SWEET HOME, ALABAMA

Sportscar racing in Alabama has some historical roots that take it back father in time than many might quickly recognize, reaching all the way back to a 1969 International Motor Sports Association race event just east of Birmingham.

“It was our second race,” recalled IMSA founder and current Grand-Am Commissioner John Bishop earlier this week from his home near Ocala, Fla.

The “Alabama International Sedan” race was a part of IMSA’s second-ever race weekend and took place on a track that operationally was barely into its second month, after hatching years earlier in a nearby Anniston, Ala., coffee shop.

The track being highly controversial from its beginning, such had little to do with its hosting a bunch of “sporty cars” in what today is typically considered “NASCAR Country.”

“The press and people there treated us really well and we actually had more people in the stands than we did at our first race (months earlier) at Pocono,” Bishop recalled. “After having the welcome mat all but pulled from beneath us at Pocono, we were the beneficiaries of some real southern hospitality. It was great.”

Perhaps even more obscure than the race in history’s consciousness was the International Sedan race’s winning driver, Gaston Andrey of Framingham, Mass. – even though that driver’s career would eventually stretch into five different decades.

Primarily a participant in Sports Car Club of America events, Andrey’s Alfa Romero Giulia GTA was among the seven surviving cars of the 22 starting the Nov. 9, 1969, 80-mile contest over the oval and 9-turn infield portion of 4-mile road course that in 1989 was renamed Talladega Superspeedway.

“Like Andrey, there were a lot of really good drivers, if not great drivers, in that race,” Bishop said.

While a look at that race’s entrant list might not ring many big-time bells - except perhaps “Famous Amos” Johnson who later became synonymous with “Team Highball” - two particular names just downright jump out at the reader:  Bill France Sr. (yep, aka “Big Bill”) and Bill France Jr., (left) who raced their respective Ford Cortina Mk. 2 GTs to 17^th and ninth-place finishes after qualifying 14^th and 12^th.

According to newspaper accounts of the race, France Sr. had advanced smartly through the field and was running in the top five when he went off course, after which he didn’t return.

“A mid-Atlantic-area based tuner got a whole load of Ford Cortinas that had gotten smashed up on a cargo ship on the way over from England,” Bishop said. “He got them at a good price and fixed some of them up. Bill Sr. and Bill raced a couple them as a lark. You know, there’s a lot of racing found in that France-family gene pool.”

In all, IMSA held eight race weekends over a nine-year period at Talladega, competing in which were the likes of Bob Akin, Don and Bill Whittington, Bob Bondurant, John Paul, Hurley Haywood, Gianpiero Moretti, Mike Keyser, Hans Stuck, Sam Posey, Al Holbert, Johnny Rutherford and still others.

The last IMSA-sanctioned Talladega race was won by Peter Gregg, who co-drove a 935/930 with some guy named Brad Frisselle (yep, father to Burt and Brian) in the 1978 6 Hours Of Talladega.

“Ah, Talladega. That was the place where they once wouldn’t allow women in the garages and pits!” Brad Frisselle once recalled, adding that a special infield chain-link fence compound, made especially for racer’s wives and girlfriends, was once found in the track’s infield.

No, next weekend’s race at Barber Motorsports Park won’t have a similar “special place” for participants’ wives and girlfriends - such being a good thing because, if nothing else, some of the drivers today bring husbands and boyfriends.

 

GRAND-AM SHOULD’VE INSTEAD BUSTED AUBERLEN AND HAND

In the wake of Turner Motorsport’s No. 94 BMW M6 driving from worst (18^th in GT) to near-first (5^th in GT), improving by 13 spots and picking up “The Best Start-Finish Award” at the Mar. 6 Grand Prix of Miami, it occurs the best way for a sanctioning body to establish a race car’s capability isn’t through track test days, chassis or engine dynamometers.

A surefire, never-miss means to learn of a race car’s true capability is to make sure the car is sent to a race grid’s rear. Possibly even resorting to some rules-related-infraction pretext (not that the Grand-Am officiating crew would ever do such a thing) by drumming up anything from “Golly gee, I see your body is 1/1000^th of a millimeter too wide” to “Darn it, the widget that’s attached to the gadget hasn’t been properly homologated as yet.”

Oh, and then alternately put Bill Auberlen and Joey Hand in the driver’s seat (as did a wise Paul Dalla Lana at Homestead-Miami Speedway) because the two drivers for the most part find sandbagging as alien as does Hand standard sunglass frames or Auberlen lily white skin.

“I don’t get it,” Auberlen once said years ago of sandbagging while undertaking a torture treatment – otherwise known as a “regional aircraft” flight (a conveyance which especially over 60-minutes duration stands on its head the idea that prisoners be accorded humane treatment in this country, as affirmed by the Constitution, Supreme Court rulings and Congressional action. As for any reader taking issue with this writer’s contention which equates “regional” airline travel with a prison: sometime in midflight request a parachute, an open door and then see what happens – especially if seated next to someone like Boris Said).

A regional aircraft’s plus side: adjoining-seat passengers get personal, regardless of one’s possible wishes to the contrary.

“I know one way to race and that’s as hard and as fast as I can; keep the car on the track; don’t hurt it but always, always try as hard as possible to drive as fast as you can,” Auberlen insisted and which, lacking any proof whatsoever to the contrary, has lived.

Hand (far left), today having advanced his driving skills by light years beyond his past “gentleman driver” days, most likely learned “Auberlen’s Racing Law No. 1” when the two raced, though mostly in separate cars, under the Tom Milner PTG BMW banner during the Rolex Series’ 2004-2005 seasons.

Milner’s teams, having stout cars and drivers, were kicking booty from here to forever when, for political reasons, Milner separated Auberlen and Boris Said after 2004’s fifth race, pairing Justin Marks with the former and Hand with the latter.

Though the PTG teams would continue to dominate – winning 10 of 12 races by 2004’s end – it was an emotionally crushing move for Said and Auberlen, who at the end of that year’s Sahlen’s 6 Hours Of The Glen had scored four-straight wins and looked otherwise unstoppable, even with seven remaining races.

Tied at 373 points when 2004 drew to a close, Auberlen walked away with the awards banquet’s GT driving-crown trophy when respective pole-positions were figured into the mix, making for a bummed Said and Auberlen even today.

In 2005, with Said (near right, with Hand) gone from PTG and looking more toward NASCAR stock car racing (bringing in $976,603 in just nine races there, BTW), Tom Milner Jr. joined Auberlen, Hand and Marks in a season-long mix of driver combinations that produced three wins for each driver but during which PTG’s driver mixing wouldn’t allow a single car having teammates with three wins.

With three wins (one coming at Barber Motorsports Park with Marks) among his seven top-5 finishes, Hand finished fourth in the 2005 season-ending points compilation – two better than a next-highest 6^th for Milner Jr. – despite PTG altogether abandoning its Rolex Series GT program after that season’s next-to-last race. Interestingly, in that last season the three PTG teammates individually posted more wins than did the driving champion, Craig Stanton.

Given the Turner BMW team’s perceived strength in testing – a buzz about which was rampant even before the 2010 season began in earnest – it’s probable certain eyes held visions of the team replicating that of BMWs from seasons’ past.

The team hasn’t done a thing to still those concerns, either. So, without winning or finishing any better than eighth place thus far in 2010, Turner’s Prep 2 BMW officially gets a tachometer that pegs at 7,000 rpm and 5-speed gearbox.

Probably would’ve been best to instead ban Auberlen and Hand, though.

You can watch the Turner crew as they comply with the new rules, live from Amesbury, Mass., apparently, lacking a microphone to go with the Web cam. It might’ve been interesting to learn their thoughts.

Later,

DC

 

 

Gratuitous Patrick Dempsey picture (Homestead-Miami Speedway, 2010, while Dempsey Racing team car No. 41 drivers James Gue and Leh Keen were winning, BTW)