FANTASY NASCAR Racin

SMOKEY YUNICK - 5/25/1923 - 5/9/2001 -
was an American mechanic, car owner and designer deeply involved in the early years of NASCAR. He participated as a racer, designer, and held other jobs related to the sport, but was best known as a mechanic, builder, and crew chief. Yunick was twice NASCAR mechanic of the year; and his teams would include 50 of the most famous drivers in the sport, winning 57 NASCAR Cup Series races, including two championships in 1951 and 1953. He was one of auto racing's most brilliant mechanics and innovators. In 1947, he opened an automobile repair shop in Daytona Beach on Beach Street he dubbed "The Best Damn Garage In Town." Yunick quickly became a major player in the racing community here, boasting several big victories on the old beach-road course before winning both the Daytona 500 as a car owner and the Indianapolis 500 as a mechanic. The first car had as an

owner was driven by Tim Flock. He ran a good race and finished third. His black Pontiacs with gold trim twice claimed the Daytona 500, with Marvin Panch in 1961 and Daytona native Fireball Roberts in '62. Yunick's cars won four of the first eight Winston Cup races at Daytona International Speedway. Turning the clock back even further, Yunick was the chief mechanic for Herb Thomas, who won Cup (then known as Strictly Stock) championships in 1951 and '53. As a car owner Yunick fielded cars for 78 races, and won nine times. He had such big name drivers as Bobby Isaac, Banjo Matthews, Curtis Turner, Curtis Turner, Tim Flock, Herb Thomas, AJ Foyt and a host of others wheel his machines. His first win came at

Langhorne PA with Paul Goldsmith at the wheel. Herb Thomas also posted a win that season. Goldsmith claimed three wins for Yunick in 1957 and added another in 1958. Marvin Panch won the 1961 Daytona 500 at the wheel of an outdated 1960 Pontiac. Panch's teammate Fireball Roberts would blow up in the closing laps handing the win to Panch. Pontiac had stacked the field with their new 1961 models, including Fireball's ride, making this an awkwardly joyous occasion when Panch beat them all to win the race in the old car. Just a few days earlier Lorenzen had won his 125 mile qualifying race showing he had a formidable race car. His final win as an owner would come in 1963 as Johnny Rutherford would win the

Second qualifying race for that years Daytona 500. He won more than 50 times as a crew chief, chief mechanic or engine builder. Yunick was especially fond of bending the NASCAR rule book. In 1968 during Speed Weeks, NASCAR officials pulled the gas tank out of his Pontiac after they thought his car was getting excessive fuel mileage. After passing a rigid inspection, Yunick got in the car-- with the gas tank lying on the ground -- fired it up and drove back to his space in the garage area, leaving NASCAR inspectors dumbfounded. "Smokey looked and saw where the NASCAR rule book wouldn't define something and he'd make his own improvisations," said Bobby Allison, who made a couple of starts in Yunick-prepared cars. "There's that gas tank story. The gas tank was the right size but he made the fuel line so it held extra gas. So he was able to drive away without the gas tank. I don't want to say he didn't step outside the lines, but he was really smart about those things." NASCAR specified how big a fuel tank could be, but he noticed no one said how big the fuel line could be. Instead of a half-inch fuel line, Yunick created a two-inch fuel line that was 11 feet long, and held five gallons of gas. Cheating? Not really, since nowhere did it say you couldn't do that. In another

incident, Yunick showed up for a race with stock rear fenders that partially covered the rear tires of his Chevelle. The car qualified well due to improved aerodynamics but the other teams were laughing and wondering how he was going to change the tires during pit stops. After qualifying, Yunick promptly cut out the rear fender openings. The other teams complained to NASCAR but Smokey said, "The rules say that I CAN cut out the rear fenders but it doesn't say WHEN I can cut them." Smokey was a perpetual thorn in the side of NASCAR in general, and Bill France in particular. The self-taught engineer was a genius at aerodynamics, and his tricks to make a car's body slip through the air were far ahead of his time. But Yunick was perhaps best known for interpreting what the rule book said—or, perhaps, didn't say. He was renowned as an opinionated character who "was about as good as there

ever was on engines", according to Marvin Panch, who drove stock cars for Yunick and won the 1961 Daytona 500. His trademark white uniform and battered cowboy hat, together with a cigar or corncob pipe, were a familiar sight in the pits of almost every NASCAR or Indianapolis 500 race for over twenty years. Racing was fun for Yunick. Building a car from the ground up to assault Indianapolis Motor Speedway was his absolute first love. His open-wheel creations made 10 appearances at the famed Brickyard between 1958 and 1975. He won the Indy 500 in 1960 when the car he prepared carried Jim Rathmann to Victory Lane. In 1959 he brought a car with the engine turned upside down. He called it the Reverse Torque Special. The car finished seventh. In 1962, Yunick changed open wheel racing forever when he mounted a wing on Jim Rathmann's Simoniz Vista Special Watson Roadster. The wing, designed to increase downforce, allowed Rathmann to reach cornering speeds never seen

at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway but created so much drag that it actually caused the car to record slower lap times. The United States Automobile Club (USAC) immediately banned the use of wings but they soon began to appear on cars competing in Can-Am and Formula One and by the early 1970.s. USAC once again allowed their use. In 1964 he showed up at Indy with the strangest machine ever to turn laps at the 2.5-mile track. It was his "sidesaddle" car wheeled by Bobby Johns. "The whole car was built out of backyard kind of stuff," said Yunick. The car was very fast, had the driver not spun the car in practice it would of raced in the 500. Following Fireball Roberts' 1964 crash at Charlotte — where after 40 days in pain from burns, he died — Yunick began a campaign for safety modifications to prevent a repeat of such disasters. After being overruled repeatedly by NASCAR's owner, Bill France, Sr., Yunick left NASCAR in 1970. Tired of what he

perceived as politics in stock-car racing, Yunick stopped fielding a Cup entries (in 1970) after a heated argument with NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. Even though the two racing giants lived in the same town, they hardly spoke to each other for the next 20 years. France died in 1992. As with most successful racers, Yunick was a master of the grey area straddling the rules. Perhaps his most famous exploit was his #13 1966 Chevrolet Chevelle, driven by Curtis Turner. The car was so much faster than the competition during testing that they were certain that cheating was involved; some sort of aerodynamic enhancement was strongly suspected, but the car's profile

seemed to be entirely stock, as the rules required. It was eventually discovered that Yunick had lowered and modified the roof and windows and raised the floor (to lower the body) of the production car. Since then, NASCAR required each race car's roof, hood, and trunk to fit templates representing the production car's exact profile. Yunick had no formal education but was considered one of the top minds in automobile engine design. He helped develop Chevrolets original small-block engine in 1955. The basic blueprints of that design are still used in racing to this day. He also did research and development on hydraulics, fuel intakes and engine mileage. He also was interested in creating other gadgets. During the energy crisis in the mid 1970s, he built a windmill and solar panel over his shop hoping to generate enough electricity to power his business. Despite failing health, Yunick continued to frequent racetracks across the country, with

his wife Margie by his side as a spokesman for an oil additive. Most recently Yunick was working on two projects. The first was writing a book dealing with his life and racing exploits. "The people who knew how things really were in racing's early days were all gone," said Yunick, explaining why he wrote the tell-all trilogy. He penned numerous magazine articles during his long career. He had the ear of Detroit's automakers and even found time to do some consulting work for NASA. Aside from racing, Yunick's innovations include variable ratio power steering, the extended tip spark plug, reverse flow cooling systems, a high efficiency vapor carburetor, various engine

testing devices, and a safety wall for race tracks, made of discarded tires, which NASCAR's France had refused to consider. (just consider if NASCAR had been as concerned about safety as they claimed, and used some of Smokey's ideas, how many lives could of been saved). He was granted twelve patents. He also experimented with synthetic oil and alternative energy sources. After Yunick's death, his shop's contents were auctioned off, according to his wishes. He had witnessed his friend Don Garlits' difficulties developing and maintaining a museum and did not want either his family to be saddled with such a burden, or a "high roller" to gain control of his reputation. Instead, he preferred that his tools, equipment, cars, engines, and parts go to people who would use them, and before his death he undertook to restore as much of it as possible to working condition. The proceeds of the auction went to a foundation to fund innovations in motor sports.