Yunick known as sport's most innovative crew chief
By David Caraviello, NASCAR.COM
Driving off in a vehicle without a gas tank, with extra fuel stashed inside the frame. Showing up with a racecar scaled down to a fraction of its normal size. Aluminum bumpers, nitrous oxide canisters and a spoiler coming off the roof. Filling the roll bar with sand to make inspection weight, and then letting it all run out. Placing a basketball in the fuel cell that could be inflated when capacity was checked, and deflated for the race.
They're all tactics attributed to the late, great Henry "Smokey" Yunick, a NASCAR engine builder, car owner, crew chief and loophole-finder extraordinaire. During the 1950s and 60s, the man in his trademark white coveralls and cowboy hat became an iconoclastic figure through innovation that didn't always sit well with the sanctioning body. He was the impetus for many of the technical rules in place today, and an inspiration to modern crew chiefs who push the sport's gray areas to their limits.
... And then there's the most famous Yunick story ever, the one where inspectors pulled the gas tank from one of his racecars, and he still drove it back to his garage.Of course, these days, the sport is pushing back. NASCAR has cranked up its penalties, issuing $100,000 fines and six-week suspensions to any crew chief caught fiddling with the Car of Tomorrow, a vehicle with a low tolerance for the kind of creativity that makes a crew chief famous, infamous or sometimes both at once. Tony Eury Jr., crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Jr., just finished such a mandatory leave period. Chad Knaus and Steve Letarte, respective crew chiefs for Hendrick Motorsports drivers Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon, are in the midst of similar vacations.
Their offenses -- illegally mounting a rear-wing bracket or pulling out a fender -- seem tame when compared to what went on in Yunick's day. But back then, the rule book was much smaller. The tolerances were much wider. And brilliant mechanical minds like Yunick, who called his Daytona Beach shop the Best Damn Garage, had more room to work. That is, until NASCAR decided otherwise.
"He didn't really bend the rules," said Marvin Panch, who won the 1961 Daytona 500 in a Yunick car. "It's just, if it wasn't in the rule book, he'd take advantage of it. That's about what it amounted to."
Yunick died of leukemia in 2001, but his legend will live as long as men change spark plugs and oil. He flew bombers in World War II, hunted for gold in South America, raced Indy cars as well as stockers and had nine U.S. patents to his name. But in motorsports, he's become most closely associated with one unsavory word -- cheating -- that's reared its head again and again in a season that's already seen seven Nextel Cup crew chiefs suspended for rule violations.
The label may not be entirely accurate. All those Smokey stories told over the years, all those tales of how he broke the rules or defied NASCAR inspectors? "Ninety-nine-point seven percent of it," said Bobby Allison, who briefly drove for Yunick and later became a good friend, "is myth."
Smokey himself laid out the difference in an interview with Hot Rod Magazine. "You have to understand that when I got into this thing back in '47, they didn't have near as many rules as they do now," he said. "You could run whatever you thought you could get away with under what NASCAR would call, 'being within the spirit of competition.' If you did something [NASCAR] didn't like, which was pretty much up to Bill France [Sr.], they would fine you or throw you out of the race as 'being outside the spirit of competition,' even though there was no specific rule against the supposed infraction."
"If it wasn't covered in the rule book, I think he would try it. But as far as just tying to outright cheat, I think a lot of that is talk."
Marvin PanchSomewhere Knaus and Letarte, busted for modifying a part of the COT that was outside the inspection template, are nodding their heads. If Yunick were working today, he might very well be suspended along with them. And not liking it one bit.
"I'm sure he would have been completely astounded by the present deal," Allison said. "He got accused of lots and lots of things, but I don't know how many times he was ever proven wrong. He just would not defend himself. If some inspector would come up and say, 'Your black and gold car is really blue,' Smokey would say, 'Oh, is it?' even though everybody could see the car was black and gold. If a certain inspector or a line guy along the way somewhere said it was blue, Smokey would not defend it. He would not argue. He said, 'Here's my deal, and here's your rule,' and went from there."
Back then, NASCAR inspectors weren't the professionals they are now. Yunick, Allison said, resented the fact that some of the people examining his racecars were in it for the $25 a day stipend and the chance to hang out in the pits. He didn't feel they were able to scrutinize the vehicles fairly. But he kept quiet. He kept going back to the garage to fix something deemed illegal, even if there was no concrete rule against it. And the legend grew.
In Smokey's day, it took two men to lift a car's front bumper. Yunick built one for Fireball Roberts' 1962 Pontiac made out of aluminum, because there was no rule that said he couldn't. He once tried a fiberglass hood and a small spoiler coming off the roof, again because they weren't specifically prohibited at the time. And then there's the most famous Yunick story ever, the one where inspectors pulled the gas tank from one of his racecars, and he still drove it back to his garage.
Cheating? Not quite.
"He had a big gas line. There wasn't anything in the rule book that said you couldn't have a big, oversized gas line," Panch said.
"Smokey was a real good engine man, and he knew how to get the horsepower out of the engine. If it wasn't covered in the rule book, I think he would try it. But as far as just tying to outright cheat, I think a lot of that is talk."
Other stories, like those involving nitrous oxide or a basketball in the fuel tank -- which, as NASCAR historian Buz McKim points out, might very well have been dissolved by the gasoline -- are more difficult to confirm. "When I drove for him, I didn't have anything like that," Panch said. But Yunick may have used some other tactics that straddled the line between creativity and illegality.
Like packing the roll cage with wet sand to make inspection weight. "His late wife told me that he did pump the roll bars full of wet beach sand one time in one of the old Pontiacs," McKim said, "and that there were little plugs in the floor, and they'd take the car in to inspection, and overnight the sand would dry, and he'd pop the plugs and let the sand run out. That was good for quite a few pounds, I guess."
And then there was Curtis Turner's Chevelle at Atlanta, in the days when NASCAR first began using templates for inspection. A former employee of Yunick's once told McKim that Smokey asked NASCAR if he could borrow the templates so he could make sure his car was right. But he also modified them, and came to Atlanta with a Chevelle that was slightly smaller -- legend has it as seven-eighths scale -- than it should have been. Since he was the only owner running a Chevelle, no one would have known had Bobby Johns not shown up unexpectedly with the same car model.
"They put that template on Bobby's Chevelle, and it doesn't come close," McKim said. "They threatened to throw him out. He went crazy, and eventually NASCAR realized, 'Wait a minute ...'"
His repeated clashes with series founder France eventually led Yunick to leave NASCAR, where he won nine races as a car owner, and move into research and development with General Motors. Even in the last years of his life, it wasn't uncommon to see Yunick at the racetrack, wearing that spotless white outfit and cowboy hat. By then, his reputation as NASCAR's foremost outlaw mechanic was entrenched -- even if it wasn't entirely deserved.
"Some of that stuff with Smokey is probably fiction," McKim said. "But there's a lot in there you can hang your hat on."
By David Caraviello, NASCAR.COM
Driving off in a vehicle without a gas tank, with extra fuel stashed inside the frame. Showing up with a racecar scaled down to a fraction of its normal size. Aluminum bumpers, nitrous oxide canisters and a spoiler coming off the roof. Filling the roll bar with sand to make inspection weight, and then letting it all run out. Placing a basketball in the fuel cell that could be inflated when capacity was checked, and deflated for the race.
They're all tactics attributed to the late, great Henry "Smokey" Yunick, a NASCAR engine builder, car owner, crew chief and loophole-finder extraordinaire. During the 1950s and 60s, the man in his trademark white coveralls and cowboy hat became an iconoclastic figure through innovation that didn't always sit well with the sanctioning body. He was the impetus for many of the technical rules in place today, and an inspiration to modern crew chiefs who push the sport's gray areas to their limits.
... And then there's the most famous Yunick story ever, the one where inspectors pulled the gas tank from one of his racecars, and he still drove it back to his garage.Of course, these days, the sport is pushing back. NASCAR has cranked up its penalties, issuing $100,000 fines and six-week suspensions to any crew chief caught fiddling with the Car of Tomorrow, a vehicle with a low tolerance for the kind of creativity that makes a crew chief famous, infamous or sometimes both at once. Tony Eury Jr., crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Jr., just finished such a mandatory leave period. Chad Knaus and Steve Letarte, respective crew chiefs for Hendrick Motorsports drivers Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon, are in the midst of similar vacations.
Their offenses -- illegally mounting a rear-wing bracket or pulling out a fender -- seem tame when compared to what went on in Yunick's day. But back then, the rule book was much smaller. The tolerances were much wider. And brilliant mechanical minds like Yunick, who called his Daytona Beach shop the Best Damn Garage, had more room to work. That is, until NASCAR decided otherwise.
"He didn't really bend the rules," said Marvin Panch, who won the 1961 Daytona 500 in a Yunick car. "It's just, if it wasn't in the rule book, he'd take advantage of it. That's about what it amounted to."
Yunick died of leukemia in 2001, but his legend will live as long as men change spark plugs and oil. He flew bombers in World War II, hunted for gold in South America, raced Indy cars as well as stockers and had nine U.S. patents to his name. But in motorsports, he's become most closely associated with one unsavory word -- cheating -- that's reared its head again and again in a season that's already seen seven Nextel Cup crew chiefs suspended for rule violations.
The label may not be entirely accurate. All those Smokey stories told over the years, all those tales of how he broke the rules or defied NASCAR inspectors? "Ninety-nine-point seven percent of it," said Bobby Allison, who briefly drove for Yunick and later became a good friend, "is myth."
Smokey himself laid out the difference in an interview with Hot Rod Magazine. "You have to understand that when I got into this thing back in '47, they didn't have near as many rules as they do now," he said. "You could run whatever you thought you could get away with under what NASCAR would call, 'being within the spirit of competition.' If you did something [NASCAR] didn't like, which was pretty much up to Bill France [Sr.], they would fine you or throw you out of the race as 'being outside the spirit of competition,' even though there was no specific rule against the supposed infraction."
"If it wasn't covered in the rule book, I think he would try it. But as far as just tying to outright cheat, I think a lot of that is talk."
Marvin PanchSomewhere Knaus and Letarte, busted for modifying a part of the COT that was outside the inspection template, are nodding their heads. If Yunick were working today, he might very well be suspended along with them. And not liking it one bit.
"I'm sure he would have been completely astounded by the present deal," Allison said. "He got accused of lots and lots of things, but I don't know how many times he was ever proven wrong. He just would not defend himself. If some inspector would come up and say, 'Your black and gold car is really blue,' Smokey would say, 'Oh, is it?' even though everybody could see the car was black and gold. If a certain inspector or a line guy along the way somewhere said it was blue, Smokey would not defend it. He would not argue. He said, 'Here's my deal, and here's your rule,' and went from there."
Back then, NASCAR inspectors weren't the professionals they are now. Yunick, Allison said, resented the fact that some of the people examining his racecars were in it for the $25 a day stipend and the chance to hang out in the pits. He didn't feel they were able to scrutinize the vehicles fairly. But he kept quiet. He kept going back to the garage to fix something deemed illegal, even if there was no concrete rule against it. And the legend grew.
In Smokey's day, it took two men to lift a car's front bumper. Yunick built one for Fireball Roberts' 1962 Pontiac made out of aluminum, because there was no rule that said he couldn't. He once tried a fiberglass hood and a small spoiler coming off the roof, again because they weren't specifically prohibited at the time. And then there's the most famous Yunick story ever, the one where inspectors pulled the gas tank from one of his racecars, and he still drove it back to his garage.
Cheating? Not quite.
"He had a big gas line. There wasn't anything in the rule book that said you couldn't have a big, oversized gas line," Panch said.
"Smokey was a real good engine man, and he knew how to get the horsepower out of the engine. If it wasn't covered in the rule book, I think he would try it. But as far as just tying to outright cheat, I think a lot of that is talk."
Other stories, like those involving nitrous oxide or a basketball in the fuel tank -- which, as NASCAR historian Buz McKim points out, might very well have been dissolved by the gasoline -- are more difficult to confirm. "When I drove for him, I didn't have anything like that," Panch said. But Yunick may have used some other tactics that straddled the line between creativity and illegality.
Like packing the roll cage with wet sand to make inspection weight. "His late wife told me that he did pump the roll bars full of wet beach sand one time in one of the old Pontiacs," McKim said, "and that there were little plugs in the floor, and they'd take the car in to inspection, and overnight the sand would dry, and he'd pop the plugs and let the sand run out. That was good for quite a few pounds, I guess."
And then there was Curtis Turner's Chevelle at Atlanta, in the days when NASCAR first began using templates for inspection. A former employee of Yunick's once told McKim that Smokey asked NASCAR if he could borrow the templates so he could make sure his car was right. But he also modified them, and came to Atlanta with a Chevelle that was slightly smaller -- legend has it as seven-eighths scale -- than it should have been. Since he was the only owner running a Chevelle, no one would have known had Bobby Johns not shown up unexpectedly with the same car model.
"They put that template on Bobby's Chevelle, and it doesn't come close," McKim said. "They threatened to throw him out. He went crazy, and eventually NASCAR realized, 'Wait a minute ...'"
His repeated clashes with series founder France eventually led Yunick to leave NASCAR, where he won nine races as a car owner, and move into research and development with General Motors. Even in the last years of his life, it wasn't uncommon to see Yunick at the racetrack, wearing that spotless white outfit and cowboy hat. By then, his reputation as NASCAR's foremost outlaw mechanic was entrenched -- even if it wasn't entirely deserved.
"Some of that stuff with Smokey is probably fiction," McKim said. "But there's a lot in there you can hang your hat on."
