Nope, died just recently.
-----Original Message-----
From: N197TR4@cs.com [mailto:N197TR4@cs.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2001 3:22 PM
To: rocky@tri.net; Bill Babcock
Cc: fot@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: Justification for cheating
Smokey spoke at a SVRA event at Mid-Ohio several years ago...perhaps 1992.
He was obviously quite a character...he said he never had anything good to
say about Champion sparkplugs....until he became a spokesman for them. His
hearing was gone and had to have questions relayed to him at the
mike...but
clearly the sparkle was in his eyes when he spoke of "fuel in the roll
cage"
tubing and other creative ploys.
Is he still alive?
Last year I did a story on Vic Edelbrock and some of his vintage cars.
Among
them, the Smokey Yunick "cheater" Camaro for Trans-Am. Park it alongside a
legal (i.e. Penske) Camaro of late '60s vintage and the differences become
obvious.
Thing is, in vintage/historic events, Edelbrock runs it in its full
cheater
configuration because, historically, that was what the car was! The point
of
vintage is not really to win races or even see who has the fastest car,
but
to exercise cars from the era on the track and if they have some history
all
the better. Yunick's car definitely has history, so it is appropriate that
it run in the configuration in which it made that history.
It should be noted that, according to Edelbrock, Yunick really set the car
up for record runs on the Salt Flats, and AFAIK it never actually raced
Trans-Am in that configuration, but it did show up for a Riverside
Trans-Am
test day once and rather embarrassed all the others that day. Of course,
if
you know anything about Smokey, you know he loved the stir it caused.
--Rocky Entriken
|