Sunday, May 10, 2009

The Augusta 417

If the modern day drivers think road racing is a grueling event today, they would have hated earning points in 1963 season.

In the 50s and 60s, one season would close and immediately the next would open. The final race of the 1963 season was contested at Riverside, CA on the 2.7-mile road course. Originally several Champ car drivers were scheduled to compete, but the United States Auto Club (USAC) was beginning to feel heat from NASCAR, and refused to allow their drivers to participate—threatening they would not be allowed to attempt the Indy 500 if they disobeyed.

That announcement came after qualification was complete and pole sitter Dan Gurney was one of the drivers affected—his pole came in a Wood Bros Ford. Marvin Panch assumed his mount. Paul Goldsmith also ignored USAC’s petulance, and was suspended for a year as a result.

The race was a grueling affair featuring seven lead changes among three drivers for a total of 400 laps. Fred Lorenzen in a Holman-Moody Ford got the jump on the competition and led the first 21 circuits before a broken transmission sidelined him.

One champ car driver who also ignored USAC’s prohibition was 26-year-old Dave MacDonald, competing in his second career NASCAR race. Driving the primary car for the Wood Bros, he took the lead when Lorenzen retired and settled into a seesaw battle with Darel Dieringer. Neither driver had a NASCAR senior division win to there credit and both were hungry.

MacDonald faded a lap at the end, but the field was impressed with his strong 2nd place showing. Teammate Panch came home on the same lap, in 3rd position.

If the stockers thought the 400-mile race in the desert of California was tough, however, they had another surprise in store: merely two weeks later the tour rolled into Augusta, GA to christen the newly built 3-mile Augusta International Speedway road course with the second race of the 1964 season. It was as close as America has come to replicating the Nurburgring.

Today drivers negotiate ten turns at Sears Point and 12 at Watkins Glen; Augusta was comprised of 21 turns and at least two series of Esses.

Originally the race was scheduled to be a 510-mile event but after qualification was completed, NASCAR realized they would not be able to finish the race before a local curfew of 5pm. Instead, NASCAR set a time restriction similar to those applied to sports car races and the event was due to be completed in under five hours.

It took the drivers more than 2 minutes to complete a lap on the challenging course.

Fireball Roberts sat on the outside front row and jumped into the lead before the first lap was completed. We watched while David Pearson, Junior Johnson and Richard Petty blew past. These three dominated the race until Johnson twisted his transmission out of his Chevrolet on lap 52 while leading. Petty pulled away from the field when he also experienced driveline problems—retiring on lap 93, also while leading the race.

Marvin Panch—still in the Wood Bros Ford—inherited the lead. David Pearson blew his engine on lap 115 and 13 laps later, Panch followed him into the pits. The Wood Bros pilot had also broken a transmission and retired from the lead. He completed enough laps to score a top 10 finish in a race with heavy attrition and diminished competition. The race lasted only eleven more laps but eight cars who were still running at the end of the event, failed to overtake Panch’s sidelined machine.

Slow and steady, Roberts retook the lead for the final time on lap 129 and brought with him Dave MacDonald. This time MacDonald was in a 2nd Holman-Moody car as a teammate to Roberts. In his first three races, the young Californian had scored two runner-up positions.

Later in 1964 MacDonald would be allowed to compete in the Indy 500—his defection must not have been as great in the minds of USAC as Goldsmith’s. He lost his life from injuries sustained in that race on May 30th.
The race was significant for another reason—in 15 previous road race events contested on nine different race tracks NASCAR had never given victory lane to the same driver twice. Roberts won a 56-lap race on a modified air strip in Titusville, FL on December 30th 1956 and it took nearly eight years for him to repeat—becoming the first driver in NASCAR’s history with two road course victories.

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