THE INTREPID “STALLS”

A continuation of an abridged series about Riley Technologies’ Bob Riley.

So much did Tommy Kendall’s all-but-catastrophic misfortune overshadow the 1991 Watkins Glen Camel Continental GTP race that few remember Juan (please don’t call me “Manuel”) Fangio II and his No. 99 Dan Gurney All American Racing Eagle Toyota HF-90 scored the team’s first win of the 1991 season.

(NOTE: Starting a roll that would lead to three total wins - two with a brand-new Eagle Mk III - in 1991’s final five races. Fangio and teammate P.J. Jones over the following two seasons would, some insist, change the very face of prototype sportscar racing by winning 70-percent of 1992’s and 91-percent of 1993’s prototype races. In 1992, Fangio, assisted by Kenny Acheson and Andy Wallace at Daytona and Wallace, only, at Sebring, which the pair won, took first place in seven races while P.J. Jones won three. Interestingly, AAR’s stunning win run was interrupted only by its “no-show” at the 1993 Elkhart Lake race.)

“I was sick; just sick,” Bob Riley said, recalling the rush of feelings in the aftermath of Kendall’s Watkins Glen wreck.

“Race car drivers are paid to take risks and every one of them understand they regularly face risks that can negatively impact them and can come unexpectedly, even be caused by someone else.”

“Anyone involved in motorsports, I don’t care where it is – Karting, Grand-Am , open wheel, wherever – understands there are inherent risks in the sport.

“Yet, motorsports, back then and more so today, is safer per-mile traveled than on public roads.

“No one in racing wants to see others get hurt, so we try as hard as we can to minimize the risks, but you just can’t get rid of ‘em.

“Look at history and you’ll see trial and error is the single most-successful method of human discovery. We learn from mistakes more than through any other method.

“Even with today’s CFD (computational fluid dynamics) the bottom line is that humans write the programs that the computers use to figure out what a car might do in a given set of circumstances. Humans – at least insofar as I know – haven’t yet figured out how to figure out everything there is to know.

“Shoot, back then, computer time for anything, much less CFD, wasn’t near as available as it is today – we’ve even got a CFD-dedicated computer here now at Riley Technologies – but even today you just can’t walk over to your nearest supercomputer and use it like you can an ATM, even though today’s everyday computers probably have more computing power than the supercomputers back then. The numbers still just take a really long time to crunch.”

“Even though I’ve always tried my best to make every car as safe as possible - because it’s never fun or easy seeing something like what happened to Tommy – it can happen to anyone,” Riley said.

“Still, interest in the Intrepid pretty well just dried up overnight after his crash,” Riley said.

The Bad At The Glen notwithstanding, by many standards the Intrepid was doing things other cars weren’t and had done so in rather spectacular fashion, to boot.

Although Miller Racing was absent in two of the 1991 season’s 14 prototype races and that Kendall started (counting only his No. 65 Intrepid) only but four of Taylor’s 12 races, outside of Taylor’s New Orleans win the team combined to additionally put their two Riley designed Chevrolet-powered RM-1 Intrepids on eight race front rows, of which six were poles (Taylor, 4; Kendall, 2); scored the fastest lap in seven races (Taylor, 5; Kendall 2); and, stepped onto four race podiums (Taylor, 3; Kendall 1).

At the end of 1991 Taylor and his No. 64 Chevrolet Intrepid alone finished with a fourth-place or better in 75 percent of the races in which they competed.

Whether the drivers or the prototypes in which they competed, by 1991’s end the Intrepid RM-1 and its pilots had faced the winning likes of Bob Wollek and Louis “John Winter” Krages in Joest 962C Porsches; Juan Fangio II and Rocky Moran in two models of Dan Gurney’s AAR Eagle Toyotas (that at season’s end had begun a 17-race, multiple-season win run); Davy Jones and Raul Boesel running three distinct TWR Jaguar models; as well as at least three different Nissan prototype chassis driven at different times by Bob Earl, Chip Robinson and Geoff Brabham, the latter capping 1991 with a fourth-consecutive prototype driving championship.

Having recorded three poles, three fastest race laps on his way to five wins, Tom Walkinshaw Racing’s Jones and his XJR rides were the best of the rest insofar as “wins” were concerned but still fell short of winning the season-long championship fight ultimately claimed by Nissan’s Brabham, winner of one 1991 race (Sebring) and “Mr. Consistent” in the remainder.

When measured against the extent of the financial, engineering and manpower depth available to that day’s top factory efforts, Jim Miller, Riley and Gary Pratt’s comparatively underfunded Intrepid design more than held its own.

Yet, despite the car’s clear promise, with 1992 on their mind, Miller Racing would whittle itself from two standout drivers to one – and it’d go with Kendall.

“I’d developed the car, won poles, led laps, won a race and there I was, out of a job,” Taylor said. “I just didn’t understand it.

“That was the beginning of me trying to figure out where I was going to go with my racing career and the manner I’d undertake it.”

Though Taylor would again give the Intrepid another go – with Tom Milner managing a couple of “borrowed” Intrepids that Riley said “were returned in better shape than when Wayne got them” – the Intrepid’s spectacular underdog moment had largely passed.

As prototype racing budgets grew well beyond what privateers could afford – at least those desiring and having a realistic chance at winning – and largely caused “the little guy’s” withdrawal, competition rules changes for 1994 were already in the air and would bring some back, along with again pairing Taylor with Bob and Bill Riley.

Next: the Mk III

Later (and enjoy the weekend),

DC

THE WALL COMES TUMBLING DOWN

 

Between flights and ready for work on the next piece in an abridged look at one of modern sports car racing’s most prolific designers, Bob Riley of Riley Technologies, this’ll perhaps occupy the reader’s time for awhile.

New Orleans Grand Prix du Mardi Gras winner Wayne Taylor and his Jim Miller-owned, Gary Pratt-built, Bob Riley designed and Chevrolet-powered No. 64 Intrepid RM-1 had just produced the 1991 IMSA GTP season’s slowest average race speed at 60.126 mph (96.763 kph).

But, bottom line, everyone else failed to drive faster.

“A win is kind of a funny thing,” Riley said. “It’s a validation of what you work for and a thrill, of course, but it’s also an albatross because one win soon isn’t worth much unless you can do it again and again. The thrill of a win really doesn’t last as long as it should, it seems.”

The schedule’s next stop, Watkins Glen International, typically produced lap speeds about twice that recorded in 1991 at New Orleans, evidenced by 1990 Camel Continental winners Chip Robinson and Bob Earl’s Nissan NPT-90 averaging 114.995 mph (185.067 kph) on the 3.377-mile (5.4-km) course.

Reigning three-time GTP champ and Nissan driver Geoff Brabham arrived for the June 30, 1991 Watkins Glen hunting an unprecedented fourth GTP driving crown but was embroiled in a pitched championship battle with Nissan No. 84 NPT-90 teammate Chip Robinson.

Principal Jaguar adversary Davy Jones (Raul Boesel, his teammate) had thus far won four races to Brabham’s one, but two relatively poor finishes – a 30th in Daytona and 12th in Miami – had dealt Jones too great of a blow to overcome Brabham’s steady, if not relatively boring, race-finish pace.

Through nine of 1991 season’s 14 GTP races and heading into The Glen 500 km race, Jones’ 8.2 average finish was nearly double that of Brabham and Robinson’s 4.2.

If Brabham were to assure his claim to that fourth-straight driving title, he’d need to at least maintain if not pick up his pace, especially when racing fortunes are known to suddenly reverse with bottom-of-barrel race finishes often furnished by the hand of others (ask Sylvain Tremblay about his 2010 Mid-Ohio race).

Neither Kendall nor Taylor had a realistic chance of winning the ‘91 championship but they could have an impact as spoilers – and perhaps help sell some cars, too.

Independent car builders had already long been a mainstay of racing, whatever its nature, but it was about the time talk of the Intrepid arose when Riley and Miller began to understand they, too, could do what Gordon Spice had done.

“I know it’s a cliché but Jim (Miller) really could sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo,” Riley said. “Gary (Pratt) was, still is gifted with his ability to put stuff together. All I needed to do was my part,” Riley understated.

Racers being racers, each knows that in order to win and win big he or she need only acquire the newest, better mousetrap and, by most observations, the Intrepid was on its way to being exactly that.

It just needed to pass a high-speed test at the 1991 Camel Continental VIII.

The Intrepid’s first victory two weeks earlier at New Orleans – achieved from the fourth row by Taylor, who drove around a front-row Brabham – hadn’t negatively impacted Brabham’s championship-title hope, especially given Robinson’s 11th-place and Jones’ 13th-place finishes in that Grand Prix du Mardi Gras.

On the car-selling side, though, Taylor and his No. 64 Intrepid were able to showcase that which Riley’s mind conceived, Pratt built and Miller enabled.

As the radical Intrepid passed each race test – from natural terrain to temporary street circuits – also growing were the prospects of other teams fielding Intrepids in 1992. Passing another yet another test at The Glen almost assuredly would make such likely.

With over half its 2.45-mile (3.92 km) course comprised of three straights and 12 flowing curves that serve more to connect and maintain a general clockwise traffic pattern than otherwise impede speed, Watkins Glen International regularly produces among the fastest average lap times recorded on U.S. tracks.

As a driver turns from the front straight and exits through Turn 1, he begins a 3,200-ft. stretch of track after which undertaken is a petal-to-metal, gear-throwing climb from The Glen’s next-lowest elevation to its highest – roughly the equivalent of a 12-story building.

In 1991, at the end of that climb a GTP driver’s first stab of the brakes came for a looming Turn 5 (aka, ‘Outer Loop’) – into which the more talented and braver will brake late and deep, especially with overtaking on the mind.

In the race’s 61st lap and with all the viewing world – whether at the track or on TV – knowing Kendall was setting up the leading No. 83 Nissan for a pass, Brabham lead a fast-closing Kendall deep into the roughly 180-degree, swooping carnival-ride, right-hand turn when the No. 65 Intrepid’s rear suddenly and nervously shifted.

Kendall’s Intrepid, experiencing downforce loads estimated to be something just a tad shy of unbelievably immense suffered a catastrophic left-rear hub failure.

As the left rear wheel-well’s bodywork door peeled away, flitting in the air as if a loose-blown leaf, the wheel, at it’s hub, was rolling well clear of the car and anyone watching just had to figure, “This one’s gonna hurt,” only it was worse than would be imagined. Kendall’s No. 64 plowed deeply into an awaiting tire barrier and the nearly immovable blue-hued metal barrier beyond. (See it at YouTube.)

(Note: Some immediately tend to use or say “ARMCO” as a generic reference for a form of broad, horizontal steel fencing made by a variety of companies. Given that the ARMCO name is trademarked and this writer has yet to establish if the barrier really was that manufactured by ARMCO . . .)

When the tires, dust and car settled, it was clear Kendall’s Intrepid hit the perimeter barriers - all but precisely head-on.

Though the Intrepid had been built to the same safety standards as that which transformed the Porsche 956 into the Porsche 962 – for one, a driver’s feet had to be located behind an imaginary straight line extending through the car’s front wheel-hub centers – Kendall’s impact speed had been so great that the damning energy inevitably shot beyond even that point and into his legs.

“I looked at my legs and puked,” Kendall said afterward.

In a literally sickening blink of an eye, cemented were the paths Kendall, the RM-1 and even Taylor would abruptly take.

And, of course, we’ll take that up in the next posting.

Later,

DC

“QUENCHING A THIRST ON BOURBON”

Another entry in an abridged Bob Riley story - one of racing’s greatest. (Though having something to do with getting down in New Orleans, what part in the series might this be, and the number to come, is for more industrious and higher-math-capable souls to figure than me.)

Though losing the overall Lime Rock Park battle, its show that day catapulted the Intrepid to the forefront in the war for minds as more and more owners and drivers started wondering what great feats might be accomplished if only raced in an Intrepid.

The answer would soon come.

On the heels of Lime Rock Park’s Memorial Day race was the June 2, 1991 Nissan Grand Prix of Ohio.

As happened at Lime Rock Park, Tommy Kendall’s Miller Racing Intrepid set a record-setting pace on the 2.258-mile Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course – considered by many to be among the world’s most “technical” road courses – with teammate Wayne Taylor (second) and Davy Jones (third) following, each likewise posting times besting that of 1990 top qualifier, race winner and reigning IMSA GTP driving champion, Geoff Brabham.

Alternating for the season’s first part between a 1989-vintage XJR-10 and a 1990-built XJR-12, Jones’ XJR-16 – under the direction of TWR’s Tony Dowe (who most recently has toiled, and won, with team-owner Leighton Reese) – was markedly slower (in the world of stopwatches and fast cars) than the Intrepid pair.

Still, the starting order was reversed by race end as Jones lead Taylor and Kendall to the checkered flag, barely 2-tenths of one second ahead of Taylor’s No. 64 Intrepid, again the bridesmaid.

“External elements in racing as often as not dictate the race’s results,” Intrepid designer Bob Riley insisted. “A driver can cut nothing but perfect laps and a pit crew can have perfect pit stops – everything a team can control can be done perfectly – but still not win because of something having absolutely nothing to do with the team. Yet, a team must always perform at its absolute best just to have a chance at winning.”

In the next race two weeks later, at the 2-hour Nissan Grand Prix du Mardi Gras, it all came together.

Ironically, it would come together only after neither Kendall’s nor Taylor’s Intrepid qualified for New Orleans’ front row – the team’s only third such shutout since the car’s introduction at West Palm Beach.

Contributing to that irony, capturing the New Orleans pole was the Pontiac Spice SE90P driven by Spice Engineering factory shoe Perry McCarthy (with American Jim Adams co-driving), which additionally captured the race’s fastest lap before experiencing the unforgiving nature of a temporary course’s concrete barriers, that are to even slightly errant race cars what graters are to cheese.

Compiling a blazing 60.126-mph average speed, Taylor’s still deft ability to navigate city traffic carried the day on the 1.3-mile (2.09 km) New Orleans temporary street course.

“Few people seem to know or remember but New Orleans was my first win here in the United States, too. I tell you, I was just elated,” Taylor said. “I’d come so close so many times before. A huge weight was lifted from my shoulders.”

Riley would also find relief, too . . . sort of.

“It’s an indescribably wonderful feeling, seeing something like that happen, because even though you’ve had success before and given everything you possibly can to make the next best thing even better, in the back of your mind you keep thinking of how it might be done better. I tell you, though, that was a wonderful time – even though I was thinking in the back of my mind . . . and still am, with everything we’ve done or do.”

Soon, Watkins Glen’s blue-hued metal perimeter would make New Orleans’ concrete-lined avenues look like a SAFER barrier forerunner.

Later,

DC

ALL IN ALL, WE’RE ALL JUST BOLTS IN THE ARMCO

 

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