The 2022 running NASCAR, IMSA & other racing things thread

Wow! I thought Bruton was immortal. Hope he's giving Big Bill and Little Bill the business tonight wherever stock car promoters go from here.

To think what he did in the span of 50 years:

Co-found with Curtis Turner a superspeedway on Turner's forestry land north of Charlotte (and not even have the thing completely paved until the week before the first race!)
Have the track wind up in bankruptcy court
Moved to Illinois and sold cars
Started buying CMS stock until he held a majority position
Hired Humpy
Created Legends cars
Bought Atlanta, Bristol, Sonoma, Las Vegas, Kentucky, New Hampshire, North Wilkesboro, Rockingham, Dover and Nashville (Marcus definitely was involved, too)
Built Texas
Was the first to add lights for night racing, to sell shares of common stock on Wall Street, first to acquire CMS naming rights

Not only was he the perfect antagonist to the Frances, but he fundamentally changed the idea of track promotion. Humpy, Eddie Gossage at Texas, and Ed Clark at Atlanta are Burton's most well-known proteges. Who else would have pre-race festivities involving a giant shark, a full-scale military invasion or a school bus jump for distance without Bruton and Humpy?

I found it fascinating how long it took for Bruton to get nominated and inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame out of spite, given that NASCAR wouldn't have gotten anywhere close to its zenith without him pissing off the folks in Daytona Beach.

 

Ooops I DB’d with its own thread.

 

Finally saw Ford V Ferrari last night, which could go on the movie thread but I wanted to comment more on the racing aspect.

The movie itself was good (although the storyline was compressed and dumbed down), and the portrayal of Ken Miles was amazing, but the racing scenes were pretty awful. I realize there's a lot of poetic license taken to create drama and excitement, but the number of passes, crashes, cars blowing up and general mayhem reminded me more of the old Speed Racer cartoon than an actual professional sports car event. I so wanted Spritle and Chim-Chim to suddenly pop up from behind Ken's driver's seat.

My favorite was the attempt to recreate the 1966 24 Hours of Daytona by using California Speedway and some CGI. The shots of the crew and Ford execs standing in front of a stucco building with red trim immediately gave it away. I've been in that media center too many times to not recognize that place. (Plus, it seems every "car on a race track" ad is filmed there, too.)

Daytona had open-air pit boxes with metal roofs until the early 1980s, as shown in this photo:



Plus, there are no palm trees in either the infield or backstretch at Daytona. (That actually looked more like Homestead!) In addition, while the CGI guys did their best to recreate the old Daytona covered grandstand in the start/finish shot, they were very low -- maybe no more than 20 rows high. Here's a postcard showing that:



By the way, that old metal roof made the cars incredibly loud. And near the end, you'd get particles of rust raining down on you every time the pack came past.

I also laughed at the "track lighting" used in the film during the night scenes. I'm not aware that Daytona had anything to illuminate the track, on either the trioval or the infield course. There may have been lights on the pit stalls, but that would have been the extent of it.

And what was with that hard right-hander after the cars came off the banking? I don't think there was ever an infield configuration used for the 24 Hours that incorporated anything close to that.

And what the hell was with that Coppertone ad? I guess that's what L.A. movie people think Florida was like in the mid-60s. (L.A. movie people have no idea what anything outside of L.A. looks like, sounds like or feels like in 99.99 percent of "location" movies anyway.)

Finally, Miles was killed at Riverside when the car flipped on the long dragstrip backstretch, and that "fatal accident" in the movie looked nothing like Riverside whatsoever.

However, now I wish I had asked Carroll Shelby about Ken Miles when I had the chance to interview him in Las Vegas.

 

It's sort of the opposite of John Frankenheimer's "Grand Prix," where the racing scenes were great but the script was a cliche fest off the track, wasting a great cast. Imagine having Mifune and making him a bit player! Imagine giving Yves Montand the most hackneyed role imaginable. It's like once the director got what he wanted in the racing scenes, he really didn't give a shit about the rest of the picture.

 

Does anyone know of there is a market for old Southern Motor Racing and Grand National Scene newspapers from the 70s-90s? I've got hundreds, boxes, etc. They are pretty cool to see all the old names, but being cool doesn't mean as much as getting them out of my house.
I've searched around all the usual selling spots, and there doesn't seem to be too many listings.

 

I’ve heard Rick Houston, who wrote for the Scene, was trying to create a digital archive. I *think* he was missing some of the earlier issues. 2MCM probably knows more.

 

Nah, that’s what I’d have said.

 

I'm about of the opinion that all this "collectible... gonna be worth something ... blah, blah, blah" is a bunch of crap.
I've got junk all over my house that was supposed to be "worth something" but is just junk.

 

The stuff that no one keeps is the stuff that people want 30 years later. No one kept ‘57 Topps cards and I bet you there are at least 20,000 sets of ‘92 Upper Deck or Fleer cards floating around out there.

 

Yep. Those Don Mattingly and Wade Boggs rookie cards that were "worth" $125 in 1987 ($321 today) now go for about $2. Not long ago I gave boxes of baseball cards to a friend who still collects.

 

Unless you have something from a special race, I doubt there is much market for a newspaper or magazine, whether loose or framed. But I bet you could make some interesting art collages that might attract a little interest, or at least look spiffier in your den.

 

I've mentioned this before I think, but the hat that is on Terry Labonte's head in this photo is upstairs in my house right now. I don't have any paperwork to prove that it's this exact hat, but on my sacred honor, I asked for it, and Dale Inman handed it to me.