THE RAFA SHOW THAT ISN’T
A very talented Raphael Matos only a few months ago seemed bound for a Daytona Prototype ride but, with money in short supply everywhere, most DP teams weren’t terribly interested.
Seems contradictory, huh?
As the late, great Paul Harvey would say, “Here’s the rest of the story.”
Fans of Daytona Prototype racing will remember when a third-shift Matos co-drove, with (pictured at left and far right with Ian James, left, and John Pew, center) a Michael Shank Racing Ford-Riley straight into the 2008 SunRichGourmet.com 1000 Victory Lane at Miller Motorsports Park.
As the end of the nearly 7-hour race approached, Matos was pulling away from the field in a car that had no telemetry, no dashboard information and, at best, spotty radio performance – all the while dealing with desert rain storms. His was among the smoothest drives ever seen, many observers afterward opined.
Arising following this year’s Rolex 24 At Daytona, where Matos co-drove the No. 95 Level 5 BMW-Riley to an 11th-place finish, the driver’s prospective Daytona Prototype ride negotiations soon shifted from DP to the IRL IndyCar Series as the latter’s March 27 opening 2011 St. Petersburg drew ever closer.
Bringing a sponsor and decent money (reportedly about $1.5 million) along for the ride, the list of interested DP teams were quickly whittled to two (one such based east of a certain Ohio metropolis, the name of which begins with a “C” – the metropolis, Gary, not the race team) before the whole DP ride idea withered on the vine.
The biggest reported problem was the number of interjected mouths believing they, too, should feed at the sponsor’s trough, therefore whittling the available cash to less than enough for a team to comfortably complete a DP season without it resorting to another “sponsored” driver, despite the Rolex Series’ schedule having already concluded its costliest annual race.
“You know I’ll do anything, anything at all for the series!” is a refrain often heard but rendered forevermore meaningless when a “cut” for just “being there” is sought.
A REAL HOOT, IT WAS
Having recently contemplated F1’s articulating rear wing and seeing grandiose comments concerning its “originality,” those thoughts quickly yielded to the mind’s eye in which pictured was Jim Hall’s 1967 Chaparral 2F.
Beyond being a bold breakthrough design, Hall’s wing, accorded its innovation and design totality, flat-out blows away any wing used in racing today.
The Chaparral was one this observer’s two hands-down, overall racing favorites, indeed, decades ago prompting him to buy a first-ever logo T-shirt direct from Chaparral Cars in Midland, Texas – the anticipated arrival of which went well beyond “Ralphie’s” Little Orphan Annie Ovaltine super secret decoder ring.
At what is today’s Rolex 24 At Daytona and in a following (now) Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring race, primary drivers Mike Spence, Phil Hill and owner/driver Hall drove the car at various times, the power for which was supplied by a 427-cubic-inch Chevrolet engine at times tweaked by another Texan, Harold Lozano, later growing into Joe, Ben (often seen at Rolex Sports Car Series races) and Mike’s Lozano Brothers Porting (LBP).
Still into building racing engines of all ilks, LBP provides the Porsche Cayenne-based V8 used in the Nos. 5 and 9 Action Express Racing Daytona Prototypes – though LBP has since relocated down the road a mite in New Braunfels, Texas.
Even though the Chaparral 2F qualified second behind Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt’s Ford MkII, the all-white car clearly was the faster machine after the race was undertaken.
At 3.81-miles long, Daytona International Speedway’s 1967 track was about 1,300 feet longer than today’s (3.56-mile) track, most of the surface’s change a result of shortening the asphalt leading into and out of the original “East Horseshoe” turn, which extended about a football field’s length farther east of today’s (Pedro Rodriguez) International Turn (3).
Though the Chaparral’s 427 aluminum-block Chevy engine certainly had tons of grunt and a comparatively excellent top-end, the Chaparral 2F was the class of the field when it came to the track’s turns, its rear-mounted wing’s plane controlled by a driver-compartment foot pedal that, when released, tilted the wing into a full-on wind wall.
Can you say “instant brake?”
When tilted fully downward, this “wall of resistance” transferred energy from the wing‘s surface, through the vertical mounts (struts) and along a path that ultimately passed through the suspension and increased the friction between the Chaparral’s two rear tires and pavement below.
After watching that wing do its thing, one got the impression that somewhere on Earth’s other side two tire-sized imprints bulged from the ground, whizzing past astonished onlookers.
(Oh! One feels a National Enquirer story coming on . . .)
Coming out of the East Horseshoe and into the following straight the 2F leveled its wing as would a mad cat its ears and the Chaparral scatted, big time, as its 427 V8 Chevrolet throatily powered through each gear change, all of ‘em: one – unless included also is Reverse to Forward.
Yep, the 2-speed Chevrolet Hydramatic was at work in the Chaparral – just like the Hydramatic found in your scribe’s former 1957 Chevy BelAir 4-door hardtop. Yes sir, the Chaparral’s Hydramatic surely was just like the street version, such idea being what all manufacturers wish us to believe about race cars, anyway.
Later sold for the princely sum of $1 to a friend who possessed access to and an ability to install a spare Hydramatic found in his back yard, the Chaparral too found its Hydramatic breaking when least desired, though it not coming from someone, assuredly on the shorter end of his age spectrum, who one too many times put petal fully to metal before dropping the gearshift lever into “F.”
It was a fascinating sound, hearing that 427 aluminium (ask an Englishman) engine spool up, down and then upward again as the gears, um, as first gear transitioned into second. The Hydramatic, even in a ‘57 Chevy with holes purposefully, craftily inserted (cut) in the muffler to make its 265’s two-barreled engine sound far meaner, was a wholly interesting gearbox “experience.”
Nearing the top-end of whatever the mated 427/Hydramatic could produce, a barely discernable rapid flick of the Chaparral 2F’s wing caught just enough air just long enough to enable a continued full-throttle push through The Kink (Turn 4), followed shortly after with a full-on application as it hit the West Horseshoe’s turn-in mark.
Far more quickly seen than could the sound of its engine be heard, standing above all other cars around was the Chaparral 2F’s wing, its movements often telegraphing the car’s attack through traffic, if not the driver’s intent even if only after such had been undertaken.
When approaching slower traffic, the Chaparral 2F sometimes glided around and between fellow competitors, at other times the wing would suddenly be thrown into the wind when a formerly open gap too suddenly closed. It wasn’t necessary to see the car; just follow the wing.
It’s effectiveness well beyond doubt, the entire motorsports world soon had taken note of the Chaparral 2F (and open-cockpit 2E in Can-Am). It wasn’t long before F1 cars – shoot, every kind of race car – were sprouting similar wings.
With knowledge of aerodynamics hardly into its adolescence, in 1968 sportscar wings like that of the Chaparral 2F were banned by the Federation Internationale de L’Automobile (FIA).
Only in a short window of time would barely a relative few see the Chaparral’s magic wing at work in true anger.
It was wonderful, too.
Later,
DC
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