Leroy Lacy writes
>I crewed for some of the F5000 cars that ran in the San Francisco Region
>from time to time. I remember Ron Grable had the sweetist sounding Dodge
>powered F5000 car.
Yes. I saw, and heard, it run at Donnybrooke.
>It had an 8 into 1 bundle of snakes exhaust that
>terminated in one giant 5 to 6 inch in diameter pipe. That car howled
>like a F1 V12 car.
Not quite. Skip Barber had a V12 Ferrari 3-litre F1 car at Donnybrooke for
the Continental Series race. It operated at much higher revs and there was
NO mistaking it.
>I went to the Questor Grand Prix at Ontario Speedway. That pitted F1
>cars against the US F5000 cars. I remember my friends and I had large
>sums of money placed assuming that the F5000 cars would wipe the F1 cars
>off the face of the earth. What humiliation, the little F1 cars (I think
>the formula was 1500 CC at that time)
I think it was 3000 cc by then. F1 cars were allowed to run in the
Continental with the F5000 cars, but Skip's was the only one I ever saw.
It was the one with the "coffee table" on the nose.
>just killed the F5000 cars. That
>was almost more than a 60s era hotrodder could take. I nearly gave up
>cars and took up surfing.
But you know better now, don't you?
I remember a driver who came to The Brooke for the Continental who was
known by several of the younger guys as simply "The Englishman": David
Hobbs.
Another interesting Continental driver there was Tommy Smothers.
BTW, Note to Casey Annis, who started this thread: Do you belong to all
the mailing lists you sent this too? I can see it splitting up, and you
are going to miss some stuff for your book if you don't subscribe to them
all. Maybe you had better find one list for it. Would vintage-race be
appropriate? Maybe you could start your own list just for this project.
philip.ethier@stpaul.gov
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