65 replies to this topic

[Michael Oliver]

Not much. Actually Allen said all I know and more. Wooley was a marginal player in the area in the '60s. By that I mean that he was never a front runner, nor was seen much. Just a weekend warrior, said in a non-disparaging way, as a lot of racers fall into that category. I was at the Regional at Wilmot Hills that he won in May, 1967, but did not have my camera with me that day and remember little, if anything, about him or his car. I seem to recall that the Cooper was a late 1950s model, not a newer car. Perhaps a T-45?

I thought I shot a lot of film back in those days, but apparently not enough!

Tom

Tom

I will be the first to hold my hands up and say I couldn't tell the different Coopers apart but I remembered I had seen a curious image of a Cooper which looked as if it might have been a F1 car. Do you know who this is?:

http://www.classicvi...-1086-full.html

The wheels are the same as the ones on the Indy Cooper of 1961 but it otherwise looks to my untrained eye like a T53 lowline...

Any ideas?

Michael

[D-Type]

Wheels like the 1961 Indy Cooper. Could this be the back up car, the one that went to Hap Sharp and ended up in the Indianapolis museum?

[RA Historian]

I will be the first to hold my hands up and say I couldn't tell the different Coopers apart but I remembered I had seen a curious image of a Cooper which looked as if it might have been a F1 car. Do you know who this is?:

http://www.classicvi...-1086-full.html

The wheels are the same as the ones on the Indy Cooper of 1961 but it otherwise looks to my untrained eye like a T53 lowline...

Any ideas?

Michael

Wheels like the 1961 Indy Cooper. Could this be the back up car, the one that went to Hap Sharp and ended up in the Indianapolis museum?

That it is. Hap Sharp bought the backup T-53 to the main T-54 entry at the '61 500. Sharp then ran the car twice at Road America, as pictured, as an exhibition entry in the F-Jr. race. I saw it run at the 1961 June Sprints, turning 2:36 laps when the track record was 2:41 by Augie Pabst in a Scarab. Hap had his fun, then withdrew before the end of the race to allow the Junior runners to have their race without further distraction.
Tom

[RA Historian]

Tom did you see any records indicating the entry of a DeTomaso formula A 1966?

No. I went to the SCCA records of the '66 Runoffs this PM, and no DeTomaso is listed in the results.
Tom

[Quixotic]

Ahhhhhh so it had a little V8 then

[TEDD]

Wow....... would have handled like a roller skate......... It would be worth more as a F5000, but if it has the history, I'd love to see someone restore it as a Junior.

I found an old ad of the car with the V8, wing and wide wheels still in place
http://www.racecar20...w-ad-22757.html

[Michael Oliver]

No. I went to the SCCA records of the '66 Runoffs this PM, and no DeTomaso is listed in the results.
Tom

Tom, Duncan, many thanks for clearing that one up, so not the man we were looking for. It was odd because I was only looking through Ron Nelson's archive the other day and I just remembered seeing an out of place Cooper F1 car (it is filed within the Elva folder and amid lots of Formula Junior photos, the reason for which is now explained by Tom's post) and I just wondered if it could have been Mr Wooley... Did Hap Sharp always run in that silvery-looking helmet? I have a photo of a Lotus 23 entered for Dave Morgan and Hap Sharp in the 1963 Road America 500 and the driver has a silver helmet, maybe this is Sharp as well? It is also on Ron's site, again under Elva, IIRC. If you'd like to see, I'll post a link.

Just going ever so slightly further OT, Tom, where are these SCCA records you speak of? I have only ever come across a pdf of winners in each class each year, is there more available online or do you have to physically go along to somewhere to look at an archive?

Michael

[Lee Nicolle]

I found an old ad of the car with the V8, wing and wide wheels still in place
http://www.racecar20...w-ad-22757.html

Unfortunatly bocked to me in Oz

[Allen Brown]

Just going ever so slightly further OT, Tom, where are these SCCA records you speak of? I have only ever come across a pdf of winners in each class each year, is there more available online or do you have to physically go along to somewhere to look at an archive?

Michael

Michael, are you aware of the archive that Nick England has put together?
http://virhistory.co.../arrc/index.htm

Allen

[SJ Lambert]

I've got an entry sheet for a meeting at Cumberland on May 12, 1968 - there was one Formula A car entered in a 16 car field (the rest were Bs and Cs) - a Scimitar driven by Steven Durst from Pennsylvania - don't know what it was powered by.

[Allen Brown]

I've got an entry sheet for a meeting at Cumberland on May 12, 1968 - there was one Formula A car entered in a 16 car field (the rest were Bs and Cs) - a Scimitar driven by Steven Durst from Pennsylvania - don't know what it was powered by.

Could I get a scan of that entry list? (allen@oldracingcars.com).

Durst drove a "Vulcan" in 1968, a Formula A car he'd commissioned himself and about which I know next to nothing. Maybe Scimitar was the name he was planning to use. This race was about six weeks earlier than the firs race that I knew about for a Vulcan.

[RA Historian]

Just going ever so slightly further OT, Tom, where are these SCCA records you speak of? I have only ever come across a pdf of winners in each class each year, is there more available online or do you have to physically go along to somewhere to look at an archive?

Michael

Michael, are you aware of the archive that Nick England has put together?
http://virhistory.co.../arrc/index.htm

Allen

That is it. I got a huge digital file from SCCA a couple years ago when I was in Topeka for the Runoffs. Downloaded the whole thing onto a flash drive which I then transferred to my hard drive backup here at home. Clicking on a couple pages on Nick England's work, it appears to be the same data, but my file goes all the way to 2005 or so.

Tom

Edited by RA Historian, 23 January 2011 - 19:12.

[RA Historian]

. It was odd because I was only looking through Ron Nelson's archive the other day and I just remembered seeing an out of place Cooper F1 car (it is filed within the Elva folder and amid lots of Formula Junior photos, the reason for which is now explained by Tom's post) and I just wondered if it could have been Mr Wooley... Did Hap Sharp always run in that silvery-looking helmet? I have a photo of a Lotus 23 entered for Dave Morgan and Hap Sharp in the 1963 Road America 500 and the driver has a silver helmet, maybe this is Sharp as well? It is also on Ron's site, again under Elva,

Michael

Sharp was a regular at Road America in the early 1960s. His preferred number was 95, until he began running the second Chaparral 2 for Hall in 1964. He ran the June Sprints in his Cooper-Maserati, a Ferrari California, a Cooper T-53 (twice, subject of these recent posts), Cooper T-57 Monaco, and Chaparral 2. He also ran in the 500 in those years, Cooper T-57, Chaparral 1, with Dave Morgan in Morgan's Lotus 23, Corvette Grand Sport, and Chaparral 2. Sharp ran with a silver helmet occasionally, as well as a white one.

Sharp must have liked Wisconsin, since after his driving career he spent a few years playing polo for the Milwaukee Polo Club.

Tom

[Michael Oliver]

Michael, are you aware of the archive that Nick England has put together?
http://virhistory.co.../arrc/index.htm

Allen

Allen, yes I am, although I have to confess I wasn't thinking about them when I wrote my post! The SCCA doc I am talking about is a pdf about 1,000 pages long which had, if I remember correctly, every divisional champion in every class in every region from day 1 to present day - I think! I can't lay my hands on it right, must be on another hard drive...

Tom seemed to allude to some SCCA records somewhere, that was what got my attention...bu't I've always understood that there wasn't much available. OK, actually while I was writing this, Tom has answered my question, so it appears to be the same data.

To get back onto topic, wasn't the Kincraft one of the earliest examples in the UK of what became Formula A/Formula 5000?

Michael

Edited by Michael Oliver, 23 January 2011 - 19:31.

[E1pix]

Allen, yes I am, although I have to confess I wasn't thinking about them when I wrote my post! The SCCA doc I am talking about is a pdf about 1,000 pages long which had, if I remember correctly, every divisional champion in every class in every region from day 1 to present day - I think! I can't lay my hands on it right, must be on another hard drive...

Tom seemed to allude to some SCCA records somewhere, that was what got my attention...bu't I've always understood that there wasn't much available.

Michael

I would LOVE to see that document!

[Michael Oliver]

I would LOVE to see that document!

OK, before you all get too excited, I have a feeling I am mixing up two documents:

This is one of them, which provides a list of all of the Midwest division champions in each class since 1963:

http://www.midiv.org...NATL_CHAMPS.pdf

Then the other document I am thinking of is a roughly 1,000-page long alphabetically-sorted pdf listing the drivers who have appeared in, I think it was, the SCCA run-offs over the years and their results. I know I saved it somewhere but can't recall just where at the moment and I don't have time to look, sorry. It came up via some obscure search method and when I tried to find it (it was in four parts) on the SCCA website I don't think I could, to the point where I ended up having to guess what the URL of the other three sections was going to be and, by trial and error, I managed to locate them! Just can't find them in my own filing system now...