The "Best Damned Garage in Town" - yes, it really was called that! - was based on Beach St in Daytona Beach, set up in 1947 by a man who became pretty legendary in US race car circles. His name was Henry Yunick but he generally when by his nickname of Smokey, a name he got from the motorcycle he raced at age 16 which had a tendency to smoke quite badly. He was born, according to his birth certificate, on May 25th 1923, but there was some doubt over the accuracy of that. As he himself once said in an interview "Actually, I don’t know my real name, I think I know what my right age is. I operate off a birth certificate I got from a priest in Philadelphia. At that time, I was 16, and they said, ‘Your name is Henry, Howard or Gregory, take your pick.’ We decided my name was Henry, and we decided my birthday was May 25, and I decided I was born in 1923, and that’s what I used ever since."
Being in Daytona in '47 meant that he got involved in NASCAR just as it was starting out under Bill France Sr. From '56 to '58, some of NASCAR's best drivers were in cars owned by Smokey - Tim Flock, Paul Goldsmith, Herb Thomas, Ralph Moody, Curtis Turner, Cotton Owens....giants from the early years of stock car racing in the US. He also fielded cars in the Indy 500 between '58 and '75, taking a win in 1960 with Paul Goldsmith driving.
Smokey had an 'interesting' relationship with the scrutineers and rulemakers in NASCAR - he worked hard on getting around the rulebook, doing stuff that was quickly made illegal but at the time of racing was merely exploiting a loophole. Some of the stuff he did was particularly clever - he once built a 7/8ths scale Chevrolet Chevelle that had the inspectors tearing their hair out. Templates were brought in after that incident to make sure the car bodies fit exactly!
Another story - one year at Daytona, a car that Smokey had built was getting much better fuel mileage than anyone else. NASCAR called him in, and had the insepctors go over the car. On being informed that his car had a number of violations of the rules (stories range from 7 to 17, most I've seen and heard agree on 17 so I tend to go with that), Smokey got in, fired it up and said "Make it 18". Nothing unusual about that? Well, the fuel tank was disconnected when he fired the engine up.....
He'd put in very long fuel lines that were coiled up, they apparently could hold a lot of fuel, increasing the car's fuel capacity by about 5 gallons (tank was 22 I believe). Another trick along similar lines involved sticking a basketball in the fuel tank which could be inflated when the capacity was checked, and deflated for for the race to get more fuel in.
Not all of his tricks were that far outside the rulebook. In '62, Smokey prepared a Pontiac Catalina for "Fireball" Roberts to run at Daytona. All the other teams started protesting when the car went out onto the track with the inner wings still intact (teams generally cut them out to avoid tyre rubbing under heavy loading in the corners, does increase drag but generally worth it). Smokey pointed out that the rules said you could cut them out if you wanted to, and he didn't want to. Fireball made the first 150mph average lap ever at Daytona thanks to the lower drag, and brought the car back into the pits. Smokey then proceeded to cut the inner wings out! Again, the teams protested, and Smokey pointed out that the rulebook didn't say when he could cut them out if he wanted to do so.....he also pointed out that he hadn't even been using the good engine in his car! It completely psyched out the field, and Fireball won the race. He also used innovations such as an offset chassis (for better weight distribution on the oval tracks), roof spoilers to reduce lift, raised floors to get the cars lower to the ground and even nitrous oxide injection on at least one occasion. In his autobiography he noted that "All those other guys were cheatin' ten times worse than us, so it was just self-defense".
Fireball died in a crash at Charlotte in '64, and following a few more bad accidents Smokey fell out with Bill France Sr over safety matters. He pushed time and time again for advanced, including deformable walls rather than the concrete used at most oval tracks until recently. NASCAR only began to push for those after Dale Earnhardt's death in 2001 at Daytona. Smokey stopped fielding cars in NASCAR from 1970 onwards.
He also built a car for the Trans Am series, a '68 Camaro. In typical Smokey fashion, this was heavily modified. Acid-dipped panels and thinner glass to reduce weight, the front end was tilted downward slightly and the windscreen also laid back slightly for an aerodynamic improvement, and the front subframe and floorpan modified to allow the car to run lower to the ground. He ran a connection to the engine oil system from inside the cockpit to allow the driver to top it up in the pits, and to give the driver a bit more room to move in the car the shoulder harness was adapted to include a cable-ratchet system, taken from the harness off a military helicopter....
Outside of racing, his engineering interests led him to design all manner of things including variable-ratio power steering, a high-efficiency adiabatic engine, a number of engine testing devices and spark plugs with an extended tip. He designed a deformable wall for NASCAR that France Sr refused to consider (which would probably have saved Earnhardt and many other drivers over the years, but sometimes events like that have to happen in order to push through advances). During his lifetime he was granted twelve patents, and he experimented with synthetic oils and various alternative energy sources (such as hydrogen, solar power, wind power and natural gas). Smokey closed his garage in '87, claiming there were no more good mechanics left.
Some choice quotes from the man himself:
Smokey Yunick died of leukemia on May 9th 2001. The thread here about motorsport punishing the innovators got me thinking about him. We will probably never see someone like him in motorsport again - he was never really formally trained in such matters, but he had such an intuitive grasp of aerodynamics and engines, plus he had that ability to find ways around the rulebook that no-one else had considered!
The sport has become infinitely poorer without men like him around.
Being in Daytona in '47 meant that he got involved in NASCAR just as it was starting out under Bill France Sr. From '56 to '58, some of NASCAR's best drivers were in cars owned by Smokey - Tim Flock, Paul Goldsmith, Herb Thomas, Ralph Moody, Curtis Turner, Cotton Owens....giants from the early years of stock car racing in the US. He also fielded cars in the Indy 500 between '58 and '75, taking a win in 1960 with Paul Goldsmith driving.
Smokey had an 'interesting' relationship with the scrutineers and rulemakers in NASCAR - he worked hard on getting around the rulebook, doing stuff that was quickly made illegal but at the time of racing was merely exploiting a loophole. Some of the stuff he did was particularly clever - he once built a 7/8ths scale Chevrolet Chevelle that had the inspectors tearing their hair out. Templates were brought in after that incident to make sure the car bodies fit exactly!
Another story - one year at Daytona, a car that Smokey had built was getting much better fuel mileage than anyone else. NASCAR called him in, and had the insepctors go over the car. On being informed that his car had a number of violations of the rules (stories range from 7 to 17, most I've seen and heard agree on 17 so I tend to go with that), Smokey got in, fired it up and said "Make it 18". Nothing unusual about that? Well, the fuel tank was disconnected when he fired the engine up.....
He'd put in very long fuel lines that were coiled up, they apparently could hold a lot of fuel, increasing the car's fuel capacity by about 5 gallons (tank was 22 I believe). Another trick along similar lines involved sticking a basketball in the fuel tank which could be inflated when the capacity was checked, and deflated for for the race to get more fuel in.
Not all of his tricks were that far outside the rulebook. In '62, Smokey prepared a Pontiac Catalina for "Fireball" Roberts to run at Daytona. All the other teams started protesting when the car went out onto the track with the inner wings still intact (teams generally cut them out to avoid tyre rubbing under heavy loading in the corners, does increase drag but generally worth it). Smokey pointed out that the rules said you could cut them out if you wanted to, and he didn't want to. Fireball made the first 150mph average lap ever at Daytona thanks to the lower drag, and brought the car back into the pits. Smokey then proceeded to cut the inner wings out! Again, the teams protested, and Smokey pointed out that the rulebook didn't say when he could cut them out if he wanted to do so.....he also pointed out that he hadn't even been using the good engine in his car! It completely psyched out the field, and Fireball won the race. He also used innovations such as an offset chassis (for better weight distribution on the oval tracks), roof spoilers to reduce lift, raised floors to get the cars lower to the ground and even nitrous oxide injection on at least one occasion. In his autobiography he noted that "All those other guys were cheatin' ten times worse than us, so it was just self-defense".
Fireball died in a crash at Charlotte in '64, and following a few more bad accidents Smokey fell out with Bill France Sr over safety matters. He pushed time and time again for advanced, including deformable walls rather than the concrete used at most oval tracks until recently. NASCAR only began to push for those after Dale Earnhardt's death in 2001 at Daytona. Smokey stopped fielding cars in NASCAR from 1970 onwards.
He also built a car for the Trans Am series, a '68 Camaro. In typical Smokey fashion, this was heavily modified. Acid-dipped panels and thinner glass to reduce weight, the front end was tilted downward slightly and the windscreen also laid back slightly for an aerodynamic improvement, and the front subframe and floorpan modified to allow the car to run lower to the ground. He ran a connection to the engine oil system from inside the cockpit to allow the driver to top it up in the pits, and to give the driver a bit more room to move in the car the shoulder harness was adapted to include a cable-ratchet system, taken from the harness off a military helicopter....
Outside of racing, his engineering interests led him to design all manner of things including variable-ratio power steering, a high-efficiency adiabatic engine, a number of engine testing devices and spark plugs with an extended tip. He designed a deformable wall for NASCAR that France Sr refused to consider (which would probably have saved Earnhardt and many other drivers over the years, but sometimes events like that have to happen in order to push through advances). During his lifetime he was granted twelve patents, and he experimented with synthetic oils and various alternative energy sources (such as hydrogen, solar power, wind power and natural gas). Smokey closed his garage in '87, claiming there were no more good mechanics left.
Some choice quotes from the man himself:
- on the concrete walls installed at Indy when the stock cars went there for the first time. Sadly enough, the man was entirely correct, but the sport caught up with his way of thinking eventually.
- on the black art of getting around the rulebook that he was so good at.
- more on the same subject.
Smokey Yunick died of leukemia on May 9th 2001. The thread here about motorsport punishing the innovators got me thinking about him. We will probably never see someone like him in motorsport again - he was never really formally trained in such matters, but he had such an intuitive grasp of aerodynamics and engines, plus he had that ability to find ways around the rulebook that no-one else had considered!
The sport has become infinitely poorer without men like him around.
