24 Hours of Daytona

A Short history of a long race.

BY SAM POSE

Dan Gurney had a 2-minute lead at Daytona when the engine blew in his Lotus 19. "I knew it was very close to the end of the race," Dan recalls, "so I put the clutch in and let the car roll up to the line, stopping a few feet short of it." The finish line was on a banked part of the track. "I stopped in the upper lane, next to the starter's stand. I even got out of the car for a moment—I don't know why. Then the starter began waving the checkered flag. I turned left and just coasted down the banking, across the line."

To win.

That unusual finish took place a half-century ago in the Daytona Continental, a forerunner to the 24-hour race first held four years later in 1966. The course was part banking, part infield road course—a configuration new to racing. Overnight, Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans became what was informally known as endurance racing's Triple Crown. It would be hard to conceive of three races whose ambience differed more. The 12 Hours of Sebring, in central Florida, was held amid the vacant hangars and rusting World War II bombers of a little-used airfield; Le Mans—the doyen of the three—combined extreme danger with the intoxicating beauty of a long twilight rush through the pastoral French countryside. Daytona was all about the banking. It was intended for stock cars, not the fragile long-distance racers, and it was brutal, pounding the suspensions and leaving the drivers feeling as if they had just been in the ring with Mike Tyson. Derek Bell, who won both Daytona and Le Mans, thought Daytona was tougher; the banking never let you rest.

Ford GT40, photo courtesy of Road and Track

For one thing, you couldn't see where you were going. You looked left into the ground; right, and all you saw was the wall. Imagine racing inside a bowl: The road ahead didn't seem to curve but to climb; the impression was that you were always racing uphill. The big windshields of the NASCAR stockers allowed for good visibility, but in a 917 Porsche or a Ferrari 512, the knee-high roof blocked your view, so you scrunched down as best you could, craning your neck for a brief glimpse forward—many a driver ended his stint wracked with the pain of muscle cramps.

Only the middle two of the four lanes were usable, the bottom one too rough and the top, next to the wall, slippery with dust in the early hours, then with marbles as the race wore on. The idea was that cars in the slower classes would keep to the lower lane, leaving the high line for the fast boys, but out there on the banking, etiquette gave way to spur-of-the-moment expediency. Drivers of slow cars couldn't see behind them any better than those in the fast cars. When a Camaro, say, pulled out to pass, it would block the lane for a prototype bearing down on the scene with a closing rate of up to 70 mph. A split-second to decide: high or low? Nine out of 10 times it was too late to get on the brakes, and if you did there was the risk of losing control—the suspension settings were compromised, the flat infield turns calling for spring rates and ride heights that were the exact opposite of what you wanted for the banking. So there you were, the car crushed down onto the bumpstops, veering from lane to lane, centrifugal force pinning you in the seat and trying to drag your hands off the wheel, going 200 and unable to see much of anything—that was the banking experience. Oh, and for 10 hours, you got to do it in the night.

Dyson Riley & Scott Mk III, photo courtesy of Road and Track

The Daytona night is the longest in racing and often the coldest. Florida in February can be damp and freezing—parka weather. Along pit lane, crews jury-rigged plastic curtains to block the wind—in the daytime it looked like Shantytown, but at night it was quite beautiful, the translucent walls glowing in the dark. Inside the enclosures, men slumped on the concrete floor, fighting to stay awake.

The contrast between the stands packed with cheering NASCAR fans at the 500 and the same stands at night, empty except for a few fanatics frozen in place like lumps of coal, left no room for doubt as to the relative popularity of stock cars versus sports cars. The first year of the 24-hour race, Daytona's management sought to evoke the carnival atmosphere of Le Mans with a Ferris wheel, but although it revolved all night, its neon tubes bright yellow on the spokes, it failed to attract any customers—because there weren't any customers to attract. Attendance at Le Mans was close to 300,000; in those first years at Daytona the oft-repeated joke was that the drivers outnumbered the spectators.

911 GT3 RS, photo courtesy of Road and Track

Despite the poor attendance, the race became an important fixture on the international calendar. There was the cachet of the name Daytona (even then the 500 was a big deal), plus 1966 was the height of the Ford versus Ferrari battle, which lent historical significance to the proceedings. Ford swept the 1966 race, with Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby coming home first in a GT40 Mk II. The following year, Ferrari fought back, winning with their stunning 330 P4s. In 1968, Porsche scored the first of its record 22 wins, and 1969 saw Roger Penske's battered Lola—a victim of a crash on the banking—eke out a win. This was big-time racing, and Speedway President Bill France chose to absorb the losses at the gate in return for the international prestige.

I was in those races, and I actually looked forward to Daytona—especially when I got to drive a Ferrari for NART (Luigi Chinetti's North American Racing Team). True, every stint involved some lurid moment on the banking, and if you weren't on the banking you were scrabbling through the tight, utterly featureless corners of the infield portion of the lap, but it was a chance to race the top European Formula 1 drivers, who in those days also participated in sports car racing. Jackie Ickx, Pedro Rodríguez, Jo Siffert, Chris Amon, Lorenzo Bandini—these men were heroes to me, and somehow the suffering imposed by Daytona helped forge a bond with them, a sort of Brotherhood of the Banking.

Porsche 907, photo courtesy of Road and Track

The epoch of the big 5-liter 917s and 512s ended with the 1971 season. The 1972 race, shortened to six hours, went to Ferrari's trim 3-liter sports racer—the last time the Ferrari factory would contest the race. The following year, 1973, saw a motley collection of sports racers upset by Peter Gregg's Porsche 911 RSR, which looked little different from the production 911s upon which it was based. Gregg was a brilliant but tightly wound Harvard grad who raced under the colors of Brumos Porsche, a dealership just up the road in Jacksonville. Peter's contacts at Weissach kept him a step ahead of the rest, but after the mighty prototypes and their swarms of engineers and mechanics, it was a letdown to see Daytona won by a car that looked as if it had just come from the showroom floor. Gregg's first victory was with Hurley Haywood, who would become the only driver to win Daytona five times. But it was Gregg, with four wins in five starts (including one for BMW), who defined an era—which ended with his suicide in 1980.

Through the 1980s, Porsche was the backbone of the race, and Daytona's prestige revived step by step as the German manufacturer supplied its many customers with ever faster cars—first the 935 and its derivatives, finally the superb Group C 962s, which were identical to the cars that were winning Le Mans. European aces such as Martin Brundle, Brian Redman and Rolf Stommelen filtered in along with Indy winners A.J. Foyt and Al Unser Jr. When Porsche finally had its fill of success, wins began going to such industry heavyweights as Jaguar, Nissan and Toyota, giving the race in the 1990s its second golden age. But only the factory-supported teams had a chance—the private teams were being driven out of the sport.

Dan Gurney's Eagle, photo courtesy of Road and Track

In 1999, the pressure for change was compelling enough to produce two new series, each backed by a man of great wealth and imagination. The American Le Mans Series, created by the inventor Don Panoz, established close ties with the French and adopted their rules. The other, sanctioned by the Grand American Road Racing Association, was the brainchild of Jim France. Jim was Bill France's son and part of the family's NASCAR dynasty, but he had a rogue gene: a passion for road racing. In 2000, Grand-Am took over Daytona's 24-hour classic and made it their marquee event. Both Panoz and France offered racing for prototypes and GT, but each took a different approach. Panoz's was caviar and champagne, while France's was burgers and beer.

Grand-Am promised NASCAR-style rules stability and rigid cost control—for example, no factory teams permitted and no in-season testing. The year 2003 saw the introduction of Daytona Prototype, a class with rules as tight as a spec series but open to a wide variety of engines, including Pontiac, Chevrolet, Lexus, Porsche and BMW. There were several chassis builders, too, of which Riley would become the most successful, winning at Daytona the last seven years. For safety and a better view of the banking, the rules mandated a bulbous greenhouse—and the big windshield, awkwardly mated to flat sides and a stubby nose, made for what most people agreed were ugly cars. But beauty is in the eye of the car owner, and the Daytona Prototype—and the prestigious series sponsor, Rolex, that went with it—was an attractive package. By 2006, 30 prototypes were on the grid for what was now called the Rolex 24. The GT cars did more than just fill out the fields; at first they were—embarrassingly—as fast as the new prototypes, forcing the organizers to invert the grid so as to have the prototypes up front at the start. A now-iconic Porsche 911 scored an upset victory, recalling the first win for Gregg and Haywood, exactly 30 years before.

Dale Earnhardt's Corvette, photo courtesy of Road and Track

Back in the 1960s and '70s, teams consisted of two drivers; today, in both GT and prototype classes, four drivers is the norm: the team's two regulars plus a big name NASCAR hero such as Jimmie Johnson or Jeff Gordon...or an Indy winner like Sam Hornish Jr. or Dario Franchitti—and there's still a spot open for a guy who pays big bucks for his ride. In 1997, the Rob Dyson entry set some kind of record when they won using seven drivers—I understand they were lining up spectators for a turn at the wheel when, mercifully, the race ended. (Just kidding, Rob.) Chip Ganassi's cars have won four times, including 2011 with Joey Hand, Graham Rahal, Memo Rojas and Scott Pruett—a formidable quartet, as good as any at Le Mans. The win was Scott's fourth; another and he'll tie Haywood.

The next generation of the Daytona Prototype, dubbed DPG3, will go into action at the 2012 Rolex. Their bodies will be allowed to have what is being called "brand character." For example: Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty run a Chevrolet engine, and under the new rules they will be allowed to have a body that suggests a Corvette. I have seen some artists' renderings of the new look, and it's good.

Daytona at night, photo courtesy of Road and Track

Also in the works is a series-within-the-series. The idea is to link Daytona to shorter events at Indianapolis (over the weekend of the Brickyard 400) and Watkins Glen (a France-owned track), re-creating—after 40 years—a second Triple Crown, complete with its own prize money and points system. Instead of Daytona-Sebring-Le Mans, it will be Daytona-Indy-The Glen. Exciting? I think so.

The heart of the new Triple Crown will, of course, be Daytona, now entering its second half-century and well into its third golden era. A chicane near the end of the long back straight was intended to reduce the risk on the banking, but it seems Daytona's essential character never changes: The curbing is temporary (so it can be removed for NASCAR races), and slower cars drop their wheels over it, scattering gravel into the racing line, leaving the drivers of the faster cars to wonder if they may have a slow puncture on their hands. As John Andretti, who won in 1989, put it: "They just replaced one hazard with another."

When I think of Daytona, I think of a race that extracts a toll on anyone who enters it, a race in which winning has never come easily. It seems oddly appropriate, then, that Dan Gurney won the first race by coasting silently across the line.

As you may know, the Rolex 24 at Daytona will be run this weekend, January 26th-27th, which with the running of the Daytona 500 the week before, signals the start of Motor Racing Season.  We here at l’art et l’automobile have been waiting as patiently as possible for racing season to start again, which admittedly has not been very patient, and Formula E just isn’t cutting it. That’s why we’re celebrating the beginning of the Racing Season, and in order to extend our celebrations to you, we have gathered all of our Daytona and Endurance Racing Artwork, Collectibles and Memorabilia and are presenting them to you. Please head over to our website and tour the Gallery and perhaps you can find an item that will assist in your celebration of the beginning of the Motorsports Season.

Enjoy the race and the season,

Jacques Vaucher

Remember we have a wide variety of items in our gallery, so do not hesitate to contact us if you are looking for something in particular.

And as always, be sure to Like and Share on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, share a photo on Instagram and read our Newsfeed.

Spray It Again Dan

Dan Gurney’s 1967 Champagne Week

story and photos by Eoin Young, edited by James Karthauser

It was a Champagne week for Daniel Sexton Gurney back in mid-summer 1967, when he won the Le Mans 24-hours for Ford one Sunday and was a winner again the next weekend when he took the laurels in the Belgian Grand Prix in his own Eagle.

Dan Gurney prepares a surprise for the audience that would go on to unexpectedly start a tradition.
Photo Courtesy of Dyler.com

Dan Gurney was the first driver to spray the champers about rather than swigging it after he and A.J. Foyt had won at Le Mans. “I was so stoked that when they handed me the magnum of Moët I shook the bottle and began spraying at the photographers, drivers, Henry Ford II, Carroll Shelby and their wives. It was a very special moment.” Gurney made Champagne history when he sprayed the bubbly and the moment was captured on a special ‘Spray it Again, Dan’ fan poster.

This classic moment was memorialized in this beautiful poster, 'Spray it Again Dan,'
available at arteauto.com

“What I did with the Champagne was totally spontaneous. I had no idea it would start a tradition. I was beyond caring and just got caught up in the moment. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime occasions where things turned out perfectly...I thought this hard-fought victory needed something special.” “LIFE” photographer Flip Schulke, was a popular chap on the racing scene and Dan had hauled him up on to the stage before he started spraying the Champagne. “I took one photo and then ducked,” Schulke recalled. “When it was over Dan handed me the empty bottle and autographed it.

AJ Foyt (right) and Dan Gurney (left) on victory stand.
Photo Courtesy of Ford Archive

That original Moët Champagne bottle is now in pride of place in the conference room at All American Racers headquarters. Schulke had converted it to a table lamp and used it in his Florida home for 30 years before returning it to Gurney with the comment “You did it...you should have it!” Dan and Evi removed the lampshade, took the electrics out, and had a special glass case made to preserve the famous bottle.

Ford Mk IV winning at Le Mans 1967.  Photo Courtesy of All American Racers

Gurney and Foyt drove their way into Le Mans history with the red 7-litre Mk IV Ford, specially modified with a bump on the roof to accommodate the lanky Dan. They raised the race record by 10mph to 135mph average for the 24 hours, covering a total of 3,250 miles. It was also the first time that an American car and driver combination had won at Le Mans.

Dan Gurney takes the chequer to win the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa in 1967 in his Eagle-Westlake V12. 

Photo Courtesy of All American Racers

Dan won at Spa in his own 3-litre V12 Eagle- Weslake. The 3-litre Cosworth-Ford V8s had arrived to win first time out at Zandvoort in Jim Clark’s works Lotus 49, and the two new cars bracketed the Eagle on the front row at Spa. Clark stormed into an immediate lead with Jackie Stewart second in the unloved H16 BRM with Gurney third. Gurney was moving in on Stewart when Clark pitted with a blown spark plug and Gurney also stopped to warn of fluctuating fuel pressure but there was nothing the crew could do so he was sent back out, now in second place, 16sec behind Stewart. Dan was now in attack mode, lowering the lap record as he chased down Stewart and went into the lead with seven laps left.

It was Moët that Dan sprayed in those days and it was Moët that was presented at races thereafter on a gratis basis, Moët et Chandon presumably figuring that giving their bubbles free was financial involvement enough. But Bernie Ecclestone decided that ‘free’ was a word with which he was uncomfortable. He put the naming rights for the official alcoholic fizz in Formula 1 up for bids, and G.H. Mumm won.

Dan Guarney at speed on the way to winning the
Belgian Grand Prix at Spa.  Photo Courtesy of
All American Racers

Dan might have been the first racer to spray the bubbly after a race win, but G.H. Mumm Champagne had arrived in motor racing eighty years earlier when Raymond Mays christened his Brescia Bugatti Cordon Rouge.

Mays had been winning sprints and hillclimbs with the elegant lightweight Type 13 Bugattis that were in production from 1910 to 1926. In the 1930s Mays would create the ERA (English Racing Automobiles) racing marque and in the late 1940s he was the man behind BRM (British Racing Motors). The first BRM was a screaming 1500cc V16 which sounded far better than its racing record would read but a BRM would win the 1962 World Championship in the hands of Graham Hill. Gurney had a dismal summer with BRM in 1960 with a best result of 10th at Silverstone.

In a 1973 interview, Mays told me the story about dining with his engineer friend, Amherst Villiers, in a London restaurant in 1923 when a Champagne label caught his eye. “I had just won a speed trial in the Bugatti and we were celebrating over dinner with a bottle of Champagne. It occurred to me that the striking red and gold Cordon Rouge label on the bottle was just what I needed as a racing name for my Bugatti, and I suppose that was really where sponsorship in racing started.” At the time of the interview, Mays was 73 and still active as Director of Racing for the Marlboro-BRM team.

That night in 1923, Mays asked the waiter if he could steam the label off the bottle as a guide for the name to be painted on the bonnet of his Bugatti and he wrote to the head office of the G.H. Mumm Champagne company, makers of Cordon Rouge in Reims, asking for their permission for him to borrow their brand name for his French racing car. The company replied immediately, delighted with the idea, and despatched three cases of Champagne to toast their new association with success.

Pleased with this double result from the bubbly company, Mays wrote to the makers of Cordon Bleu Cognac but while he received permission to use the name on his ‘other’ Brescia, he was never offered any brandy!

In fact this was inadvertently a first venture into the world of commercial sponsorship in motorsport that has led to the wheel turning full circle. Cordon Rouge Champagne is now the official bubby in Grand Prix racing for presentation and spraying on the Formula 1 rostrums.

Tom Wheatcroft arranged with Raymond Mays to open his motor racing museum at Donington Park in 1974, linking with the UK importers of G.H. Mumm Champagne – half a century after Mays ‘discovered’ the label – and the bubbles started spraying in vintage racing circles with a replica of a Brescia Bugatti used in major store promotions. A special Cordon Rouge Classic Bugatti hillclimb was held by the Bugatti Owners’ Club at Prescott on June 2, 1974 and the winner at six vintage meetings during the summer was presented with a Jereboam of Cordon Rouge and each finisher received a bottle.

Cordon Rouge Champagne had already been the toast of society for half a century when Mays, the young Cambridge graduate made racing history by being the first to carry what amounted to a commercial sponsor’s name on his racing car. That the ‘sponsor’ was a top Champagne company only added to the flair of Mays’ talent as a racing driver. With ‘Cordon Rouge’ he was to dominate speed trials and hillclimbs all over England during the summer of 1924.

Mays, the son of a prominent wool brokerage family from Bourne, Lincolnshire, leapt to prominence in speed events in 1921, while still at Cambridge. He drove a speed model Hillman in those days and had such instant success that he invested everything in a new Brescia Bugatti for the 1922 season. Once again he excelled and during 1923 the Bugatti was run in much modified trim. The speed and engineering so impressed Ettore Bugatti that Mays was provided with a second Brescia for the season of 1924, thus providing him with the need to differentiate between his two Bugattis.

Raymond Mays in the Cordon Rouge Brescia Bugatti.
 Photo Courtesy of All American Racers

The Brescia was a 1500cc 16-valve 4-cylinder sporting car, the competition models being Type 13s in the Bugatti numbering system. They won the voiturette race at Brescia in 1921 to earn the title and Mays made his debut with his Brescia at the Laindon hillclimb, facing Leon Cushman and Eddie Hall in similar cars and placed second in his class. By the end of the 1922 season Mays and the striking blue-grey Bugatti had become extremely competitive. During the winter of 1922-23 Mays began a modification programme on the Bugatti working with Amherst Villiers, a brilliant engineering friend from Cambridge days. Mays wanted a ‘super hillclimb car’ and Villiers designed new pistons and camshaft and made other modifications to boost the Bugatti’s engine from a rev limit of 4300rpm to over 6000rpm – an almost unheard of figure in those days. Running specially-brewed RD2 alcohol fuel – it cost over six shillings a gallon in those days which was regarded as insanely expensive – Mays found that he had the super-car he wanted, but there were development problems with bearings.

Villiers was also an accomplished painter having produced portraits of subjects as diverse as Graham Hill and James Bond creator, Ian Fleming. It was Villiers who designed a fictional car to the fit the role of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which Fleming was using as the theme for a children’s book. His painting of Mays at speed in the Brescia Bugatti was used by G.H. Mumm in a presentation and a poster for the Prescott Hillclimb that summer.

M. Lefrere in Bugatti’s London agency, was most impressed and at the Show he gave Mays a personal letter of introduction to Le Patron, Ettore Bugatti. Bugatti invited the young Englishman to the Molsheim factory, emphasising that he bring his Brescia with him.

Mays senior was delighted at his son’s newfound success and financed the trip to Molsheim, taking the modified car for Bugatti’s inspection. Ettore stood worked long and hard on the cars, Mays helping on evenings away from the wool business. Bleu was potentially faster than Rouge with its later engine, but it mixed success with misfortune, winning at South Harting and throwing a rear wheel at Caerphilly. After this hair-raising ‘moment’ the car was set aside for axle shaft changes, while Rouge howled from strength to strength, winning all over the country.

Dan Gurney with the original Moët bottle
in the All American Racers’ boardroom.

The Brescia Bugattis finally ran out of hours and engines and Mays moved on but he had brought Champagne and sponsorship to motor racing, making history as he did so. Dan Gurney might have been the first driver to spray the crowd after a race win in 1967, but Bernie Ecclestone made an extra little bit of history, whether he realised it or not, by bringing Cordon Rouge back into the motorsport winner’s circle!

We here at l'art et l'automobile hope that your holiday season has been filled with laughter and joy, and if you're of the particular frame of mind, filled with champaign toasts and the occasional dousing.  We hope you have enjoyed this little taste of Racing History, and that your spirits rise like the bubbles from the champaign flutes.

We also wish to toast Dan Gurney, who's accomplishments and exploits have not only gone down in racing history, but who's jovial spirit and gleeful nature have given us a much lauded tradition that racers still honor and celebrate to this day.

Cheers to Dan and Cheers to you this holiday season!

Jacques Vaucher

Remember we have a wide variety of items in our gallery, so do not hesitate to contact us if you are looking for something in particular.

And as always, be sure to Like and Share on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, share a photo on Instagram and read our Newsfeed.