Vic Elford

I worked at the S. C. Johnson PR agency, Carl Byoir & Associates, and had asked to be assigned to manage the media
relations for the Can-Am when they expanded the series to 11 events in 1970. Road Atlanta was one of several tracks that
that we took on as first time professional races. But they had not only never run a professional race, they had never run
a spectator race at all! I went down to help them prep for the race, give them a briefing, explain the J/Wax involvement,
so there’d be no misunderstandings. Art, Earl, and Dave didn’t understand all that was about to happen, but they
listened and were eager to do whatever to this fast-talking guy from NYC told them they needed to do.
- Brad Niemcek

The track had relatively good safety features for 1970, but in places the run-off area ended abruptly with a wall of Georgia clay.

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 The Teams.

McLaren.
In the first year of the Can-Am, Bruce McLaren Motor Racing did not win a single race and
ended up third in the point standings. The next year, the team began one of the most dominating
performances recorded in any sport. From the beginning of the 1967 season to the Road Atlanta
race in September of 1970, McLaren would win an astounding 26 of 29 races, including every race
held in the previous two years. In many cases, the team would come in 1-2, and in one race, 1-2-3.

A major reason for their success was Bruce McLaren himself. The promise he showed racing in his native New
Zealand earned him the coveted “Driver to Europe” selection in the 1958 season. He quickly established himself as
one of the top drivers in the world, becoming the youngest Grand Prix winner in 1959 at the age of 22.

But it was his engineering skill that set him apart. McLaren embraced the latest thinking in racecar design, but
never forgot the old axiom that “to finish first, you must first finish.” His cars were not as innovative as ones from
designers like Jim Hall, but they were simple, easy to work on, reliable, and fast.

The car he introduced in 1967, the M6 was followed by the M8A in 1968 and in 1969 by the M8B, the car
journalist Pete Lyons called, “the perfect race car” since it won every race in which it was entered. Due to this success,
McLaren found a ready market for customer versions of the previous year’s design, produced through a third-party
builder. For 1970, following in his philosophy of not fixing something that wasn’t broken, McLaren was planning to
race the M8D, an evolution of the earlier car. But then tragedy struck.

While McLaren was testing the new car at the Goodwood circuit, the rear bodywork on the car came loose,
causing the car to go out of control and hit a concrete structure. He was killed instantly. The team was devastated.

Denny Hulme was one of the best drivers in the world in 1970, having just won the Formula One World Championship a few
years prior. He had severely burned both hands during practice for the Indy 500 just weeks before Bruce’s death.

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 In June 1970 everything changed for us when Bruce died testing the new Can-Am car at the Goodwood race
track…Teddy Mayer, myself, and the rest of the team decided that the best thing we could do was to continue racing,
and to honor Bruce’s memory by using everything we learned from him.
- Tyler Alexander

We met at the factory the next morning, and by 8 AM everyone had turned up. That’s when I realized, if proof
was ever needed, that anybody would do anything for Bruce. They must have talked to each other and said that
Bruce would have expected them to be there, so they were. That day confirmed what an incredible team of people
constituted McLaren Racing. Through all the years that the team has grown, it was as though there was a little bit
of Bruce in everyone. Rarely had he needed to tell anyone to do anything. Everyone knew how he thought, how he
wanted things done, and that was the way it happened. Everyone worked, and worked hard, for Bruce – and that
clearly hadn’t changed.
- Phil Kerr

McLaren’s success was due to Bruce - his ability to get the right people, at the right place, at the right time. He
was a very good driver, but more to the point he was a very good practical engineer. But it was Bruce’s organization
and technical skills to put that group together that made the difference. Of all the guys I worked with, Bruce would
have been my number one.
- Roger Bailey

Bruce McLaren at Sebring in 1967, when he won with Mario Andretti.

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 We now had to decide who would drive the Can-Am cars at Mosport. Teddy called Dan Gurney who agreed
straightaway. Denny, who had been so racked with grief on the day Bruce died, was now showing enormous courage
and determination and it clearly made up his mind he was going to adopt a leadership role. Despite his hands needing
another six weeks of treatment [from burns at Indianapolis], he decided he was driving. We said, “You can’t.” “Stuff
that,” was his reply. “I’m driving at Mosport!” It was Denny who helped us deal with our grief. He gained strength
from somewhere and decided he would lead by example.
- Phil Kerr

A week before the race he could not bend either of his hands, but with typical Hulme homespun therapy he
was wandering about the McLaren workshops with the steering wheel forcing his fingers to close round the rim. He
finished third in that first Can-Am race with hands raw under the bandages where blisters had burst. But to Denny
that race was a gesture. He had set his heart on Mosport to bolster his own spirits during the painful days in the
hospital, but eventually he was aiming at Mosport with grim determination to ‘do it for Bruce’. In several of his early
races he had to bend the fingers of his left hand round the steering wheel and trap it there for the race, doing all the
work with his right hand.
- Eoin S. Young

When Bruce died that same year, we were looking for a driver. Teddy called Gurney. Gurney drove a few races
for us, but he had Castrol as a sponsor and that conflicted with our Gulf sponsorship. Then, we were going to put
Stewart in the second car, but he also had a sponsor problem – his F1 car was sponsored by Elf. We couldn’t just put
an Elf patch over the Gulf patch on his uniform. So we got Gethin to be the second driver.
- Tony Attard

Denny Hulme, the trusted stalwart... ... and the newcomer, Peter Gethin.

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 Teddy’s approach to racing was strict and direct; he didn’t believe in the casual attitude adopted by most people
at that time in racing in England...Teddy’s willingness to do the work himself finally won him grudging favor with the
mechanics, who were impressed that the “little gray haired guy” would be in all day Sunday helping to crate up spares
for shipment, and still be there working on schedules in his office when they were going home. In this respect he was
like Bruce.
- Eoin S. Young

Teddy Mayer was difficult. He probably was very good as a lawyer, which was his training. I first met him in 1963
and he was his brother Timmy’s bag boy. We called him “The Weiner.” Bruce and Teddy were a weird combination but
they got along well.
- Roger Bailey

Tyler had an incredible mind. He went to MIT and was a hands-on engineer, very good at figuring things out. He
was very good at what he did. Taught me a hell of a lot. He was one of a kind.
- Alec Greaves

Tyler was a great guy to work with - a dedicated racer. He got his start in the aircraft industry and was one of the
best aluminum welders I ever met. Tyler would never ask you to do anything he wouldn’t – or couldn’t – do.

But, he wasn’t the easiest person in the world to get along with. There was no bullshit - you couldn’t smoke Tyler.
He would tell you to your face you’re full of shit. But if you didn’t provoke him or deliberately get on his wrong side,
he was a great guy to be around. He was one of a kind - I can’t think of anyone I would put in the same bracket. There
will never be another Tyler.
- Roger Bailey
Denny Hulme, Teddy Mayer, and Tyler Alexander were the three who kept McLaren on its winning path. Each had their role to
play and they did so tirelessly.

36 37
 Chaparral.

The Chaparral was the brainchild of Jim Hall, a graduate of Cal Tech and heir to a sizeable oil fortune. Hall
was a fixture in American road racing in the late 1950s and even spent a year in the early 1960s competing on the
Formula One circuit. He had the resources to purchase the very best race cars but knew that the factories like Ferrari,
Jaguar, and Maserati did not sell the latest versions to customers who might beat their own entries. So, in 1962, Hall
commissioned California builders Troutman and Barnes to construct the Chaparral 1, a relatively conventional front-
engined sports racer. Hall had moderate success in this car but decided he could build a better
car himself. He constructed a workshop in his hometown of Midland, Texas, that included a
sophisticated test track dubbed “Rattlesnake Raceway.”

Their first car, the Chaparral 2, was ready for the start of the USRRC series in 1963 and went on to be one of the
most dominant cars in that series, winning the 1964 championship convincingly. The car broke ground in many areas
of racecar technology: glass-fiber composite chassis, clutchless “automatic” transmissions, and the first integrated
utilization of aerodynamics to enhance vehicle performance.

With the launch of the Can-Am, which he had championed, Hall saw the perfect venue to showcase his innovative
thinking. Their first car, the 2E. set the design standard for virtually every racecar after, with the radiators placed in
the rear and a large moveable wing on top to create downforce in the corners. Unfortunately, a series of mechanical
problems plagued this car, and its successor the 2G, and they won only one race.

Through his back-door relationship with the General Motors Research & Development department Hall would
receive interesting designs and components to evaluate. One of these arrived sometime around 1968 in the form of
a concept vehicle with fans to create suction and a skirt around the perimeter of the chassis to hold the vacuum. The
1969 season had been particularly painful with the failure of the ground-effects 2H and Hall was looking for a new
approach to give him a competitive advantage over the all-conquering McLarens.

Vic Elford takes the radical 2J Chaparral out for a test spin.
The resulting 2J “Sucker Car” would prove to be the most controversial racecar ever built.

38 39
 Frank Winchell was head of General Motors Research & Development in the 1960s and was a brilliant guy. Frank
always thought that GM R&D should know more about vehicle dynamics than anyone else on the planet and he
encouraged us to question everything. That’s how the car was probably conceived; someone could have said, “What if you
were able to seal the underneath of the car, put a fan on the car, and were able to evacuate some of the air to reduce the
ambient pressure underneath the car?”

We had a vehicle, the Suspension Test Vehicle (STV), with which we could configure virtually any suspension
arrangement you could imagine. It had suspension attachment points everywhere. We could test roll center, camber
changes, etc., and see the effects quickly and easily. We took that chassis, put skirts on it, added two fans driven by go-cart
engines, and took it to the skid pad to measure cornering force. It was phenomenal – it could go as fast as you could stand!

We then built a second chassis that became the basis for the 2J. But, in my mind this was still just a demonstration
vehicle to prove the concept. I knew this was going to be controversial. Other series had already banned moving
aerodynamic devices and the skirts and fans were certainly moving parts. But, somehow it got approved to race.

Since GM was part of the Big 3 ban on racing, edicts would come down from the executives’ staff telling us to get
anything racing related out of the R&D department. The concept chassis we built after the STV got caught up in that. I
personally packed it up and sent it down to Midland for safekeeping. We never finished it at R&D. Eventually, Don Gates
went down to Chaparral to help Hall finish it.

When they ran into problems with the 2H, the concept chassis we built was over in a storage area so Jim decided to get
it running. He made substantial changes. For example, we had the fans in front of the rear wheels on a vertical axis, each
run by its own go-cart motor. He moved the fans to the back, mounted horizontally, and driven by the single snowmobile
motor. With this arrangement the car might have moved forward on its own just with the thrust from the fans!
- Don Cox “I wonder how fast I can go in this corner before this thing breaks loose?’ Vic explores the limits of the 2J.

40 41
 The first race for the 2J was Watkins Glen where Jackie Stewart drove it on a one-race deal. I had driven a 917
in the 6-hour race the day before and we were allowed to enter the endurance cars in the Can-Am race on Sunday;
we only had to tape up the headlights to be eligible. The endurance cars took six of the first seven places! This really
pissed off the regular Can-Am teams because we were taking the money out of their pockets.

That night, back at the Glen Motor Inn, my phone rang and it was Jim Hall. He asked, “How’d you like to drive
the Chaparral?”

“You’re joking,” I replied, “You’ve got Jackie Stewart.”

“Yes, but that was just a one-off thing for the first race. Now we want someone for long term. We know
you’re fast. But we saw how you worked with the Porsche engineers and thought you’d work well with us.” His
chief engineer was Don Gates who was a real whiz engineer. The three of us would sit for hours talking about the
possibilities. We got along wonderfully.
- Vic Elford

Jim was a very focused man. Not a lot of gray area with Jim. We all highly respected him. Everyone who worked
for him would be very guarded with what they said out of respect for the man. We were all cautious not to have
loose lips. Any issues were all taken care of internally. We were all protective of Jim and let him do the talking.

The crew enjoyed the gamesmanship of hiding secrets from other teams and the press. We had great fun with it.
There are many photos from that era that show McLaren, or Hulme, or Gurney looking at us in the pits to see what
new thing we had brought that time. There was a feeling on the team that those were our secrets and you’ve got to
figure it out for yourself.
- Rodney Rogers Jim Hall and Vic Elford were alike in more than their smoking habits. Both were very direct and blunt, although Vic has a better
sense of humor!

42 43
 Lola.
Lola was the brainchild of English designer Eric Broadley. In the 1950s, Broadley
was an avid amateur racer producing a series of specials that beat cars from other future
motorsports design legends, including Colin Chapman. The success of his specials motivated
him to produce racing cars as a business and the new company, Lola (named after the song Whatever Lola Wants in
the 1955 stage hit, Damn Yankees), was born.

Broadley went on to design a Formula One car and a beautiful sports racing coupe, the Lola Mk. 6, that became
the inspiration for the Ford GT. But it was the introduction of the Lola T-70 in early 1965 that set the racing world on
its ear. The car utilized a state-of-the-art steel/aluminum monocoque tub as the platform and was designed to accept
a 5-liter Chevrolet, although any V-8 could be adapted. The car was an instant hit and Lola sold 15 of the cars in 1965
and an additional 32 cars in 1966.

The superiority of the car’s design was underscored when John Surtees, the de facto Lola factory entrant,
won the first Can-Am Championship in 1966, over Mark Donohue, also in a Lola T-70. The next year, the McLaren
juggernaut would eclipse Lola and Surtees would win just one race, after winning three out of six the year before.

Lola’s business model was based on its willingness to offer the same car design to customers as the ones run by
their factory-supported team. This ensured that the starting fields of Can-Am races were populated with potentially
competitive cars since there were many reliable suppliers of the engine of choice, the Chevrolet big-block.

However, this philosophy changed in 1970 when Lola made the new T-220 available only to its North American
distributor, Carl Haas. With the quickly rising superstar driver Peter Revson at the helm, Lola was in a position to give
McLaren stiff competition.
Peter Revson in the new Lola T-220. This was not to be his year in the Can-Am, but watch out for 1971.

44 45
 Revson was cool; he wasn’t a problem. I worked with him when he won the Can-Am championship in 1971 and at
Indy. As Andretti said, “I wouldn’t be anything without my crew.” Revvie felt the same.
- Alec Greaves

My parents didn’t support Peter’s racing in any way, shape, or form. My mother, who loved fast cars and was
a very good driver, only went to one race – his first. She just couldn’t bear to watch, fearful he’d get hurt. And my
father, who was the worst driver in the world, thought racing as a profession was just plain foolish. Although once
Peter hit his stride, my parents were proud of his accomplishments.
- Jennifer Revson

Peter and Denny at Road Atlanta in 1971, the year Peter would join McLaren to win the race and the Can-Am Championship.
Revson was a true athlete in a variety of sports, including being New York State water ski champion in his youth.

46 47
 Ford G7A.
The Ford G7A has come to be an almost forgotten oddity of the Can-Am era but in reality, it
could have had a significant impact on motorsports history. Ford’s program to win Le Mans evolved
from the original GT40, to the Mk. II that won in 1966, to the Mk. IV that won in 1967. A total of
10 Mk. IV chassis were built, with two more as spares, with J-9 and J-10 being destined to become
the development bed for a new endurance racing car as the successor to the Mk IV.

Shelby was to enter the two chassis, now designated as the Ford G7A, in the fall 1967
Can-Am configured as open sports racers to try out new components – the radical 3-valve
“Calliope” motor, dihedral wing, etc. – in preparation for the 1968 endurance racing season. In
a memo from Ford racing head Jacque Passino, dated April 17, 1967 (two months before the Mk. IV win at
Le Mans), he outlined the plan: “Transition from modified sports car racing to long-distance racing in 1968 will be
accomplished by fitting a new ‘barrel’ greenhouse to the open-top car to achieve a weight saving and a smaller
silhouette relative to the current Mark IV...Experiments with suspension-mounted air-foils will also be undertaken to
study the feasibility of using devices similar in function to the raised-wing spoiler used by the Chaparral.”

However, the Ford commitment to endurance racing was abruptly curtailed when the rules were changed right
after the Ford win at the 1967 Le Mans, eliminating the big 7-liter engines. For various reasons, the cars never raced in
1967 but the Agapiou brothers, Charles and Kerry, former key members of the Shelby team, were offered both cars for
one dollar in 1968.

The Agapious revised the car, eliminating the dihedral wing and trying other Ford powerplants since the Calliope,
although showing great promise, needed development. They entered the car in the 1969 season with Peter Revson
but the effort was disappointing due to a lack of reliable Ford engines that could match the Chevrolet big-block.
Coming into Road Atlanta in 1970, the Agapiou Brothers were on their sixth driver, NASCAR star LeeRoy Yarbrough,
What if? The G7A might have been a contender if Ford had put a fraction of the resources into the Can-Am that they did to win
who had limited road racing experience and had never driven in the Can-Am. Le Mans. Here stock-car superstar LeeRoy Yarbrough learns how to drive a sports car.

48 49
 We had LeeRoy Yarbrough as a driver as part of the deal to get engines from Holman & Moody. John Holman
wanted us to use him. I didn’t know what to expect – I had heard stories about NASCAR drivers but he was wonderful
to work with – very polite and easy-going. He was very intelligent and was very open to our suggestions.

I was surprised how well LeeRoy took to sports cars. I’m not sure but I don’t think he had driven on a road course
before or if he had it wasn’t much. But he would go faster and faster each time he got in the car. And, he didn’t go off
the road, which was a pretty big accomplishment on that track.
- Charlie Agapiou

LeeRoy was from Jacksonville, where I was from. He wasn’t really cut out to drive sports cars or Indy cars. But in
stock cars, he was something else. Someone once said there wasn’t a container big enough to hold his bravery.
- Bill Warner

“Hell, I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s got four wheels and a motor just like my Mercury.” Yarbrough had won more races in
1969 - including the Daytona 500 - than any driver in NASCAR history and $180,000 in prize money, over $1 million today.

50 51
 BRM.

BRM stood for British Racing Motors and it had been a stalwart of racing since its founding in
Bourne, England by Raymond Mays right after the War. The initial premise for BRM was to show
the strengths of the British motor industry, from which it received financial and material support.
This proved to be an unwieldy arrangement and Sir Alfred Owen took over the support through his
conglomerate, the Rubery Owen Organization.

Led by Mays, and later Louis Stanley, and brilliant designers like Tony Rudd and Aubrey Woods,
BRM rose to greatness in the 1960s, with Graham Hill winning the Formula One World Championship in
1962 and BRM the Manufacturer’s Championship. They finished second in the Manufacturer’s Championship in 1963,
1964, 1965, and 1971.

BRM did not manufacture cars to sell to other teams and this lack of cash flow meant they needed to keep their
focus largely on Formula One. They did explore some sports car racing but it was the potential for large payouts in the
Can-Am, and possibly an influx of cash from Canadian racer George Eaton, that enticed BRM to design the P154.

The new car was designed by Tony Southgate who had just joined BRM after working at Lola on the T-70.
Southgate’s design was fairly straightforward and used a wedge-shaped body to create downforce. The rear suspension
design was reportedly dependent on using new wide Firestone racing tires, which never materialized. But that proved
secondary to the engine problems the team experienced due to a lack of familiarity with American V-8s.

The car received support from the British oil company Castrol and was colorfully painted in the company’s
distinctive red, white, and green colors. This was one of the earliest “rolling billboard” uses of sponsorship in
motorsports and was viewed negatively at the time by some purists, although the fans loved it.

Canadian George Eaton in the colorful BRM. No one remembers why there was duct tape on the nose, but probably because of
Despite their problems, the BRM, in George Eaton’s hands and crewed by the veteran Roger Bailey, showed
the risk of damaging the fiberglass from rocks and stones on the new circuit.
surprising strength at the second round of the 1970 Can-Am, finishing a respectable third at Mont-Tremblant.
52 53
 George Eaton was very easy to be around; there was nothing arrogant about him. We’d go out to the pub every
night. After we finished the car, he and I flew to Toronto. I asked him, “What does your family do?” “We’ve got some
stores,” he said. We’re driving from the airport into town and there’s this big warehouse with Eaton’s on the side.
Sarcastically I said, “I suppose that’s one of your stores.” He says, “No that’s one of our warehouses.” I’d been to Toronto
and I’d seen Eaton’s but I had no idea. Then I realized it was probably George who was paying for the Can-Am cars.
- Roger Bailey

I came to Canada from Aussie in 1967 and ended up working for George Eaton. George was the son of a
billionaire. He was all right as a driver. He wasn’t a natural but he was OK. His Dad gave him a million dollars for his
21st birthday and said, “Go play!” So he did and I helped him spend it!
- Tony Attard

George Eaton wasn’t really a playboy – he could be very serious about racing when he wasn’t distracted by a hat-eating girlfriend.

54 55
 The Independents.

Lothar Motschenbacher.

After the major “factory” teams of McLaren, Chaparral, Lola, and BRM, the bulk of the Can-Am fields were made
up of independents who would purchase chassis from McLaren or Lola and then buy a big-block Chevy from engine
builders like Traco, Al Bartz, George Foltz, Ed Pink, or Chaparral. Properly assembled and prepared, these cars could be
very competitive, at least for one of the runner-up positions.

At the top of this tier was Lothar Motschenbacher, a German transplant who had the distinction of being the
only driver to have started every Can-Am race since its inception. His cars were immaculately turned out and at
the beginning of the year, he was racing an ex-factory McLaren M8B from the previous year with excellent results.
Coming into this, the seventh round of the 1970 Can-Am, Motschenbacher had done very well with second and third
placements. However, the M8B had been damaged in an accident at Road America and Motschenbacher was now
back in his McLaren M12 that he had raced in 1969 and was trying to sell.

I came over from Germany and started a repair shop in Van Nuys specializing in 300 SLs. I was racing and
working on customer cars – I joked I worked 26 hours a day, 9 days a week. Some rumors went around that I was
some rich kid from the Rhine because I would tow my racecar behind a big, black Mercedes 300 limousine, with the
trailer painted green to match the Lotus. Despite what they said, I had no money.

I got into bigger cars on a dare. I had won my race at Riverside and overheard Vasek Polak say to someone, “Well
he does OK in the Formula Junior but I want to see how he can do in a bigger car.” The next day I called Carroll Shelby
and ordered a 427 Cobra. I sold my house and a 300SL roadster to pay for it.
- Lothar Motschenbacher
“Why won’t this *!? go any faster!” Lothar turned out beautiful cars but suffered from lack of funding. Here he is in 1971 at Road
Atlanta in the car Denny Hulme drove in the 1970 race.

56 57
 Oscar Koveleski.

Oscar Koveleski was a seious racer who didn’t take himself too seriously. He used the
number “54” on his car, a harkening back to the TV show of an earlier era, Car 54, Where
Are You? His stature as a serious driver was also obscured by the fact that he ran one of
the biggest mail-order car model businesses in the U.S., Auto World, in Scranton, Pa. Every
teenage modeler/slot car racer knew Oscar and Auto World, and he brazenly promoted his
company with the slot-car track graphics on his car. And, along with racer Tony “A2Z” Adamowicz and J/Wax PR man
Brad Niemcek, Koveleski founded the Polish Racing Drivers Association (PRDA) in 1970, whose membership criteria
was to: 1) Be a racing driver and be Polish; 2) Be a racing driver and not be Polish; 3) Not be a racing driver and be
Polish; 4) Not be a racing driver and not be Polish.

But behind Oscar’s flippant attitude was an accomplished racer. He had a long and successful history of sports car
road racing – he would win the 1970 SCCA ASR National championship in this car – and had owned cars that, today,
would make him a multi-millionaire.

Supporting Koveleski’s efforts was veteran crew chief Jack Deren who had grown up in the active Mid-Atlantic
racing scene; one that received far less attention than Southern California but produced such talents as Bob and Al
Holbert, Mario Andretti, Mark Donohue, and Roger Penske. Jack always made sure Oscar’s cars were well prepared
and reliable.

Our McLaren will go from 0-60 in about 5 seconds, hit its top speed of 175-185 mph, and develop cornering forces
which will strain your neck after 15 minutes of hard driving on a flat track. The seat is solid fiberglass, the wheel is 12
inches in diameter, and …it steers like a truck with broken power steering.
- Oscar Koveleski
Never one to pass up a chance at promotion, Oscar blatantly advertised his mail order model/slot car company, Auto World, on
his Can-Am McLaren. When challenged by the SCCA, he claimed the slot car track graphics were “racing stripes.”

58 59
 Tony Dean.

Tony Dean was a used-car salesman from England and an avid racer, having won the British Formula Three
Championship in 1965 and finishing third in the Monaco F3 final behind future Formula One drivers Peter Revson and
Chris Irwin. Being a shrewd businessman, Dean determined that with a swift and nimble racer that was highly reliable
and required minimal repairs and maintenance, he could collect enough backmarker winnings in the Can-Am to pay
his way and have some fun.

His calculations proved correct. Despite driving a small 3-liter Porsche 908 against monstrous 8-liter McLarens
and Lolas, Dean was able to score respectable fourth- and fifth-place finishes in two of the races prior to Road Atlanta.
While no one expected Dean to ever win, he could certainly place high enough that, when the year-end points fund
was awarded, he would be well compensated. But, as in all of racing, anything was possible when the green flag
dropped.

Tony always had a smile – he was a car salesman. He had a small, used-car place in Leeds. When he was in the US,
he’d buy as many King Edward cigars as he could afford for his friends in Leeds to smoke. He had to keep his supply
up! He’d smuggle them back into the UK in the car. He later got caught for doing that.
- Graham Everett

Tony was an interesting guy – a very ingenious guy and a very talented driver. He was a used car dealer and a
very successful one. I ended up driving with him in some other races. He was a good friend of mine until we had a
falling out a few years later.
- Bobby Brown

I loved Tony! He was a great guy, a real gentleman. We’d go drinking together. You talk about a shoestring
budget. We couldn’t lend him any parts because he had a Porsche and we didn’t have anything that fit. He knew the
deal with what he had with that little Porsche. He knew he wasn’t going to compete with our cars. But, he was a very
What’s that line about “Can’t get no respect”? No one paid any attention to Tony Dean in his Porsche. But, beware of things in
good driver. I wish McLaren had hired him to drive for us, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. small packages.
- Tony Attard
60 61
 Practice and Qualifying.

Up until the Road Atlanta Can-Am, professional road racing in the Southeast had been
dominated by the Sebring and Daytona endurance events. Sebring had been, for many
years, the only venue in America where you could see the major drivers and cars from
Europe race. Bill France wanted his new Daytona Speedway to also be recognized for
international racing and started what eventually became the 24-hour race in 1962.

But both of these tracks had significant drawbacks for the spectator. Sebring had no permanent facilities
besides the pits, so creature comforts were minimal. And Daytona was featureless and bland, despite the banking.

Road Atlanta provided both: ample and clean facilities with a spectacular twisting, up-and-down, roller-coaster
of a track. The drivers and crew did not know what to expect when they arrived in the second week of September of
1970. Even getting to the track was new for them and, with this being the first pro event at Road Atlanta, the officials
were learning along with the teams.

And so were the photographers. No one had ever shot at Road Atlanta before so we didn’t know the best vantage
points, which corners were best for tight passing, and how the sun would play on the track as the race went on. We
especially did not know how to navigate the course. Since there were no pedestrian bridges, to get to the other parts
of the track from the pit/paddock area meant a long walk using the main car bridge into the infield. Unlike Sebring
and Daytona, photographers couldn’t just wait for an opening and run across the track while the race was on.

But the track won raves from all involved. There was a large, paved paddock area for the teams to work on
the cars, as opposed to many venues where all they had was dirt and grass. And the course, while challenging and
dangerous in places, was fast. A perfect place for McLaren to continue its unbroken string of 19 victories.
The dominant McLaren team, with a new name on the side of the #7 car.

62 63
 The first time we went to Road Atlanta, we had to drive across the Smoky Mountains to get there because the
Interstate wasn’t built all the way. We had reservations at the Holiday Inn in Gainesville. Back in those days we were
long hair hippies and that place was pretty conservative – it was a dry county. We walked into the hotel in t-shirts and
cutoff shorts and said we have a reservation, and they looked at us and said, “No, we don’t think so.” When we told them
it was under “McLaren,” they just shrugged and said, “Uh. OK.”

When we went from race to race, we had three trucks: a truck for the spare engines and bodywork and two Chevy
trucks for the cars. We’d have a nose on the top of those. We would travel with two or three of us in each cab. They
wanted to buy us some big, enclosed trucks but we told them we didn’t want them. We’d have to go through the weigh
stations and that would slow us down.

Nobody back at the shop knew where we were. We’d stop at a phone booth and check in. We put in CB radios in the
trucks so we could talk to each other in case someone got left behind. It was flat out, balls-to-the-wall most of the time.

One time in Manitoba I got a speeding ticket doing 98 on the two-lane highway pulling one of the Can-Am cars
behind the truck. Those trucks could get up there. I don’t know what Lee Muir had done to the engines but they ran
really good – they didn’t have a governor on them. The only thing they couldn’t pass was a gas station! They only had a
20-gallon tank so we couldn’t drive at night – nothing was open at night in those days.
- Alec Greaves

Alec Greaves doesn’t miss a chance to take a smoke while he tie-wraps some wires on Gethin’s McLaren. In the background is one of
the team tow-trucks with a spare nose section on top. That was how they would drive as they went around the country to races.

64 65
 We had two mechanics on each car. Jim Stone and I were on Denny’s car. Jim eventually went back to Aussie and
was very successful in racing – he was recently inducted into the Australian Motorsports Hall of Fame. I was in charge
of the gearboxes, a Hewland 500. If any of the cars needed gear ratio changes, that’s what I would do. If Denny or
Peter came in and said, “I’m not getting enough revs going up the hill,” we’d pull out the gear ratio charts and find the
right ones to put in.

Alec was on Gethin’s car. He was a fabricator – very, very good with sheet metal. He came from the aircraft
industry. That’s where the best sheet metal workers in England came from.
- Tony Attard

In 1969, I became #2 with another Kiwi, Alan McCall, on Bruce’s car. At some point, Alan decided to stay in
England and that’s when Tyler came over to be chief on Bruce’s car and team manager. I had to step up to the plate
then, into the deep end. We shared the same room, drove the truck together to the races. But Tyler didn’t drive the
long ones – the California cross-country trips – he’d fly. I said to him, “I’m not good enough for you to drive cross
country with?” He replied, “I can do it, you can’t, so shut up!”
- Alec Greaves

Early morning hours prepping for qualifying. The Winnebago in the background belonged to Spanky Smith and was the de facto
McLaren hospitality trailer, before there was such a thing in motorsports.

66 67
 I started at McLaren with the 1970 season. I was to be one of the two mechanics on Bruce’s car. With Bruce’s
unfortunate accident, the McLaren organization scrambled to find a replacement driver for Bruce’s car. Management
picked Dan Gurney to replace Bruce. Unfortunately, Dan did not last very long due to sponsorship issues. After about
two or three races, Peter Gethin replaced Dan for the rest of the year. The following season I was moved to Denny’s car.
- Tony Attard

We heard after Watkins Glen that we had a new driver for the second car – from Gurney to Gethin. So we had to
change the car from Gurney – a six-foot something guy – to Gethin, whose father was a jockey. He got in the car and
couldn’t touch the pedals! We moved the pedals all the way up and built a box in back of the seat. Then we cut the
windshield down and put a little lip on it. Anyway, we got him in there.
- Alec Greaves

Oscar strikes again! Oscar Koveleski was the founder of the Polish Racing Drivers’ Association and never passed up an
opportunity to play some mischief.

68 69
 Our attitude was, “If it works, don’t fix it.” There was no point in redesigning the wheel if you don’t need to. We
had one upright that fit all the Can-Am, Indy, F1, and F5000 cars – one casting. We didn’t have the money for a lot
of different designs. The Can-Am program paid for the F1 and Indy programs. Looking back, it really was a shoestring
operation.
- Alec Greaves

While at McLaren the guys nicknamed me, “Smokey” since I came from Aussie and there was a guy there in the
1800s named Smokey Dawson. He was a highwayman, a bandit robbing stagecoaches. They finally caught up with
him and they hung him right there and then. Plus, I used to smoke a lot so it was kind of a natural nickname. Most
people only knew me as Smokey.
- Tony Attard

The work in the McLaren paddock space was quiet, methodical, and continual. Nothing was left to chance.

70 71
 Lee knew engines. He was the kind of guy you needed at a race. He knew how to discern what was a critical
problem and what wasn’t; whether we needed to pull the damn engine to fix it, or whether he could do some other
things before resorting to tearing the engine down. He was a very nice guy.
- Tony Attard

We got Reynolds Aluminum engine blocks as part of our sponsorship but initially, the rings wouldn’t seat. It had
so much blow-by past the rings it would push the engine oil out into the catch tank. We couldn’t go with another
block – we had to use the Reynolds blocks because they were sponsors. So, we put in a bigger catch tank and a pump
and just pumped the oil back into the main oil tank from the catch tank. Eventually, we figured out how to get the
rings to seat.
- Alec Greaves

You can see Spankey Smith’s Winnebago in the background. It was kind of the home port for the McLaren guys.
It wasn’t very luxurious, but it was one of the few motorhomes in the paddock in those days.
- Bill Warner

Four key members of the McLaren team. Alec Greaves peeks out on the left side of the frame. Lee Muir, attaching a screen to
Gethins’ intakes, was in charge of the engines. In back, Jimmy Stone and Tony Attard work on Denny Hulme’s car.

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 We took both cars down after every race – every nut and bolt. We didn’t take the tanks out but everything else
was stripped completely. There were just two guys on each car – not 30. And those two did everything.

The cars were designed properly to make them easy to service. We could change an engine pretty quick. When
we built them over in England the basic structure would be there and then there would be decisions about where to
put things, like the oil tanks. [Designer] Gordon Coppock would say, “Put it where you want it – you’re the ones who
will have to work on it.”
- Alec Greaves

When we got the M8B, one of the team cars from 1969, it was obvious to me as a mechanic how well McLaren
had massaged that car. Little things like replacing a u-joint. Usually, you have to put it in a vise and press it out. But
they had honed the yoke so you could almost push the cups out by hand. It didn’t matter that they were that loose –
you’d change them after every race anyway. You wanted it easy to service. Coming back from an event, I could have
the car totally torn down to nothing with the engine out in four hours – by myself. The M6 was totally the opposite.
It would take days to tear apart.
- Jack Deren

The heart of McLaren’s success in the Can-Am were the huge 8-liter Chevrolet V-8s. Reynolds Aluminum, a sponsor, cast the
blocks especially for McLaren giving them a significant advantage over the competition. However, most of the components in the
engines were basic, off-the-shelf parts that anyone could buy.
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 I think I was the first one to understand and push forward with aerodynamics, and this was one of the major
reasons we were such a dominant force in that period of racing. It was in the winter of 1963-64 when the light bulb
came on. I realized that if you put an aerodynamic downforce on these cars in the right places, you could make them
handle over a broad speed range and also increase their traction capability.

It made a tremendous change in the performance of the car. Before that, people would put aerodynamic devices
on cars, but they didn’t continue to develop the theory and practice the way we did. They’d add a device for some
specific reason and then go on about their business and forget about it. I think when I made that connection, it was
the start of real aerodynamic management in racecars.
- Jim Hall

I remember the car that GM R&D sent us being there for a year or two at the shop. They had spent a tremendous
amount of time on the development of the 2H – that was the primary focus in 1968. Mike Pocabello and Don Gates
had come down from GM R&D to work full-time at Chaparral and they became focused entirely on the 2J concept
beginning in 1969.

The major problem with the 2J was the ignition system on the JLO snowmobile engine used to run the suction
fans. We had to run it wide open and that caused a problem with vibration - it kept shaking the ignition wires off.
We’d put RTV goop on it to give some kind of a cushion but it would never work. Things would rattle themselves
loose or the wires would break.
- Rodney Rogers

In the early morning Gary Knutson (left), Don Gates (behind the car talking to a woman), and Franz Weisz (right) get the 2J
ready for practice. Gates had come from GM R&D and was instrumental in the development of the 2J.

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 My dad, Troy Rogers, went to work for Chaparral as a machinist at the end of the summer in 1964. When I got
into my teens, my dad finagled me a job there in the summer. It started out as a gofer to help do whatever – taking
out the trash, mopping the bathrooms, mowing the grass around the shop and racetrack. When I turned 16 and got
my license I became another body to get the cars to and from the racetracks. Franz and my Dad would stay behind
working right up to the last minute on new parts or engines and then fly with Jim and Sandy to the race. Beginning in
1969, I’d go to all the summer races while I was out of school.

When it was time to go back to school in the fall, I would only go to the shop on weekends to help out. There
were very few races I could go to during the school year, but the first Road Atlanta was early in my senior year so my
Dad allowed me to skip school to go to the race. It was the only race for the 2J I went to.
- Rodney Rogers

“So, you want downforce? What if you just suck all the air out from underneath the car?” The two fans and the JLO drive pulley
are clearly shown here. With 2000 lbs. of downforce from the suction, not sure why they needed the spoiler on the back.

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 The openings on the pan on the bottom of the car around the engine were minimal – there was only a small gap
to allow for the air to come up and out the fans in the back. This caused a strong vortex of air swirling around before
it exited in back. That tight compartment had a lot of nooks and crannies that would gather rocks and dirt. It was a
pretty constant job to clean out the belly pan around motor and headers just so you could get to stuff.

The 2J was extremely difficult to work on – very tight. It had that big block and the headers were like big tubes of
spaghetti. My dad built the exhaust – it took a long time to get all the curves and angles right.

The skirts self-adjusted and required very little maintenance other than just being cleaned after every race. We
used throttle cables to connect the skirt system and they didn’t have any issues of sticking with dirt or clogging.
- Rodney Rogers

Rodney Rogers holding the vacuum hose cleaning all the debris that settled on the tray floor. The fans sucked a lot of dirt and
small rocks off the road surface. His dad,Troy Rogers, works on the opposite side of the car. Sure hope there’s a jack stand there.

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 It wasn’t easy. Many times I towed the car on a trailer with a station wagon cross-country. We needed to leave
California on Tuesday to make East Coast races for Friday practice. Denny would come over and tell me, “Lothar you
need to run more practice laps, shake it down. You only run three or five laps. We run 30.” But it was expensive to do
that – it was all related to the finances. I always had to back off half a second or more a lap because I couldn’t afford
to break the car.
- Lothar Motschenbacher

You look back and hardly anyone had tractor-trailer rigs back then. Even the McLaren and Chaparral teams came
in open trailers, towed behind a Chevy pickup.
- Bill Warner

Veteran crew chief John Collins (in white) and other members of Motschenbacher’s crew unload their McLaren M12 off the
trailer after a long drive from California. The Interstate Highway System was still incomplete in parts of the country making
getting to remote places like Gainesville, Georgia, challenging.
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 Everything we did was on a shoestring. In 1966 I had lost an engine at St. Jovite and I knew McLaren had a spare
but I needed to get Bruce’s OK. He was an avid water skier so I went down to the lake where he was laying in the
grass. As I walked up I didn’t say a word to him. He just said, “As long as I have it back after the race.”

I was on Firestones at the time but Ted Lobinger of Goodyear said he’d pay for the rebuild on Bruce’s engine after
I was done. He literally bailed me out. It was life-changing. He helped me go on.
- Lothar Motschenbacher

We’d share parts with other teams. We had full backup in our trucks. We could practically build a new car from
spare parts except for the chassis tub. They don’t share like that today.
- Tony Attard

The Motschenbacher M12 gets ready for tech inspection. His ex-Team McLaren M8B had been damaged in the race before and
the year-old M12 was resurrected. Note the Formula Vees in the background. They would run in a support race that weekend.

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 Tony had a guy working for him, Graham Everett, who was a very talented mechanic. He could do everything on
the car - engines and chassis. Graham was a player; he could party all night and be up and going the next day.
- Bobby Brown

I was a bit overwhelmed – I had never experienced anything like that level of racing before. I just stumbled into
that situation. I was really young then and didn’t have any experience at that level. But there were a lot of people out
there in the same position!

I met Tony and he asked if I was interested in going to America with him to race. Tony realized that the prize
money you could get in Can-Am was much higher than what you could get club racing in the UK. It was a way to get
out of town and race in a foreign country. I was just 21 and it sounded like a good idea! So, we packed our bags and
he shipped the Porsche over in a coach that carried the car and had a place to sleep. We put some wider wheels on the
908 and fender flares. I basically traveled around with the car to all the races.
- Graham Everett

That Porsche didn’t require a lot of work. Graham told me he only changed four of the six spark plugs – the
other two he could only reach with the engine out. He dusted the lock-wire and changed the tape and that was all it
needed!

One time we were coming across the [U.S. – Canada] border and there’s Tony’s transporter bus sitting there with
Graham in a deck chair outside. We stopped and asked, “What’s going on?” “I’m screwed. My passport’s run out. And
the paperwork for the car’s not up to date. They won’t let me into the States and they won’t let me back into Canada.”
He was in no man’s land until they got it figured out!
Graham Everett, 21-year old Can-Am crew chief!
- Alec Greaves

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 In early 1970, I got a call from Mike Underwood at BRM. He said they needed help desperately to finish the Tony
Southgate-designed P154 they were building for the Can-Am series. I didn’t really want to work for BRM but I said I’d
give them some help. Two P154s were built - one for George Eaton, the other one for Pedro Rodriguez who was the
number one driver for them in F1. I ended up going over to be part of the team in the 1970 season along with Reg
Richardson, the BRM engine man.
- Roger Bailey

Roger Bailey looks stylishly mod in his Castrol green and red uniform. Many of the top teams had tailored uniforms for the races.

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 I was the mechanic for Jackie Stewart when he won the F3 Championship in 1964, which he credits for launching
his career. He gave me a watch, a Longines, to thank me. I was out with some racing friends and one noticed the
watch and said, “I see you have your Jackie watch on.” A guy who was with him looked at it and said, “Well, he
couldn’t have thought much of you - he gives everyone else Rolexes.” I said, “You really don’t understand. All those
Rolexes Jackie gives away are all part of his promotional deal with Rolex. This watch he had to buy!”
- Roger Bailey

We called him “Boost Bailey” because he worked on the Offys in the McLaren Indycars.
- Alec Greaves

Roger Bailey had an impressive resume before coming to BRM, including being the first non-Italian to ever be a factory Ferrari
mechanic. He worked for just about every major team in motorsports in the day.

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 We had terrible handling issues with the car at first and many people thought that it was because we were
supposed to get special Firestone tires, which never appeared. But we discovered that this was the first Tony
Southgate design and, frankly, Tony had miscalculated. On a normal twin parallel link suspension there are two
suspension arms, one from the top of the upright to the top of the bulkhead, the other from the bottom of the
upright to the bottom of the bulkhead. And they are pretty much parallel in line.

But Southgate had made a yoke for the bottom radius rod and bolted it onto the flat surface on the side of the
engine where the engine mount went for the production cars. This meant the bottom radius rod was about half the
length of the top radius rod. So, when the wheel went up you got tremendous toe-in. Obviously nobody had bump-
steered the design before it left England.
- Roger Bailey

Tony Southgate’s design for the BRM P154 was fairly straightforward. The program mostly suffered from a lack of reliable engines.

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 Reg Richardson walks around the P154 Few creature comforts for George Eaton.

George wasn’t a playboy, even though he was very rich. He was very serious about his racing. He had two
brothers who were also interested in racing, John and Thor. You could say it was a racing family. I stayed with them
at their lake house and met his parents - they didn’t seem overly interested in racing but went along with what the
boys wanted.
- Roger Bailey

The flat front nose was for downforce. Eaton waits patiently for his chance to go out.

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 Linda is one of the warmest, kindest people you’d ever want to meet. She was always pleasant and always
remembered you if she had met you.
- Bill Warner

If anyone exemplifies the phrase “never judge a book by its cover” it would be Linda. Beyond her va-va-voom
appearance and Mae West-like sashay, she’s really a no-nonsense country girl with old-fashioned values, street
smarts, and a wicked sense of humor who wholeheartedly loves her fans and motorsports family. Time after time I’ve
witnessed how she invests her heart in racers and the sport – a sport that she’s made her life. And when you sprinkle
in a fair amount of je ne sais quoi, that special something that draws so many to her, the sum of Linda’s qualities has
not only surpasses the brand ambassador norm, it’s rightfully earned her the title, “First Lady of Motorsports.”
- Jennifer Revson

Stirling was tireless, always ready for another interview, upbeat and positive, and loving it. He also was quite
frugal, watching his expenses like a hawk. I would jokingly accuse him of riding his scooter halfway across London to
save two pence on a head of lettuce. But he was also very generous.
- Jim Kaser

There were three things that were of paramount importance to Stirling: 1) Adhering to a schedule; 2) Hooking up
with girls; 3) Meeting girls so he could hook up.
- Brad Niemcek

“Miss Hurst Golden Shifter” Linda Vaughn. Stirling’s typical attire in the paddock.

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 Oscar came up with the idea of taking a can of J/Wax, cleaning it out real good, and filling it with butterscotch
pudding, because that’s just what the wax looked like. So when the J/Wax people came walking through the paddock,
Oscar’s wife Elaine, and my wife Terry, were pretending to wax the car with this stuff, then dipping into the can and
eating it. The J/Wax guy, Jim Johnson, got very upset until they told him and then he thought it was really funny. He
said, “You know Moss is on an extreme diet. See if you can get him to taste the wax.” Terry had a can in her hand and
she talked Moss into tasting the wax. He immediately said, “You’ve ruined my diet!”
- Jack Deren

Denny had little patience for the media. He would give grudging respect to some of us for the good job we did
promoting the series. I tried not to ask him to do dumb things. One time out in Los Angeles, he and I double dated.
Coming home I was driving and got pulled over by the CHIPs. He thought it was hilarious.
- Brad Niemcek

“OK, Denny, I’ll give you a really good deal on this McLaren if you give me a really good deal on my next McLaren.” Oscar
Koveleski shows Denny Hulme one of his R/C cars in a quiet time during practice.

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 Oscar ran a mail-order hobby store called Auto World in Scranton and got some sponsorship from Jerobee who
made R/C cars. He would run one around the paddock when nothing was happening. One time he started driving
it around Denny, who was standing there. He shouts out, “I always wanted a car that could run circles around
McLarens!
- Jack Deren

Oscar was a wild man. I think he took racing seriously but he didn’t act that way. One year after this he had
retired and turned the driving over to Tony Adamowicz, I saw Oscar sitting on the wall at Road Atlanta below the
tower. He was very quiet, watching his car go around, and I say, “Oscar what’s on your mind?” He says, “You know,
having another driver in your car is like having someone else sleep with your wife.”
- Bill Warner

Koveleski would entertain everyone in the paddock on Saturday with demonstrations of the R/C cars he sold.

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 With the Chaparral you had to brake with your left foot – the steering column went between your feet so
there was no way to use your right foot. Fortunately, I had already learned how to do that in my rallying days.
When you changed gears you had to get the revs right since there was no clutch. You changed the gears manually
– it was a three-speed which is why the other cars like the McLarens could out-accelerate it – they had four-speed
transmissions. I would sit with my foot on the brake as the mechanics started the little engine – the fans could move
the car on their own. The car would sink down a few inches as the suction built up. I’d put it in 1st gear and start the
main engine. It had a torque converter so it could idle in gear with my foot on the brake and then would move as I
took my foot off and went for the gas. At 5000 RPM the converter would lock up and you didn’t have slippage up to
the redline of about 7600.
- Vic Elford

We wanted the SCCA to ban the car because it had moveable structures, the same reason they made us take off
the wing from the year before. The Weiner went up to the SCCA guys and said, “If you’re going to allow that, then
you need to let us run the high wings on the suspension.” The car was really good like that. We could adjust it and
keep the downforce just where we wanted it. It was a good car, it really was. Even Gurney said it was pretty nice.
- Alec Greaves

The Chaparrla 2J already shows signs of the quantity of red Georgia clay it is consuming on the Road Atlanta track.

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 Peter grew up driving sports cars, so racing them was a natural progression. He loved the Can-Am cars because
they were fast as hell. Of course he really wanted to win the Indy 500, but never said it was fun or anything. As his
career progressed, his focus was really on F1. He loved everything about it and was aiming for world champion.
- Jennifer Revson

Revson getting up to speed in his Lola.

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 I went to work at McLaren in 1968 and worked in 1969 doing the Can-Am with Bruce, the year we won every
race and he won the championship. I was one of a privileged few who got to work directly with Bruce. We knew how
hard he worked; he was something else. He treated you as part of the family, not just a number on the clock.
- Alec Greaves

I was really close to Denny. He started as a test driver at Brabham in the early 60’s and he sure knew how to
drive. He was called “the Bear” for a reason: he hated the media. I can’t tell you how many times Teddy would come
into the Gulf trailer and say, “Denny get out here! The media is waiting to talk to you!” He was just a country boy
from New Zealand and was not the kind of guy to say, “Look at me!” But when he got into that bloody car….
- Tony Attard

Mayer was more than a smart-aleck Yank lawyer come over to revolutionize racing, as he soon proved to the rest
of the McLaren team, because he was more than willing to work just as hard as they were. If he did things wrong it
was from ignorance, not from carelessness, and he figured ignorance was something lessons and experience would
put right.
- Eoin S. Young

Denny, Teddy, Jimmy Stone, and the McLaren M8D in a quiet time in the pits before qualifying. In this time of racing, there
weren’t the huge crowds and TV crews to make shooting difficult.

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 Lee has a couple of spark plugs in his hand. We’re probably waiting for one of the cars to come in to do a
“practice plug cut.” The driver comes in from a hot lap, cuts the engine off clean before he gets to the pits, and just
coasts in. Lee would pull a couple of plugs from each side of the engine and use a magnifier, like the ones jewelers use,
to look at the color of the spark plugs. They call this “reading the plugs.” The color would tell him if it is running too
rich or too lean. Then he’d adjust the fuel injection to enrich the mixture or back it off.
- Tony Attard

Tony’s nickname was Smokey. Today, he’s pretty mellow but in the old days, he was a terror. I later heard that
after Tony left McLaren he went back to school and got a Ph.D. in nuclear physics! From being a lowly mechanic to
having a doctorate in physics!
- Alec Greaves

“So I went over and stuffed a banana up Vic’s tailpipe!” Alec Greaves shares something funny with Tony Attard as Lee Muir
listens in. Tyler Alexander hovers in the background.

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 We were at Mid-Ohio before the race and the engine in Gethin’s car sounded off. Lee checked it and said he
thought a lobe was going off the cam. There was nothing we could do 15 minutes before the race. Teddy told him the
engine was going to go and to just pull off when it wasn’t drivable. I’m strapping him in had he asks me, “What do I
do?” I tell him, “Run the fucking thing until it stops! It’s not going to hurt anything.”

It finally came apart on the backside of the circuit. Remember this was just Gethin’s second race for us and I think
he was afraid of what Teddy would think. He came back to the pits and told me, “I ran it ‘til it stopped!” I jokingly
told him, “Don’t tell the Weiner that!” He said, “Will I get fired?!” I reassured him, “Na, you won’t – don’t worry.”
- Alec Greaves

“God, I hope I don’t break it!” Gethin ponders his chances.

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 Tyler would give Teddy Mayer shit all of the time. He could be real gruff and called a spade a spade. Some of the
guys had a hard time with that at first, but once they got to know him it was fine.
- Alec Greaves

Tyler was a very open, wonderful guy, a hard worker. All those McLaren guys were wonderful, very helpful. This
was a different era of racing – everyone helped each other. You met people and made lifelong friendships.
- Bobby Brown

Being a mechanic at McLaren was a special experience for me. We worked hard and sometimes very long hours,
but it was a team effort, everyone was focused on building the best car. There was a great feeling of camaraderie. One
of the biggest satisfactions as a race mechanic at McLaren Racing was that Bruce McLaren gave you the opportunity
to be creative, like fabricating brackets and necessary components for the car.
- Tony Attard

Despite having no formal mechanic training, Denny was superb in the workshop. He could fix just about
anything. Everyone got on well with him and he was always good to have around.
- Phil Kerr

Practice was a time for making small changes to the car before qualifying. The McLarens would qualify second and third,
behind Vic Elford’s Chaparral.

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 Tyler taught me so much. He would take the time to show me how to do things – he was my mentor. He was a
really good fabricator. One time he came over to where I was working and was questioning what I was fabbing, and I
looked at him.

“You know who you’re talking to? You taught me all this shit. And you’re questioning me?”

He just looked at me and smiled. He was really, really good.

- Alec Greaves

Tyler Alexander leans over talking to Gethin as Alec Greaves listens. Alexander was an extremely talented American mechanic /
fabricator who met Bruce McLaren and became a director of McLaren Racing. He was also an accomplished photographer.

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 In private testing sessions and during race practice, every modification or change to the car was noted on a
Vehicle Running Record along with drivers’ comments and individual lap times. These records were filed for reference
and in this way complete details of a car’s behavior under certain conditions could be checked at a later date.

This Vehicle Running Record was laid out and produced by Teddy Mayer. Spaces were provided for the date,
circuit, event, car, driver, weather, circuit length, total laps, total miles, fastest lap, average lap, water temperature,
oil temperature, oil pressure and fuel pressure. And that was merely the heading line!

…These charts were not kept as reference for a track from year to year, apart from basic information like gear
ratios. The main purpose was a detailed record for use at the next race.
- Eoin S. Young

We called him “The Weiner” but it was an affectionate nickname. I got along fine with him but he could be
difficult. He also knew a little bit about technical things but we made sure he didn’t interfere with what we did. One
year at the Speedway he came into the garage and was looking at the scale setup we had, starting to measure, to tell
us that it was off. Hughie Absalom looked at Tyler and me, and we just put everything down and wandered out the
door and left. Soon, he looked up and saw we had gone and got the message: “We know what we’re doing. You do
your job and we’ll do our job.” He never messed with us after that!
- Alec Greaves

“The Weiner” at work on his Vehicle Running Record. He became friends with Bruce McLaren through his brother, Timmy, who
was also a driver and was killed racing in 1964. Teddy joined Bruce McLaren Motor Racing shortly after that.

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 They were very simple, straightforward racecars. Jim Hall once remarked that the McLarens were, “unremarkable cars
driven remarkably well.”
- Jack Deren

Hulme was a great guy – great to race against. He co-drove with me several times in the 917. He was no bullshit,
no-nonsense. I really liked him.
- Vic Elford

Now, Denny was a great guy but he had his moments. One time at Elkhart Lake he came into the pits and said,
“This car is a piece of crap. I can’t qualify this thing. Pull the damn engine and put another one in.” Well, after a while
he cooled down and came back out, got in the car, and put the thing on the pole.
- Tony Attard

What a guy Denny Hulme was! He chewed me out one day at Mid-Ohio. I wasn’t doing well in the new M8E I
had bought and he comes up to me and says, “You know I’m pissed at you! You’re driving like an old lady!” He knew I
could do better than I was doing.
- Bobby Brown

Denny hurls his M8D down the hill into Turn 12 and onto the front straight. This was still only months after severely burning his
hands at Indianapolis.

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 I can tell you we knew the sentiment about our car was not good. A lot of drivers came in to complain to my Dad
and Franz that “that thing is just tearing me up.” The fans rotated fast enough that it could propel the car at 35 - 40
mph with just the JLO engine. It was especially bad for the teams in back of us in the pits. We had to start the JLO
engine up and have it at full bore before the car left the pit, so there’d be all this debris in the pits going out in back.

The noise was ear-splitting the entire time it was on! It made it difficult to work on in the pits. We had earmuffs
that everyone would wear. It didn’t have any kind of muffler on the exhaust – it ran full throttle all the time. You
could hear it run all the way around the track from the pits!
- Rodney Rogers

While the drivers complained about the debris, for everyone else around the 2J in the pits it was the noise from the snowmobile motor
that was unbearable. The motor ran wide open all the time and produced an ear-shattering noise level, as evidenced by the people in
the background with their hands over their ears. You could literally hear the car the whole way around the 2.52 mile track.
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 At one race, Oscar was running well off the pace. He asked Bondurant to take the car out and immediately he
was four seconds faster – which proved the speed was in the car. Bob shared what he was doing here and there and
by the end of the weekend Oscar had picked up the four seconds.

This shows that there was a lot of camaraderie among the teams in those days. A guy would blow an engine,
the other teams would drop what they were doing to get him back on the track. It was the same group of 30 teams
that traveled around to the Can-Am races all over the country. We knew it was show business; we were there to put
on a show.
- Jack Deren

One of the legends of motorsport, Bob Bondurant. By 1970, Bondurant was entering his third decade in motor racing. He
qualified his Lola in 7th place.

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 Hulme would rather be with us than sponsors or anyone; he was just one of the boys. He hated doing interviews.
He was at a vintage event and a bunch of people are following him around. He spots me and grabs me and whispers,
“Keep walking, keep walking. I’ve got to get away from these people. I told them I’ve got to talk to you about a
business deal.”
- Alec Greaves

One time we had to take one of the cars down to Atlanta to the Coca-Cola headquarters as part of our
sponsorship. Denny was there to entertain, which he hated with a passion – mixing it up with the big knobs. Teddy
said to Alec and me, “I don’t want you two in the main room. I want you to eat here in the kitchen.” I said, “Hell
Teddy, where are we going to eat – there’s just this little table.” But we did as we were told. A short time later,
Denny comes in and says, “Smokey! What the hell are you doing in here?” We told him what Teddy said and he
said, “Bullshit!” He looks at what we’re eating and says, “What’s that you’re eating? Looks like bloody dog food to
me. Throw that away.” He comes back with two plates of food from the main room. He had no problem challenging
Teddy. What are you going to do – fire your best driver? He was World Champion in 1967. Not likely.
- Tony Attard

“The Bear” examines a competitor’s car. If you weren’t a sponsor or media, Denny was very pleasant to be around.

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 It was frustrating not to have the funds to do all the things we wanted to do to be competitive. I’d go out and
qualify in the top five or so and then find out the others had been at the track for days and had blown 2 or 3 engines.
I’d come with my spare engine in the back of the truck. We’d practice and qualify on the engine we used for the
previous race and then install the fresh one for the race.

I felt like David versus Goliath – I took on the world!

- Lothar Motschenbacher

Using his track time judiciously, Lothar goes out to qualify and places his McLaren 9th on the grid.

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 Before my Dad, Troy Rogers, went to work at Chaparral, he was a machinist for Gardner Denver, a company that
serviced the oil businesses in Odessa, Texas. Hap Sharp was good friends with the owner and told him he wanted to
add a machinist to the Chaparral staff to make it easier and quicker to fabricate new parts. They picked my Dad.

My dad was always interested in automobiles but had zero racing or high-performance experience. It was a job
he absolutely loved – going from sitting around talking about an idea, then making it into a real part, taking it out
and seeing if it worked on Rattlesnake Raceway.

My Dad started going to the races almost immediately and kept it up full time until the mid-1980’s. All the guys
on the team worked around the clock, 24/7. Working like that was just an expected thing, it was prestigious. They
were a very small group, but very dedicated.
- Rodney Rogers

Troy Rogers was a key part of the Chaparral team beginning with the USRRC Championship 1964 season and into the Indy years.

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 At the races, around seven or eight the night before the race, everybody would be gone at the racetrack but we
were still there until one or two in the morning. Checking everything, making sure everything was all right. Keep
checking, checking, checking – Tyler made us do that. That’s how you win races, how you have a car running after
200 miles. We didn’t leave anything to chance.

Tyler used to say, “When you finish working on it, stand back and just look at it. Look at it until it’s buried in
your brain how it goes together and how it works going around the racetrack. And think of what could go wrong and
put your mind to thinking about that. Think of how the suspension is going up and down. When it turns, where the
stresses are.”
- Alec Greaves

Tyler Alexander waits for Gethin to come in after qualifying in 3rd place.

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 It was a different era of racing. Everybody stuck together. We had a good supply of parts and would help the
other teams. At one race, Greg Young, who had bought two of our old cars, was having trouble with one of his
engines, and Lee Muir and I were underneath the car helping. People asked us, “What are you doing?” “We’re going to
change out a bearing – it’s not sounding right.” “But they’re your opposition!” “Yea, but we want to beat them on the
racetrack, not in the pits.”
- Alec Greaves

The paddock at Road Atlanta was luxurious compared to most other tracks, with a large paved area to work on the cars.
However, the lot was not completely level, and wood blocks had to be placed in back of the tires to keep the car from rolling.
Here, the gear ratios are being changed in Bondurant’s Lola, a relatively easy task.
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 Bondurant of course was famous as one of the best of the Cobra drivers. They called him “Matinee Bob” at Shelby
and it wasn’t because of his good looks. He’d come to morning practice and find some pretty girl and disappear. He’d
show up again in the afternoon to go out and qualify!
- Bill Warner

These cars had so much power the tires would spin on the rims! You had to be really careful with the throttle
coming out of the corners so the tires wouldn’t move on the rims and put them out of balance. Some guys would use
screws through the rims to secure the tires.
- Bobby Brown

Running a Can-Am car is like pulling the pin on a hand grenade. As soon as you turn it on it’s just a matter of time
until something blows up.
- Alec Greaves

The rear wing of Bondurant’s Lola carries an ad for his driving school. An ex-student, Paul Newman, also sponsored the car as a
“thank you” for helping him prepare for his role in the movie “Winning.” Newman would later become a highly regarded driver.

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 When I came down to Midland to drive the 2J on his private track, Rattlesnake Raceway, Jim told me, “If
something happens and the car stops, don’t get out – we’ll come and find you. Otherwise, you’ll be walking around in
rattlesnakes.” That place really lived up to its name!
- Vic Elford

“Now if that snowmobile motor quits while I’m in the middle of a high-speed corner, what happens?” Vic, lost in thought.

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 At Road Atlanta, I really started to learn what the car could do in corners. With the constant suction from the
fans, you had downforce in slow corners as well as fast ones. Being new to ground effects, I would tell myself, “Oops,
watch it – you’re starting to get near the limit.” But I wasn’t. It just kept going quicker and quicker through the
corners. I kept expecting something to happen but it never did – it just started drifting out more from the apex. All I
had to do was get off the throttle a bit and it came back. It was very controllable.
- Vic Elford

Vic told me the 2J was phenomenal but you really had to screw up your courage to go into a corner so much
faster than you thought you could. But the problem was if you went into that corner and that snowmobile engine
coughed, your heart was right up in your throat!
- Bill Warner

The concept is simple: Assume you have a car 70 inches wide by 100 inches long. That’s 7000 square inches of
area. Normal atmospheric pressure that we all live in is 15 psi. Imagine if you could just lower the pressure by 1/4 psi –
there would be enough suction generated to suspend the 1800 lb. racecar upside down from the ceiling! We figured it
wouldn’t be that hard to close off that area underneath the car to reduce the pressure.
- Don Cox

Vic explores the limits of the 2J. He put the car on the pole by almost a second and a half over Hulme’s McLaren. It had been
three years since a Team McLaren car had not been on the pole of a Can-Am race.

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 Ford sold us the two G7As – J-9 and J-10 – for one dollar and all the parts to go with them. We raced J-10 and had
J-9 back at the shop as a backup. The G7A was a mechanic’s dream to work on. Everything on it was planned; there
was nothing hodge-podge. There were some things we had to beef up when we started getting the horsepower into it
– the front suspension and mounts. It was very easy to work on; very easy to adjust the suspension. No trouble with
the car at all.

We just couldn’t get aluminum block engines from Ford. When we ran the car at Shelby we had the Calliope
engine, which was built on a 427 block, but was a monstrosity. We took that out and tried the Indy 4-Cam engine but
Ford didn’t really want us to use that engine. We didn’t have an engine program and had to use whatever they gave
us. At one point we were just going to ditch the Fords and put in a 496 Chevy!
- Charlie Agapiou

Jack Brabham tried our third McLaren in 1969 at Michigan in practice when he was there driving the Agapiou
G7A. He wanted to drive our car in the race so he tried to break the Ford in practice but he couldn’t. Of course the car
broke about 15 laps into the race. Jack said “I was 20 laps shy of getting a ride in the McLaren!”
- Alec Greaves

It’s not clear how much road racing experience LeeRoy Yarbrough had before Road Atlanta, but it didn’t matter. He qualified the
G7A in 11th place, ahead of much more experienced drivers.

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 Jim Hall was a member [of the SCCA Competition Board] in 1963, and, I think, in 1964, and had been a
proponent for the [Can-Am] series for a long time. He provided very valuable advice on car rules and specifications.
Hall and [Tracy] Bird had been friends for several years, and they frequently discussed the rules and passed their
recommendations on to me. I spoke directly to Jim on occasion, but the work Tracy did with him was most valuable.
- Jim Kaser

I have to think that Jim must have known that the lifespan of that car was going to be very short. It was just so
different from any other car. The rule makers were going to be all over it.

George Drolsom told me that if you got in back of that car it just showered you with so much crap you couldn’t
stand it.
- Bill Warner

Watching the Chaparral come down the hill into Turn 12 and onto the pit straight was like watching a slot car – it literally was
like it was cornering on rails.

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 Being behind the Chaparral was horrible, horrible. I was behind it a couple of times with both Elford and Steward
driving. The garbage and crap that came flying at you was absolutely ridiculous. They should never have let it run in
the first place. The theory and concept was great and I applaud Jim Hall for doing it but it wasn’t a good experience
for all the rest of us. It was an unfair situation.
- Bobby Brown

I wasn’t real impressed with the red clay on parts of the circuit. I remember the Chaparral went off and it looked
like a bloody 747 taking off! It was unbelievable the shit that came out the back! Just sucked it all up and blew it out
the exhaust fans!
- Charlie Agapiou

“Dirt? What dirt? It doesn’t spew out any dirt!” Clear evidence of why other drivers hated the “Sucker Car”.

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 This was the first real race of any kind at Road Atlanta. No one knew what to expect. The track was not safe but
we didn’t look at those things in those days. A couple of guys flipped coming out of turn 7 over the years until they
fixed it. I had never been exposed to that red clay all over the place. As it turned out, that clay was to be my demise.
- Bobby Brown

This was the beginning of the aero age. Everyone – especially Bruce and Hall - learned a lot from trial and error.
For example, Bruce was testing on a cold day and they kept taping over the radiator opening to increase engine
temperature. He’d go out and notice that the car was handling worse, understeering. That’s when he realized the air
going in the radiator opening and exiting out in front of the windscreen was creating downforce.
- Jack Deren

The races always presented colorful photo opportunities, although some wouldn’t be considered “politically correct” today.

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 The first time Gethin went out in the Can-Am car at Edmonton we told him, “When you go down the front
straight, there’s a left turn at the end. Don’t pitch it in like you do with a F5000 car because it won’t pitch in. It
will just keep on going straight because it’s such a bulk. Remember that.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll remember that.”

So we’re watching him and the first time he gets on it he comes to the corner and pitches it in and we see
this yellow blob where he’s gone off in the grass. He comes in all covered in grass and we say, “Pitched it in there,
didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you had to try it and now you know it doesn’t work, OK?” We could talk to the guys like that. It
wasn’t a problem.
- Alec Greaves

Gethin settles in to his place on the McLaren team.

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 I drove an Eagle F5000 in 1969 and got to be pretty friendly with Dan Gurney. I decided I wanted to do Can-Am
in 1970 and Dan said he was going to be selling the McLeagle, so I bought it. He and the guys at All American Racers
had extensively modified the car from the base McLaren M6 that they started with, including making all-titanium
suspension pieces to save weight. It didn’t come with a motor and since I was a Chevy dealer I had access to the new
ZL-1, 427 all-aluminum engines directly from GM.

I loved driving that car - it was a fabulous car! I had some reasonable success with it – my finishing record was
better then Dan’s, which was helped by me using Chevrolet motors versus Dan’s Fords. I couldn’t beat McLaren, but
then no one could.
- Bobby Brown

One year I saw Bobby Brown running in the SCCA runoffs at Road Atlanta. I’ve never seen anyone braver come
down the hill than Bobby Brown. He’d put two wheels in the dirt passing someone coming down to Turn 5….that
was brave !!!
- Bill Warner

The“McLeagle,” so called because the inveterate tinkerer Gurney changed almost everything on the car until it was more akin to
one of his Eagles than the McLaren he had purchased. Brown qualified the car in sixth place, the first of the independents.

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 We had a special relationship with McLaren since Oscar lived in the same area of Pennsylvania as Teddy Mayer
and they had known each other for years. McLaren would change their bodywork several times a year, they’d say it
was “getting soft,” and they’d just give it to us. Same with the engines. I’d drive out to Livonia and we’d take it apart,
grab a set of cylinder heads, put the bottom end together, put it on the dyno, and then I’d put it back on my truck
to bring back to the shop. We were running the same basic engines they were, which, by the way, weren’t anything
special. I remember Gary Knudson being asked what type of cams they were running. “We tell people and they laugh.
No, you have to be a roller or something like that. And I say, no we’re running an off-the-shelf ZL-1 cam. We’re only
going to seven grand, you don’t need all this trick stuff.”
- Jack Deren

Koveleski stopped playing around and qualified his ex-Team McLaren M8B in the middle of the pack at 16th place.

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 Race Day. Moss gives Dave Sloyer a ride in the pace car.

The race had been very well-publicized throughout the South and many fans saw this
as perhaps their only opportunity to see a Can-Am since the other venues were a good
distance away in the Mid-west and West. Sloyer and Walker had worked with Brad
Niemcek on the PR efforts, and with Jim Kaser on getting the local SCCA involved. They
provided stock footage to the local TV stations to show viewers what the race was about.

Although the track had run a SCCA regional race the month before as a warmup, the organizers had no real
experience in the minutiae of an event of this size: taking money, giving tickets, parking. They were able to enlist the
help of the Atlanta Region of the SCCA for corner workers and tech inspectors. Executives from other tracks came to
lend their support and expertise; Roy Hord, who co-owned Riverside with Les Richter, came to help with the ticketing.

As the morning progressed the traffic outside the track backed up for miles as the spectators flocked in to see
the cars that had never run in the South before. Estimates pegged the attendance at 40,000, but Walker later said
that, using aerial photographs to count the number of cars parked in the infield, the number was closer to 19,000.
The organizers arranged for a local horse group to patrol outside the fences and they only found only a few trying to
sneak in.

The morning hours before the start of the race was a time for drivers to relax, crews to make final adjustments,
and fans in the paddock to see stars like Stirling Moss, one of the greatest drivers of all time and the Can-Am
“Commissioner” and Linda Vaughn, “Miss Hurst Golden Shifter.” Journalists and photographers from all over the world
had come to Road Atlanta to document the next chapter in Can-Am history.

The story that they would end up writing would not be the one they expected.
Miss Atlanta International Raceway shows her colors. Chris Economaki catches up with Teddy and Tyler.

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 Denny got the nickname “The Bear” because he could be gruff and he was a big guy, but he was a very sweet and
lovely friend. He was from new Zealand and we each loved each other’s accents.
- Linda Vaughn

My future wife worked in Indycar racing at the time and was good friends with Denny – he was her matron of
honor at our wedding! When he was walking her down the aisle he asked her if she really wanted to go through with
it – he had an airplane ticket for her if she wanted to back out! He was her best friend for a very long time.

Her parents owned a general store in a little village about an hour and a half south of Indy. The store was right
on the street and had a big front porch with swings and seats. She would invite Denny to come down and he would sit
there in an old polo shirt and talk and wave at everyone. He never, ever mentioned he was a racecar driver. She would
tell him, “Denny, we’ve got to go back to work tomorrow,” and Denny would respond, “I don’t want to go back!”
- Tony Attard

Linda Vaughn was equally comfortable in the presence of stock car drivers and drag racers as she was Formula One World Champions
like Denny Hulme, a good friend.

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 There wasn’t that much money in racing in those days. Teddy said the prize money didn’t cover the cost of the
two cars, mechanics, and motels. The only way it was possible was because we were getting millions from Gulf,
Reynolds, and Goodyear. One year Coca-Cola gave money for two races in Canada. A lot of the other teams didn’t
have those sponsorships.
- Tony Attard

Alec Greaves gets a ride to the grid in Gethin’s McLaren. The paddock was about 20 feet above the pit area, so the trip down the
hill could be interesting!

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 In the late 60’s there were a lot of corporate upheavals and people were leaving. When the car left, so did Don
Gates to work for Jim. He became the guy in charge of developing the car. Don was a very clever guy; he was a
genius. Because of Don, we were transmitting data from the car running on the track in Midland to R&D in Warren,
MI, in real time – in 1965!
- Don Cox

Chaparral Engineer Don Gates is behind wheel as crewmember Rodney Rogers, on the right, pushes the 2J to the grid.

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 I remember the track temp was 171 degrees. I thought that was pretty damn hot!
- Jack Deren

Jim Kaser, the Director of Competition for the SCCA, was a big help in getting us the Can-Am date, as was
everyone with the Atlanta SCCA. I did a lot to promote the track with local newspapers and television. We went to
Daytona and Sebring to get footage of road racing that the stations could use to show their viewers what we were all
about. The stations were eager to get it.
– Earl Walker

Haas Racing crewmember George Pfaff brings Revson’s Lola down the hill. The ban on cigarette advertising on television and radio
would take effect at the end of the year. The tobacco companies were already planning their alternate promotional strategies.

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 One thing that made the Can-Am so great in the beginning was that you could buy all the bits you needed to put
together a pretty competitive car. You could go to McLaren and to Lola for a chassis, and to Chevy for a motor. Sure,
McLaren had good connections with Chevrolet, but so did Chaparral and others. When the 917/30 came along in 1973
that all ended. You couldn’t go out and buy that technology.
- Roger Bailey

Last minute details: a Gulf representative fills spare fuel cans for McLaren, while Reg Richardson and Roger Bailey fill the BRM
tanks. The funnel has a chamois to filter the fuel and absorb any moisture that would damage the fuel injectors.

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 “Don’t let the dust get in your eyes as I lap you,” Vic says to Gethin. “You know we haven’t lost a race in three years, Vic!”

Most of the drivers were pretty nice guys – not like the stuff going on in F1 these days. The money wasn’t there
like it is today. I don’t know what the top drivers were paid in the day, but nothing like the 50 million today. And the
thing is, these Can-Am cars went just as fast as Formula One today! At Riverside, I know we were doing 230 – 235
through the speed trap. Think about that! There were no electronic controls or spotters. Denny would say “I’ve got
my heel on the accelerator to keep the revs up, right foot on the brake and my left foot on my right foot and I’m
pushing like hell to try and stop the friggin’ thing.” You talk about being brave!
- Tony Attard

Teddy struck me as being a bit aloof, but it could have been that he was just very shy. He seemed to be a good
businessman, smart man. If you sat down and talked with him he was actually very helpful.
- Bobby Brown

“Well, if both Vic and Denny have trouble...” thinks Gethin. “Well, if Vic, Denny, Peter, and Peter have trouble...,” thinks
journeyman driver Chuck Parsons.

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 Vic was a very focused man. My Dad had a great relationship with him – they became lifelong friends. Dad was
very impressed with his ability to get a lot out of the car. He took good care of the equipment; he did not abuse the
car the way some other drivers would. He was humble but very aggressive on the track. My Dad loved Vic Elford.
- Rodney Rogers

Troy was my chief mechanic right from the start. Very quiet and pensive, we were able to sit and think things
through together any time we had a problem. At the track he never did anything until he was sure of it. As with Don
Gates, I got on very well with Troy and was very happy working with him.
- Vic Elford

Elford is totally focused on Troy Rogers’ last minute instructions before the start.

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 The Race.
In qualifying, Elford had proven the superiority of the 2J, setting a pole position more than
a second faster than the McLaren of Denny Hulme - the first time since 1967 that a McLaren
team car had not sat on the pole of a Can-Am. And, many had suspicions that Elford was
“sandbagging.” Peter Gethin in the second McLaren was another second back followed closely
by Revson in the Lola and Eaton in the BRM.

At the start, the lack of acceleration from the 3-speed gearbox set Elford back, and he fell to fourth place before
he could get going. Hulme took the lead but on the 10th lap hit a backmarker, Gary Wilson, and damaged the car
sufficiently that it could not be repaired. Elford had passed Revson and Gethin and would have taken the lead, but
had to pit to check a misfire in the ignition system of the JLO engine that was causing the car to lose downforce.

Gethin took the lead and it appeared McLaren would notch their 20th win in a row, but then he too was involved
in an incident with two other cars. He dashed into the pits for a new nose, letting Peter Revson move into first.

Revson held onto the lead for nine laps but on the 30th lap, a rear suspension piece broke blowing a tire on his
Lola right at the bridge before the downhill, causing him to hit the clay embankment and bounce back to the track.
Just as Revson wriggled out of the wreckage, Bob Brown – blinded by the dust and about to take the lead in the ex-
Dan Gurney McLeagle – came along and hit Revson’s car. The Lola was demolished and Brown’s was badly damaged.

Now, George Eaton inherited the lead in the BRM and held it for 19 laps, all the time wondering if the engine
would last. It didn’t.

This put Gethin, back in the race after repairs, in the lead with 24 laps to go. Once again, Teddy Mayer could take
a deep breath and relax. But there were still a few surprises left.
At the start, both McLarens passed the Chaparral and began another parade to a Can-Am 1-2.

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 Gary Wilson was chugging around in the middle of the track and Hulme came over the hill and hit him. So it was
up to Gethin and he took over and was doing a nice job and then he didn’t come in!
- Alec Greaves

We were at a vintage race years later with Denny and a Can-Am McLaren had just won the 8-lap race. The guy
who won came up to Denny and said, “I thought you said these cars were bears to drive.” Denny looked up at him and
said, “Look at you – you’re all sweating, you’re all flustered. Put 60 gallons of gas in there and get out there for two
hours, not just for 8 laps, and tell me it isn’t a bear to drive.”
- Jack Deren

The red dust was everywhere! I wore a white shirt and the red clay destroyed it. We could not believe the events
of the race. One of the ways we promoted the Can-am was to send out a radio report on each race afterwards to over
400 radio stations around the country. Most races it was easy to write before hand. But not that race!
- Brad Niemcek

On lap 10, Hulme ran into a back marker and was out of the race. Here he leads Gordon Dewar’s McLaren M6A, which was a DNF.

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 Even though I had qualified on the pole by a large margin, I got blown off by the McLarens and Revson in the Lola
on the very first corner. By the time we got to turn six, I had caught up to them. I’m on Revson’s tail and he suddenly
puts on the brakes. I think he’s got a problem but then I realize it’s his normal braking point. Because of the constant
downforce, I could brake much later and I just motored around him. The next lap I did the same thing to Gethin, and
then to Hulme. Then the little motor started acting up.
- Vic Elford

Elford was able to recover from his poor start and was about to take the lead when the engine powering the fans started
misfiring. He had to pit, dropping him down in the standings.

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 Don Gates and Jim were very angry that the car was banned. They felt the spirit of the Can-Am was ingenuity
encouraged by a minimum of rules. I read they issued a statement that said, “...Chaparral Cars is the only entrant that
has attempted to fill this concept to any degree. Our detractors say that we are not within the spirit of the rules; we
contend that they are not within the spirit of the Can-Am series.”
- Don Cox

It was a pretty dark cloud when the 2J was banned – a lot of disappointed people. I know Jim was very upset and
fed up with racing at that point. Remember, in those days there weren’t the huge sponsorship deals for the teams like
you had later. The money that it cost to develop that car came right out of Jim’s pocket.
- Rodney Rogers

Jim Hall and Elford decide to continue in the race despite a misfiring auxiliary engine that powered the downforce suction fans.

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 1970 was our best finish at Road Atlanta, 4th. For me, just finishing a race was winning. Having a car still running
strong - a car that was happy, with no major problems – that was what I always strove for.
- Jack Deren

Chuck Parsons, who ended up in 12th place, leads Gordon Dewar (DNF), and Oscar Koveleski. Oscar finished in 4th place, his best
finish to date in the Can-Am. He would effectively retire from racing at the end of 1971 but would finish second in that year’s
Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining Sea Memorial Trophy Dash with PRDA teammates Tony Adamowicz and Brad Niemcek.
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 LeeRoy had the car going really well and with all the attrition we thought we were going to do pretty good. Then
an oil plug fell out of the engine and that was that.

The car could have been extremely competitive if we had the right power plant. At a test session when we first
got the car, Mario Andretti said, “That thing is really fast. You’ve got a car that could win some races here.” If only we
could have had an engine that lasted. The Chevys were all 454s and then 496s. We were stuck with the Ford 427s.
- Charlie Agapiou

LeeRoy was denied a good finish despite a solid performance on his part. It was later revealed he was suffering from a concussion
as a result of an accident five months before. The effects of this would follow him the rest of his life, resulting in a tragic end.

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 I was racing our last year’s car, the M12, because Jackie Oliver had run me off the road at Mosport in one of
the factory M8B McLarens from 1969. I didn’t realize a rear hub had been cracked. That caused an accident at Road
America that damaged the car.

Before the race, we checked the timing as part of our pre-race check and the spark plug wire didn’t get put back
tight. I started the race running on seven cylinders. I had to run the whole race down on power because I didn’t want
to lose places to come into the pits to fix it. I thought maybe it would go away, clean itself out. Then the right rear
spring broke – I’ve never heard of that happening before or since.

It was a disappointment to finish third but we did end up second in the point standings at the end of the year,
which was great because I really needed the money to pay people back. Sometimes I think I may have tried to bite off
more than I could handle in those days.
- Lothar Motschenbacher

Our McLaren was a team car from 1969. As I recall, someone had agreed to buy both cars from 1969 and then
couldn’t. Teddy called Oscar and asked if he was interested. Lothar bought the other one. Originally Lothar was going
to buy both since he had sponsorship from 7-Up but they said the cars had to be green, and Lothar said, “No my cars
are red,” and lost the sponsorship money!
- Jack Deren

We were proud of the way our cars looked in red, but I can assure you I would have painted the car any color a
sponsor wanted if it would have given us some additional money!
- Lothar Motschenbacher
Motschenbacker soldiered on despite only running on seven cylinders to finish in third place.

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 It was generally known that you had to come within the top five to have enough money to go on to the next
race. First place would pay a good sum but go down to third or fourth and it dropped a lot – it made it tough to race
on. There were guys who, if they had blown their engine, would get a rental car with a similar engine. Take it to the
track, pull the engine and put all the bits and pieces from their blown engine on it, race it, and then put it back in the
rental car! That is American ingenuity. That’s a true story!
- Tony Attard

“Please Vic, don’t suck me up into that thing!” Canadian Rainer Brezinka in his ancient McLaren Elva Mk III finished in a very
respectable 11th place. Vic continued on to finish in 6th place after pitting.

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 We called Peter Gethin “The Rabbit” because the guy took off like a rabbit from the grid. He only had one speed
– fast! He never slowed down, even if he had a 10-second lead. His foot was on the throttle all the time. At one race
someone actually put a large stuffed rabbit in his seat in the car on the grid!
- Tony Attard

With Hulme out and Elford having problems with the auxillary motor, Gethin takes the lead. But then he gets caught in an
incident and damages his nose and has to pit for a replacement.

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 Dick Smith in a Mclaren M12 was a DNF. Dick Durant (8th place finish) tells Dave Causey (2nd) where to go.

George Drolsom was a factory service guy for Porsche and drove for Warren Bermeister who owned a bunch of
ice cream stands in suburban Chicago. The car was kind of outdated, an older Lola T-70. He did not fit the mold of a
racecar driver at all – he was kind of laid back. We called him “Lonesome George,” just like George Gobel. If the car
was on fire, he’d say in a calm voice, “Look at that, the car’s on fire.”
- Bill Warner

Revvie didn’t have the finesse that Hulme did. At Road Atlanta one year we had the wide wheels on the cars and
he would come out of the corners so hard he bent the top beam and the radius rod on one side. We fixed it by going to
a local tubing company and finding a slightly larger piece of tubing to slide over the rod and weld in place. That did it.
- Alec Greaves

Roger McCaig (5th) leads “Lonesome George” Drolsom (10th). Revson takes the lead when Gethin pits. Is this his day?

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 I was in second, right behind Peter who was now in the lead in his Lola. He hit the dip at the end of the straight
and his suspension broke a rear wishbone and blowing a tire. He hit the embankment and there was a horrendous
dust storm so I didn’t see he was back in the middle of the track. I was on the brakes as hard as I could but I still hit
him. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the nose and radiator of my car was all smashed up. That put me out.
- Bobby Brown

Revson is cruising to an easy victory when a broken suspension causes a rear tire to blow, sending him into the clay wall. Bobby
Brown, running in second and poised to take the lead, plows into the back of the Lola moments later, eliminating him as well.

190 191
 On a good day George was every bit as quick as Pedro in the BRM. And on a couple of occasions George out-
qualified him. People may doubt this, but I was there.
- Roger Bailey

It is now George Eaton’s turn to take the lead, but his engine lets him down after staying in front for 19 laps, the longest lead of
the race. It’s now Gethin back in the lead after replacing his bodywork.

192 193
 The pit set up in America included a complete body section – nose and tail– for each car, as well as materials
to repair damage to the body, a complete set of spare wheels for each car, and quick-lift jacks ready in each pit. Air
lines were rigged to power wrenches to speed wheel changes, and spare fuel is kept in churns. Oil couldn’t be added
during the race. The team developed a pressurized water system so that an overheating car could have water pumped
in under pressure during a pit stop without unscrewing the water cap. Tools were laid out ready for use, and the
signaling numbers and name boards set out for a quick selection during the race.
- Eoin S. Young

Denny has the cart with 2, 12-volt batteries to start the car. We did that because it took 24 volts to start that
monster Chevy. The coupling was at the back of the engine right between the exhaust pipes. Denny would always
jump in and help – he was a mechanic himself. He had started in the shop on the Cooper cars.
- Tony Attard

Suddenly Gethin tears into the pits with a door that has come loose. He storms out of the pits, incurring a black flag penalty
from the stewards for excessive speed in the pits.

194 195
 We had increased the wheelbase on the cars and that meant we had to use a longer input shaft on the transaxle.
When Gethin put the power down it snapped the shaft – the engine wasn’t talking to the transmission anymore.
- Tony Attard

“I swear I didn’t break it!” Gethin looks up to his crew as his McLaren coasts down the front straight, his transmission broken
from, perhaps, overly aggressive driving. The black flag was immaterial at this point.

196 197
 That’s me running behind The Weiner, back when I was skinny! This was the only time we had a transmission
failure. Notice I have a roll of gray tape – what would we do without gray tape?
- Tony Attard

Teddy Mayer races down the pit lane, followed by Tony Attard, to see what can be done to get Gethin back in the race.

198 199
 In the end, Porsche came along and changed the game with the twin-turbo 917s. We could have competed
with them – we had put twin turbos on the Chevy and it had so much power it bent the driveshafts. We had the
horsepower but we’d have to redesign the car. The Weiner said, “We’ve got to spend this much money to win this
much money? It’s not worth it.” We didn’t have the sponsors behind us to make it work.
- Alec Greaves

Accepting defeat, Mayer takes the long road back to the paddock. This was the first loss for McLaren in the Can Am in three years.

200 201
 No one was more surprised than Tony Dean when his little Porsche 908 running like a clock all through the race,
swept under the chequered flag first. It was, perhaps, the end of an era, for it marked the first time in 19 races that the
McLaren team had been shut out of the winner’s circle in a Can-Am race.
- Motor Sport

Tony didn’t even know he had won the race! He told me, “I was just motoring around, not paying that much
attention to where I was in the standings, and all of a sudden they wave me into victory lane!”
– Bill Warner

We didn’t qualify anywhere near the front but then everyone started breaking down. Tony could drive OK – he
was pretty brave. The Porsche was a very reliable car and got great fuel economy so we could just cruise along.
- Graham Everett

That was one race that got away from me. I would have been thrilled to finish second – maybe even won it! I was
at least two laps ahead of Tony and he just kept going and going in his little Porsche.
- Bobby Brown

Tony Dean, the used car salesman from Leeds, crosses the finish line in his little Porsche 908 to win the 1970 Road Atlanta Can-
Am, and enters the history books.

202 203
 Moss interviews Dean as Dave Sloyer, in ascot, looks on. Dean and Vaughn flash a 70s hand gesture.

Bruce and Denny got tired of being interviewed after each race since they won so much. So we asked ourselves,
“How do we get at least the top 3 guys to the press room?” I came up with the idea of giving the top three finishers a
medal – a gold, silver, bronze medallion. The drivers loved it. Peter Revson said the photo of him with his chest full of
medals was his favorite shot.
- Brad Niemcek

The prize money varied from race to race – a big race like Riverside outside Los Angeles paid more than a smaller
race in a less populated area. And some didn’t actually pay cash – the one at Edmonton gave Teddy a gold bar worth
10 or 12 thousand dollars when we won! That was because the race was held during the Calgary Stampede and they
wanted to tie the race into the festivities.
- Tony Attard

These sort of winnings sound great until you rack up the crippling costs of mounting such a racing offensive,
leaving nothing to chance. Mayer maintained the costs were not covered until after midseason in 1969 when they
were winning everything in sight. Sponsorship contracts were vital to the McLaren team, and it was this lack of
sponsorship that kept the other major European teams out of the series.
- Eoin S. Young

“What the hell just happened?” Dean savors the moment.

204 205
 GAINESVILLE, Ga., Sept. 13—Tony Dean of England, driving a second-hand, 3-liter Porsche 908, won today the
Road Atlanta Can-Am, a demolition derby that was the wildest of the 36 Can-Am races that have been run since this
competition began in 1966. It was a victory so surprising that Dean himself was surprised.
- John S. Radosta
New York Times

That was the last of real racing in my mind. Green flag to checker, fastest car wins, period. No class nonsense. As
the race went on, the track would get dirtier and the weight of the car would go down by almost 400 pounds. They
were turning lap times that were faster than qualifying.* That was racing.
- Jack Deren

[* Both Peter Revson and Peter Gethin set the fastest lap in the race at 1:18.05. This was a full 1.6 seconds faster
than Gethin had qualified and 2 seconds faster than Revson’s qualifying time.]

Cinderella Man. Due to his Road Atlanta win and consistent finishes in other Can-Am races, Dean would earn $12,000 in prize
money for this win and almost $50,000 at the end of the year from the points fund, a huge sum in racing in 1970.

206 207
 Epilogue.
This was the only Can-Am race Tony Dean would win, but due to consistent finishes and his Road Atlanta victory he
would finish the 1970 season in sixth place in the standings. Dean would continue to race into the 1980s in a variety of
series with limited success. He would run afoul of the law for smuggling cigars into the UK in his racecar.

Vic Elford would continue to drive the 2J for two additional races, qualifying on the pole in both but not finishing
either. The Chaparral 2J would be banned at the end of the year for having moveable aerodynamic devices. Jim Hall
would withdraw from racing for several years but would come back to win the Indy 500 with the radical Chaparral 2K
designed with John Barnard. The car featured more effective ground effects than the 2J without the need for fans.

Peter Revson would switch to McLaren for the 1971 season and would win the race at Road Atlanta on his way to
the Can-Am championship. He would be killed tragically in 1974 driving the F1 cars he loved.

Porsche would return to the Can-Am in 1971 with the 917/10 and would eventually dominate the series with the
twin-turbo 917/30 in the same way McLaren had. Many feel this dominance was the cause of the Can-Am fading away
after the 1974 season, but other factors, including the oil crisis and resulting recession, were also responsible.

Road Atlanta would go on to become one of the premier racing venues in the United States, although not under the
original ownership team of Walker, Sloyer, and Montgomery. The track would go into bankruptcy several times and be
resurrected by Don Panoz in 1996, who made major improvements. The track is owned today by IMSA Holdings.

Road Atlanta would be the only race McLaren would lose in the 1970 season and they would continue to dominate
in 1971. After only winning two races in 1972, they would leave the Can-Am to concentrate on Formula One. To date,
McLaren has won 182 F1 races, 8 Manufacturer’s Championships, and 12 Drivers Championships.
“The Little Porsche That Could” proudly wears its laurels in Victory Lane.
Somewhere, Bruce McLaren is smiling.

208 209
Appendix.
Starting Grid Results of Road Atlanta Can-Am, September 13, 1970
Pos. Driver Make/Model Qualifying time Pos. No. Driver Make/Model Entrant Engine Margin/Notes
1 Vic Elford Chaparral 2J 1:17.420
1 18 Tony Dean (GB) Porsche 908/02 A. G. Dean Ltd. F8 2v DOHC 3000 cc 1:49:45.880
2 Denny Hulme McLaren 8D 1:18.680
3 Peter Gethin McLaren 8D 1:19.670 2 51 David F. Causey (USA) Lola T163 David F. Causey Chevrolet 427/Chaparral 1m 12sec
4 Peter Revson Lola T220 1:20.020
5 George Eaton BRM P154 1:21.040 3 11 Lothar Motschenbacher (USA) McLaren M12 Motschenbacher Racing Chevrolet 454/Motschenbacher 72 laps
6 Bob Brown McLaren M6B 1:21.920
4 54 Oscar Koveleski (USA) McLaren M8B Auto World Inc. Chevrolet 427 V8 72 laps
7 Bob Bondurant Lola T160 1:23.830
8 Chuck Parsons Lola T160/163 1:24.090 5 55 Roger McCaig (CDN) McLaren M8C McCaig Racing Chevrolet 427 V8 72 laps
9 Lothar Motschenbacher McLaren M12 1:24.100
10 Tony Dean Porsche 908 1:25.500 6 66 Vic Elford (GB) Chaparral 2J Chaparral Cars Inc. Chevrolet 465/Chaparral 69 laps
Program Cover 11 LeeRoy Yarbrough Ford G7A 1:27.120 7 7 Peter Gethin (GB) McLaren M8D McLaren Cars Ltd. Chevrolet 465 66 laps
12 Dave Causey Lola T163 1:27.390
Average Speed: 103.472 mph (166.522 km/h) 13 Graeme Lawrence McLaren M12 1:28.270 8 81 Dick Durant (USA) Lola T163 Racing Associates Inc. Chevrolet 427/Chaparral 66 laps
Distance: 75 laps, 189.06 miles (304.26 km)
14 Gordon Dewar McLaren M6B 1:28.760
Margin of Victory: 1 minute, 12 seconds 9 14 Graeme Lawrence (NZ) McLaren M12 Canadian Can-Am Chevrolet 427 62 laps
15 Tom Dutton McLaren M6B 1:28.780
Fastest Race Lap: Peter Gethin (lap 7) & Peter Revson Racing Team
16 Oscar Koveleski McLaren M8B 1:28.990
(lap 26), 1:18.05 (116.27 mph) (187.12 km/h)
Fastest Qualifier: Vic Elford, 1:17.420 (117.216 mph) 17 Gary Wilson Lola T163 1:29.200 10 34 George Drolsom (USA) Lola T70 Mk.3 Warren Burmester Chevrolet 380 V8 54 laps
(188.641 km/h) 18 Roger McCaig McLaren M8C 1:29.920
19 Tony Adamowicz Lola T70 1:30.100 11 39 Rainer Brezinka (CDN) McLaren Elva Mk III Rainer Brezinka Chevrolet 365 V8 51 laps
Attendance: 40,000 (est.)
Weather: Hot and humid 20 Dick Durant Lola T163 1:30.470
12 10 Chuck Parsons (USA) Lola T160/3 Douglas Shierson Racing Chevrolet 465 V8 Head gasket
21 Cliff Apel McLaren M6B 1:32.240
Lap Leaders: 22 Eno de Pasquale Lola T163 1:32.180
1-10 Hulme / McLaren 23 Ron Goldleaf McLaren M6B 1:32.710 Did not finish:
11-20 Gethin / McLaren 24 Ranier Brezinka McLaren Elva 1:35.890
98 George Eaton (CDN) BRM P154 British Racing Motors Chevrolet 465/BRM Blown engine
21-30 Revson / Lola 25 George Drolsom Lola T70 1:35.950
31-50 Eaton / BRM 26 Dick Smith McLaren M12 1:45.810 26 Peter Revson (USA) Lola T220 Carl Haas Racing Chevrolet 465/Foltz Accident
51-67 Gethin / McLaren 27 Mike Barbour Rattenbury 1:48.090
68-75 Dean / Porsche 3 Bob Brown (USA) McLaren M6B Bob Brown Racing Inc. Chevrolet 465 Accident
Did Not Start
15 LeeRoy Yarbrough (USA) Ford G7A Agapiou Brothers Mercury 496 Engine
Bob Nagel Lola T70 1:35.330
Note: This data in this section has been compiled from several
sources, including official entry lists, finishing lists, Motor William Wonder McLaren Elva 1:37.990 47 Gordon Dewar (CDN) McLaren M6B JNO Racing Enterprises Chevrolet 427 Oil leak
Sport Magazine, and the www.RacingSportsCars.com web site. Jerry Hodges McKee Mk. 10 1:52.990

210 211
 Results of Road Atlanta Can-Am, September 13, 1970 (cont’d) Tri-panel brochure.
Did not finish: (cont’d)

No. Driver Make/Model Entrant Engine Margin/Notes

21 Bob Bondurant (USA) Lola T160 Smith-Oeser Racing Chevrolet 427/Chaparral Body damage,
overheating

79 Tom Dutton (USA) McLaren M6B Barrett Racing Chevrolet 427 Accident

37 Cliff Apel (USA) McLaren M6B Cliff Apel Chevrolet 350 Accident

67 Eno DePasquale (USA) Lola T163 Eno de Pasquale Chevrolet 468/Chaparral Clutch

5 Denny Hulme (NZ) McLaren M8D McLaren Cars Ltd. Chevrolet 465 V8 Accident

19 Gary Wilson (USA) Lola T163 Wilson Racing Chevrolet 427 Accident

74 Dick Smith (USA) McLaren M12 Dick Smith/George Harm Ford 427 Oil leak

70 Mike Barbour (CDN) Rattenbury Mk.4B Mike Barbour Oldsmobile 262 Con Rod

17 Ron Goldleaf (USA) McLaren M6B Glen Racing Ltd. Chevrolet 439 Accident

32 Tony Adamowicz (USA) Lola T70 Mk.3B Vic Nelli Chevrolet 448 V8 Fuel starvation

Did not start:

24 Bob Nagel (USA) Lola T70 Mk.3 Nagel Racing Ford 427

William Wonder (USA) McLaren Elva Mk III William M. Wonder Chevrolet 427

25 Jerry Hodges (USA) McKee Mk.10 Hodges Racing Chevrolet 427

Special thanks to John Gabrial who kindly supplied many of the items
on the following pages from his extensive collection.
212 213
1970 Road Atlanta program pages.

214 215
Program pages (cont’d).

216 217
Media coverage.
Unknown, possibly Competition Press & Autoweek.

James Reeve
SCCA “Sports Car”

Unknown, possibly Competition Press

& Autoweek.

218 219
 Media coverage. 1971 Road Atlanta program pages.

220 221
Event poster. Bumper stickers. 1970 Can-Am Points Purse. Peter Revson’s 1971 Road Atlanta 1st place medallion.

Jennnifer Revson
Corner worker patch.

PRDA membership card.

In addition to the prize money that each track offered, the drivers and teams would share in a points fund supported by
the Johnson Wax involvement. Denny Hulme’s $162,202 in total winnings would be worth well over $1 million today.
222 223
Chaparral press kit.

Front and rear of the kit folder and the lead press release. The Chaparral and Lola press kits are from the collection of John Gabrial.
224 225
Chaparral press kit. (cont’d)

226 227
Chaparral press kit. (cont’d)

228 229
Lola press kit.

230 231
 Photo Notes.
All photos were taken with a Nikon F and Ftn, using a variety of lenses. Black and white film was Tri-X developed
in D-76 for that distinctive “golf-ball” grain. Color shots are High-Speed Ektachrome slides that were scanned and color
corrected in Photoshop. All film was scanned on a Nikon Coolscan IV using VueScan software.
Production Notes.
Layout was done in inDesign. The type face is Skia.
Credits.
The photo of Jim Kaser is from the Sports Car Club of America Archives/International Motor Racing Research Center
The scanned images on pages 19, 21, 25 and in the Appendix are from the collection of John Gabrial.
The photo on page 25 of James Reeve receiving the trophy from Earl Walker is from James Reeve.
The photos on page 25 of Road Atlanta being built are from an unknown source.
The color photo on page 21 of the Johnson Wax Trophy is from the author’s collection, photographer unknown.
The photo on page 223 of Peter Revson’s Road Atlanta medallion is from Jennifer Revson.
The clip on page 219 of the race results of the August 22-23 SCCA regional is from James Reeve.
Tyler Alexander’s quote is from McLaren From The Inside, David Bull Publishing.
Jim Kaser’s quotes are from his article, Creating History, How The Can-Am Series Came To Be.
Phil Kerr’s quotes are from To Finish First, MRP Publishing
Oscar Koveleski’s quotes are from an Auto World article, October at Road Atlanta.
Linda Vaughn’s quote is from First Lady of Motorsports, CarTech Inc.
John Radosta’s quote is from the Sept. 14, 1970, edition of the New York Times.
Eoin S. Young’s quotes are from Bruce McLaren, The Man and His Racing Team. Some of the quotes have been put in
past tense to match the rest of the book.
232
About the Author/Photographer.
Harry Hurst has been involved with cars and racing most of his life. A native Floridian (born just two days after the
inaugural Sebring race in 1950!), he began taking photographs at races in the mid-1960’s, at tracks including Daytona, Road
Atlanta, and Sebring where he became Track Photographer in 1969 at the age of 19. He studied Fine Arts at Florida State and
received his degree in photography/cinematography in 1972.
After graduating, Harry opened an English sportscar repair/restoration shop in Tallahassee and translated that technical
knowledge into a job producing training programs for Jaguar and later as East Coast technical representative for the
DeLorean Motor Company.
In 1982, Harry went to work for the Philadelphia office of Carl Byoir & Associates, the same public relations agency
that had promoted the Can-Am for its client S. C. Johnson. Over the last thirty-five years in advertising and public relations,
Harry has been instrumental in helping several of his clients become involved in motorsports, including Black & Decker,
Exide batteries, SKF bearings, Chilton books, and Odyssey batteries.
In 2013, and again in 2018, Harry had a showing of his photographs at The Quail Lodge, A Motorsports Gathering. His
photos have appeared in numerous books and magazines all over the world.
Harry helped Dr. Fred Simeone launch the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum in 2008 and still assists the
museum with communications and special events. He also helped with the Radnor Hunt Concours for several years in its
first decade and has twice been the featured artist for the event.
233
 www.GloryDaysOfRacing.com

234