L
LUKE'57
Guest
Race Card #89- Thank God it's almost over.
No, not the card set, though some may feel that way. That's how most felt about the '64 racing season. It started off badly with the loss of the defending champion Joe Weatherly at Riverside in January. Things went from bad to worse in May when Fireball Roberts, the sport's first superstar, suffered extensive burns in Charlotte's World 600. Then Jimmy Pardue was killed in a tire test at Charlotte in the fall and that doesn't even begin to mention the many open wheel casualties including Eddie Sachs and Dave McDonald killed at that year's Indy 500.
Even Ford's "Golden Boy" Fred Lorenzen didn't escape the season unscathed. Lorenzen won eight races in '64 including the Rebel 300 at Darlington, the National 400 at Charlotte and a third consecutive Atlanta 500.
But the '64 Fords that some claimed, and it would seem rightly so, had been dangerously lightened almost claimed Ford's top ace too. During a qualifying race the day after Fireball Roberts passed away from burns received in that year's World 600 Lorenzen almost joined the list that marked one of the blackest stretches in racing history.
Coming off the fourth turn, Plymouth's Paul Goldsmith lost control and several other cars were involved. Lorenzen spun his car to miss the accident and was hit by Goldsmith's spinning car in the driver's side door. Almost the entire left side of Lorenzen's Ford was demolished and Fred was hospitalized with cut tendons and extreme blood loss from a cut artery in his arm.
The legacy of the '64 "lightweights" didn't end with the '64 season. In seperate crashes Buren Skeen and Harold Kite were killed in the following season as the cars were handed down to the independents. Even my friend Roy Tyner had a '64 story to tell me. Seems he wound up with one and crashed it on a short track at a much reduced speed by that didn't help much. He said he got hit in the drivers side door and when all the expensive noises were over that him and his seat and the door bars in the roll cage were all the way over on top on the transmission tunnel. Don't even want to think about a highspeed crash on a super speedway.
Well, that's enough gloom and doom for now. Don't know what came over me but I appologize. I promise the next card will be a happy story, at least for Ford. And there's only one more '64 Ford card left and it's a movie star so stand on it and turn left.
No, not the card set, though some may feel that way. That's how most felt about the '64 racing season. It started off badly with the loss of the defending champion Joe Weatherly at Riverside in January. Things went from bad to worse in May when Fireball Roberts, the sport's first superstar, suffered extensive burns in Charlotte's World 600. Then Jimmy Pardue was killed in a tire test at Charlotte in the fall and that doesn't even begin to mention the many open wheel casualties including Eddie Sachs and Dave McDonald killed at that year's Indy 500.
Even Ford's "Golden Boy" Fred Lorenzen didn't escape the season unscathed. Lorenzen won eight races in '64 including the Rebel 300 at Darlington, the National 400 at Charlotte and a third consecutive Atlanta 500.
But the '64 Fords that some claimed, and it would seem rightly so, had been dangerously lightened almost claimed Ford's top ace too. During a qualifying race the day after Fireball Roberts passed away from burns received in that year's World 600 Lorenzen almost joined the list that marked one of the blackest stretches in racing history.
Coming off the fourth turn, Plymouth's Paul Goldsmith lost control and several other cars were involved. Lorenzen spun his car to miss the accident and was hit by Goldsmith's spinning car in the driver's side door. Almost the entire left side of Lorenzen's Ford was demolished and Fred was hospitalized with cut tendons and extreme blood loss from a cut artery in his arm.
The legacy of the '64 "lightweights" didn't end with the '64 season. In seperate crashes Buren Skeen and Harold Kite were killed in the following season as the cars were handed down to the independents. Even my friend Roy Tyner had a '64 story to tell me. Seems he wound up with one and crashed it on a short track at a much reduced speed by that didn't help much. He said he got hit in the drivers side door and when all the expensive noises were over that him and his seat and the door bars in the roll cage were all the way over on top on the transmission tunnel. Don't even want to think about a highspeed crash on a super speedway.
Well, that's enough gloom and doom for now. Don't know what came over me but I appologize. I promise the next card will be a happy story, at least for Ford. And there's only one more '64 Ford card left and it's a movie star so stand on it and turn left.