A continuation of an abridged series on master race-car designer Bob Riley . . .
With Wayne Taylor and the Intrepid’s second-place finish at the South Florida Fairgrounds safely entered into IMSA’s 1991 official record, the No. 64 Chevrolet Intrepid RM-1’s debut was successful by most anyone’s standards.
Save perhaps one: “The Other Guy.”
Tommy Kendall, driving Jim Miller Racing’s No. 65 MTI Vacations Spice SE90P Chevrolet at the Toyota Grand Prix of Palm Beach, put it on the pole and finished fourth – one lap down to reigning 1990 GTP driving champion Geoff Brabham’s soon-to-be replaced third-place Nissan NPT-90; and two laps ahead of fifth-place and an also on-the-way-out All American Racer No. 98 Eagle HF90 Toyota, driven by Rocky Moran.
Among those awaiting a new car, in this case an RM-1 Intrepid (chassis No. 002), Kendall drove a year-old Miller Racing Spice in the first four of the team’s scheduled 1991 races, faring well during that period by neither qualifying worse than ninth nor finishing lower than seventh.
Indeed, in the Apr. 7, 1991 Nissan Grand Prix of Miami race on the 1.873 mile (3.014 km) Miami Bicentennial Park temporary street course, Kendall’s No. 65 Spice salvaged Miller Racing’s team pride by posting a second-place finish after Taylor’s pole-winning No. 64 Intrepid fell to the waysidewith a broken halfshaft on Lap 84.
Taylor’s 16th-place Miami finish somewhat dulled the luster gained in its debut race, paddock talk turning to Nissan Performance Technology and Tom Walkinshaw Racing’s soon-to-appear newest iterations.
“There was a lot of talk over the new Nissan and Jaguars,” Bob Riley said.
“The cars they were running, the NPT-90 and XJR-10, were competitive in 1990 and again already in ’91. So, a lot of folks were wondering just what kind of car they’d be replacing them with. There was Dan Gurney’s new Eagle on the way, too.
“So, I guess it wasn’t too surprising that we already kinda slipped a little from the radar. We had a really good car, of course, but the others had a lot of recent history. As good as we’d already ran the Intrepid was an unknown quantity that others may have seen as just being lucky and it’s understandable that it’d take a win to make them really take notice.”
When IMSA’s ’91 road show arrived at Connecticut’s Lime Rock Park after the first six GTP rounds, Jaguar had taken three GTP races; Nissan, two; and Porsche one. The situation was ripe for a giant killer to emerge; all the better if “All American” (with no intended disrespect of Dan Gurney’s All American Racers).
To Taylor, Kendall’s first race in the No. 65 Chevrolet Intrepid RM-1 at the May 26, 1991 Toyota Truck Lime Rock Grand Prix would spell a first: signal the beginning of Taylor’s end at Miller Racing or, as Taylor conversely sees it today, the end of his beginning.
In the 1990 Lime Rock Park race, Taylor and then co-driver/owner Jim Miller finished second to Price Cobb and John Nielsen’s TWR Jaguar XJR-10 – a lap down – and a score ripe to be settled by Taylor and and the Miller Racing team.
“But my clutch exploded just as I went out to qualify so I didn’t get a time and was moved to the back of field for the start,” Taylor said of a race weekend that saw the Miller Racing teammates all but bookended the 18-car field after Kendall’s Intrepid captured the pole.
Remove Lime Rock Park’s 2,400-ft. (732 m) pit straight – the track’s longest straight line – from the track’s already fairly short overall length and a driver then each lap on-average encounters one turn roughly every 820-ft. (250 m). Remove the 1,200-foot (366 m) slightly bending “No-Name Straight” as well and the average turn-to-turn distance is reduced still another 200 ft.
To say “Lime Rock Park hit the Intrepid’s sweet spot” probably would qualify as an understatement of almost legendary proportion.
Everything in the Intrepid, from its normally aspirated Chevrolet 6-liter engine’s comparatively quicker low-end torque curve to the car’s aerodynamic efficiencies worked in symphonic-like harmony at Lime Rock Park – at which two very talented drivers would conduct their own style of music, if not by original intent.
“Jim Miller knew what each of us faced in the race so he got us together before the race, and said ‘We’re not going to take each other out. If someone gets in the position to overtake, let him go,’” Taylor said
Although previously having amassed something in the neighborhood of only one-hour’s practice time in the newest Intrepid before arriving at Lime Rock Park, Kendall scored the race pole after knocking nearly three seconds off the previous record set in 1990 by Drake Olson in the No. 98 All American Racers’ Eagle HF89 Toyota.
Up front for the start, Kendall was able to run unimpeded, made quick use of the Riley design on the venerable 1.54-mile (2.478-km) circuit’s layout and in the process pretty well stunned even veteran race observers.
On the way to Kendall nailing the Lime rock Park pole, many in the paddock thought the Chevrolet engine was putting out far more horsepower than the advertised 800, largely overlooking the aerodynamic efficiencies Riley had incorporated in the car’s design.
With what has since become characteristically associated with Riley, the Intrepid looked markedly different from what had become an aesthetic standard largely repeated in other prototype cars. Although many observers noted its ability to take turns better than competing makes, the look was thought to have little to do with that ability.
But that which the eye perceives, the mind believes and nature’s applicable rules often are at odds with each other.
An Old Greek Guy named Archimedes – at a time when Greece was at the center of the civilized world, if not the universe – got the whole computational fluid dynamics (CFD) thing rolling a couple-thousand-years ago, but the ability to regularly utilize CFD by major car manufacturers, much less an independent-minded designer, wasn’t available until well after Riley crafted the RM-1 in his head.
“Honestly, we were a little stunned at what the Intrepid was doing,” Riley said.
“A big deal is usually made of qualifying but sometimes in racing everything just falls together just right and someone goes really fast. While we felt the Intrepid was fast and winning the pole reflected it, the race is what really counted, of course.”
“But I can remember looking at Jim (Miller) during the race and saying, ‘I think it must be making about twice the downforce we thought,’” Riley chuckled.
Loosed by the race’s green flag and the Intrepid’s Chevrolet engine singing its throaty tune as it climbed Lime Rock’s No-Name Straight again and again, Kendall overtook GTP Lights leader Parker Johnstone’s Comptech Acura Spice SE90P in just 11 laps, then followed with the fastest race circuit on Lap 29. Kendall caught, worked his way around and began lapping his GTP competitors on either side of those marks, shortly becoming the first of only three cars on the lead lap before being made aware of a need to take a little of the edge off his blistering pace.
From the same green flag’s first wave but at the other end of the race-start equation was Taylor. His forward vision obscured and motion obstructed by the 15 race cars lying ahead, Taylor nonetheless had also begun picking off his competitors and was through most of the field when Kendall appeared in Taylor’s rearview mirror.
“Just as had been agreed upon before the race and of which Jim (Miller) reminded over the radio, I let Tommy pass,” Taylor recently recounted.
Later, just a little beyond the race’s midpoint and in fourth place, but still lapped just as Miller had earlier directed and, according to the driver, absent of an explicit intention to do otherwise, Taylor’s No. 64 Intrepid suddenly appeared in Kendall’s rearview mirror.
With Kendall ahead nearly one full lap plus a race-car length or so, the two Intrepids ran multiple laps in nose-to-tail formation making mincemeat of the field when Kendall suddenly slid from the course at the exit of Big Bend (Turns 1 & 2).
“We were behind one of the Nissans – either (Chip) Robinson or (Geoff) Brabham, but I really don’t know who – who did a brake check,” Taylor recently recalled.
"I was right behind Tommy, I mean right on his tail, and I wasn't at all expecting a brake check. Suddenly, Tommy was on his brakes and I couldn't react to it quickly enough and tapped Tommy in the rear and that upset him enough to send him off."
Precariously perched at Big Bend’s exit, unable to rejoin, Kendall helplessly watched as his race-lead cushion quickly evaporated, passing into a deficit before corner workers, putting themselves in great jeopardy, came to his aid.
Having insufficient remaining time to counter all he’d lost, Kendall fought with sufficient spirit to come back enough to place fifth to Taylor’s fourth, both having completed 132 laps to Robinson’s winning 133, amassed in the No. 84 Nissan NPT-91.
"To this day they think I did that intentionally (sent Kendall off) even though I had done as we agreed earlier, letting him go by when he caught me. There would be no reason for me to let him go by (at that time) and then (later) intentionally hit him. Why would I do that?" a still baffled Taylor asked as ghosts from Lime Rock Park, past, still pointed fingers.
Next, “QUENCHING A THIRST ON BOURBON”
Later,
DC
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