Balls or Ballsy?

"Oran J Sands III" (merlyyn) 06/30/2014 at 10:33 • Filed to: None

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The Whittington brothers, Don and Bill, showed up at Indy in 1980 and immediately established themselves as competitors. They had good hardware and drove well. Their source of income was speculated upon in hushed tones but as long as they raced cleanly no one seemed to care.

The brothers were truly into racing. They raced IMSA, LeMans (won) and Nascar and eventually even bought Road Atlanta. At the beginning of their Indy 500 driving experience I was fortunate to witness a scene that gave testimony to their driving experience. It was the early 80's and one of Don Whittington's first races at Indy.

I was a security patrolman for the north pits that year. Indy has a very long pit wall and the best teams always get the good pits at the south end, close to the pit exit. Since the assignments were handed out based on seniority I was assigned to the "lesser" pits on the north end. Don Whittington was assigned in my section.

Indianapolis 500 , 1980. Early in the race Don brushed the wall and bounced off. Next time around he came in for fresh tires (brushing the wall is not good for sidewalls.) Two laps later he's back in bitching about the understeer. The traditional Indy method of dealing with this was to increase the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , basically increasing the tire diameter of the outside tires. Most teams with enough budget would keep several sets of "sized" tires on hand for this exact need.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Five more laps and he's back in the pits again complaining of "push". Another tire change and he's back out. Two laps later he's radioed in and told them to get more tires ready. They were out of tires now and they started roaming pit road to find a team that would give up a "larger" set of tires. Tires (and wheels of course) were found and the driver pulls back into and gets yet another set of tires (they set a record for the most pit stops in a race .) This continues until the crew chief tells him to suck it up and get out there and drive.

And that's exactly what he did. Don drove well, held position and eventually finished 13th. Exhausted he dragged himself from the car and quickly went back to his trailer. The race is over and the crews put every thing away; loaded carts of tires and tools are dragged back to the garage area. A small garden tractor shows up to pull the car back to the pits. Now in this particular era of Indy racing the procedure is to pull the nose off the car and loop the tow strap around the front sway bar. One of the pit crew takes the nose off Don Whittington's car and immediately yells for the chief. The front sway bar was completely cracked in half by the earlier swipe of the track wall. making it push. Badly. No front sway bar to balance out the car. At 200 mph. For two hours plus.

Financing aside, the Whittingtons were drivers. With huge balls.

NOTE: After I wrote this I found a page written by the crew: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

Gratuitous snake pit photo:

thebigbossyboss > Oran J Sands III 06/30/2014 at 10:41

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cool...

quarterlifecrisis > Oran J Sands III 06/30/2014 at 10:46

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I love reading old Indy stories. The 70s and 80s are pretty interesting because, as the cars got faster, they were complete pieces of crap in terms of safety and integrity. That last part is slightly paraphrased, but heard straight from the horse's mouth - I think it was Steve Chassey or Tom Sneva or someone along those lines that mentioned it.

Oran J Sands III > quarterlifecrisis 06/30/2014 at 10:54

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There was still a lot of junk in the field at that time. And a lot of interesting cars as well. That same race Dan Gurney had Mike Mosley in the race with a stock block. It was only in for 5 laps as a mechanic had used the wrong sealant on the valve covers and it was blowing oil. They pitted twice to fix it but with no drying time available it wouldn't seal and they retired it. But before they did they set the fastest lap of the race (according to the crew chief.) Those wonderful Gurney-Weslake heads.

quarterlifecrisis > Oran J Sands III 06/30/2014 at 10:57

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Definitely an era we won't see again. I hate to be a preacher about opening the series up - but I do think if we opened the 500 back up, with a decent amount of money to start and a big purse, to some one offs, it could be a good turning point. Robin Miller always has an interesting take on that as well. The big drawback now is that it will cost you $1M to throw a month of May operation together....you could do it for less...but....