PUTTING ON A PAIR OF CAPRIS

 

PART DUEX of an abridged look at Bob Riley’s contributions to sportscar racing . . .

 

Gaining Ford’s blessing for a full-on 1984 SCCA Budweiser Trans-Am Championship effort, “Roush Protofab” – the combined efforts of Jack Roush, Gary Pratt (now Pratt & Miller Engineering) and the late Charles Selix – fielded a Mercury Capri (aka, the Riley MkI chassis) which for most of that season was driven by Tom Gloy, Greg Pickett and Willy T. Ribbs.

(Note: Ribbs, qualified a DeAtley Motorsports Chevrolet Corvette as second fastest for 1984’s first race at Road Atlanta but did not start the race – wasn’t even an entrant for the next three Trans-Am races – but showed up as a Roush driver for Race 5. When it comes to Willy T, one can’t help but wonder “exactly what happened with all that?”)

In the first race of the 1984 season at Road Atlanta, the two Capris first appearance put on a decent show with Pickett starting ninth (finished 19) while Gloy started third (finished 25), the cars being respectively felled with overheating and gearbox problems.

As one can imagine when it comes to Roush’s mentality, with that race came an end to the relatively poor finishes.

Gaining momentum, the two Capri drivers then pulled top-5 finishes in the season’s second race (Gloy, third; Pickett, fifth) and swept the top-two spots (Pickett in first; Gloy, second) by only the season’s third race at Sears Point International Raceway (now Infineon Raceway or, alternately, O. Bruton Smith’s Left Coast Palace).

The 1984 Trans-Am paddock had no clue as to what thereafter awaited, but by the third race just about everyone wearing a bow tie or an Obwandiyag badge (the Pontiac “Chief”) could’ve saved effort, money and embarrassment by folding the tent and head home for the rest of the season. Indeed, even for approximately the next five seasons.

For that 1984 Roush opening-salvo season no more than four Roush Mercury Capris faced no fewer than 18 GM pony cars (at Texas’ Green Valley Raceway) and as many as 30 of ‘em (at Road America).

Logic tells one the competition’s sheer numbers should’ve more frequently ground down the Mercury Capris, but by ‘84’s end the combination of Riley’s chassis, Roush’s engines, talented drivers and able crews combined to that year collectively claim 11 wins (Pickett 5; Gloy 3; Ribbs 3); nine top-2 sweeps and 33 top-5 finishes.

With Bob Riley spearheading an adept engineering team – that grew to include others like present-day Grand-Am consultant Don Hayward – the Ford Mustang, Mercury Capri, Merkur XRT4i and Mercury Cougar – would flat-out dominate production-based SCCA and IMSA GTO sportscar racing unlike any other team or manufacturer before or since.

THE NEED OF FIRING ON ALL CYLINDERS

An important if not successful part of building the Ford SVO (Special Vehicle Operations) as successful long-term program was the preceding 1983 Team Zakspeed Roush Ford Mustang GTP team’s failures.

Built in Roush’s Lavonia, Mich., facilities, Bob Riley likewise toiled on the blazingly quick front-engined car that most often included Klaus Ludwig (15 races) and Bobby Rahal (7 races) in its driving pool, at times joined by Geoff Brabham, Bob Wollek, Tim Coconis and Tom Gloy.

“The Mustang GTP was fast – we set a fair share of qualifying and fast-lap records with them – but they sure did go through a lot of engines,” Riley said, referring to the GTP car’s Achilles Heel.

“(Zakspeed founder) Erich Zakowski came from European touring car racing and was accustomed to relatively short race distances.

“They brought over a 2.1 liter, 4-cylinder Ford motor they used there, put a turbocharger on it that developed ungodly pressure and it all combined to make for an engine that was fast but just didn’t have the endurance for races over here.”

“The Mustang GTP was a really cool car,” said present-day Grand-Am competition chief Mark Raffauf, who as an IMSA official watched the Mustang GTP finish only 20-percent of the races in which it competed.

“But it, especially at Daytona, tended to run out of engine long before it ran out of straightaway.”

The Mustang GTP’s first race and sole win, Ludwig and Coconis sharing the steering wheel, came during its on Aug. 21, 1983 debut race, a slightly shortened, wet (460 of 500 miles) Pabst 500 at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wis.

“If it hadn’t been for the rainwater channeled into the engine compartment through the hood scoop, I doubt it would’ve finished even that race,” Riley said of a car whose aerodynamic efficiency was so great that the Mustang’s engine, turbocharger and gearbox lacked sufficient cooling, even with two radiators, because air resistance was so effectively channeled into a helpful tool.

“One of the problems with that engine wasn’t related as much to the engine itself as it was in keeping it cool,” Riley said.

“Blowing those engines got so bad that Mid-Ohio’s firemen, when they’d see me come in for a race, would shout, ‘Hey, did you bring The Torch with you!?’”

“Those motors weren’t built or rebuilt in the U.S. We sent ‘em back to Europe and the turnaround time was so tight that I believe they sometimes only cleaned the outside of the engines to make ‘em look pretty before sending ‘em back.”

“I suggested they put a Roush 8-cylinder in there but they (Ford Racing) were getting pretty short on the patience end. There was a lot of money going to something that wasn’t producing much return so it wasn’t really much of a surprise when they went to the rear-engined Probe.

“The way things were going Ford’s way in Trans-Am and GTO, for marketing reasons I think, Ford was more interested in connecting those cars to the public and the Probe eventually went away. But I wasn’t really involved in that project so it didn’t much matter to me.”

“(Zakspeed’s) Zakowski eventually gravitated toward Formula 1, where he really wanted to be anyway, and Jack (Roush) decided to go to NASCAR.”

Next: Mr. Riley, Meet Mr. Taylor 

Later,

DC