Comment:

The car pictured was owned be me. The body was riveted over a conduit tube frame that was tack welded to the original chassis. We did it this way because we did not have a break of any kind so we need something to give it structure instead of breaking the aluminum to give it strength. Everything for the body change was bought at Fazzios surplus yard because it was cheap, but that also meant the rivets were steel shank, a real pain in the ass to pull by hand. On the air intake deal we had to get the tin up over the radiator so that’s all that’s about.

Dave mention guys trying to get into the skirts, what really happen was Pat Conaway got loose going into 3 first lap of the feature. He was fish tailing in and out of the race surface, the last time he came back onto the track he got into Jacks driver door with his right front as jack drove past he got to the skirt and  the conduit structure under the body kicked him back off our car. So the skirt in reality saved us that day. Pat more than likely would have cut down our LR under normal circumstances.

One of the reasons the car was so dominate was because it was super light. Week to week racing I think we had to be 3400Lbs, If I remember we scaled for this race at 2800 and change. We took all the ballast out, removed the nerfs bumpers etc. and removed anything that was not needed down to the water temp gauge, we were on alcohol so we figured  over heating wasn’t going to be an issue. The car was kept at my house in my one car garage so when we started to build the body we measured the garage front to back and made the body that long, giving ourselves 1” clearance to get the door closed when we were done for the day.

The day of the race had everybody throwing fits when we pulled in. the only racers that put any extra effort into this race was us, Vince James and Tom Willis. James and Willis had sprint wings on top but no other changes that were visible. I walked up to the pit shack and there was a crowd gather around all bitching about the car. That’s when George came down to our pit and asked us to take 100 bucks to load it up. I argued that it wasn’t my fault nobody else went to the effort we did. George argued the fans would be cheated if we ran away from the field. I told him pay me winning money and we would go home, George said no and simply walked away. I figured we were good to go.

Jack won the heat hands down but when he came in after he said we have to make big changes, he said it was hooked up so much it would not turn any RPM, he figured if we could free it up some and get the engine to rev we would kill’em in the feature.  We cut the deck area full of holes, like Dave said moved the wing up and flatten it out, changed the stagger and corner weights.

Jack took the car to the staging lanes for the feature and we walked up and sat in the pit stands. A good friend Dean Porch was down the pit shack and overheard George tell the race director to pull Helget out of line at the turn 3 entrance when the field rolled out and hold him there until the green flag drops.  Dean came up and found me and told me what was going on. I ran down and got in a colorful conversation with George about the situation. George was a good man and I am sure he did have the fans in mind, my argument remained your advertising said no rules! He got frustrated and stormed out of the shack as the field rolled out for the feature. I still figured they were going to pull jack to the side and walked back up to the stands rejected. When I got back to the crew and told them we were done they said why Jacks out on the track! So I guess George had a change of heart the last minute.

Long story short we started near the rear of the field and dominated the whole race. Afterward Jack said he never drove a car that was so good compared to the competition, he said most of the time when he got out front he was ½ throttle trying not to make it look so bad. The win was great and the circumstances of the day will always be a cool memory but what I enjoyed the most was looking down the pit line after the heat races watching everybody scramble, cutting on roofs raising them up , turning over stock deck lids trying to make a spoiler, Everyone was unbolting ballast, One guy came over to a friend’s pit while  I was standing there talking to him a few pits down from mine and asked him if he had any aluminum with him so he could make a spoiler on his car, He said because Andersen is cheating it’s forcing him to cheat. The guy did not have any so I said to the guy I have some follow me, he followed me down to the pit lane to my car. As I walked up to the back to my pickup to get a piece for him he stood at the back of the race car looking like someone just smacked him in the head with a shovel! I gave him the piece of aluminum and wished him good luck. He took it turned around and walked away. Not even a thank you! Jack and I laughed our asses off! Great day!!