August 27, 2025 • 44 mins
NASCAR has a history built on lawbreakers and innovation. That had to come from somewhere, and that's always going to come from the characters that have been part of the series from day 1. Join us this week as Sean takes us through the story of 3 of NASCAR's greatest kooks, the weird and wacky characters with their insane ideas and stories that helped to shape NASCAR to what it is today. Find the video version on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@CheekyTalesPod
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
In the1920s and 30s, Daytona Beach,
Florida became the capitalof the Speed world,
with two long straights,one on sand and one on road,
connected by two deeplyrutted sandy corners.
15 different landspeed records were set there.
With the repeal of prohibition,
Moonshine runnersneeded a reason
to drive their hot rodsand racing was the way to go.
NASCAR was formed in Daytonaand is now the USA's
(00:23):
most popular racing series.
And even though the tracksare simple, no offense to them,
the characters behindthe cars are far from plain.
Join me as I take us throughthree of NASCAR's wackiest
characters here on Cheeky Tales.
(00:49):
I don't.
I don't.What do I do with my hands?
I don't know what to dowith my hands.
Cheeky verse.
If you haven't listenedto Aaron's Prohibition episode,
go back and listen to thatbefore this one
becauseyou're going to get some.
It's a subtle link.
Yeah, there's a link.It's like I was in a spaceship.
Oh. Real fast.
Welcome to this week'sepisode. Hey.
Hey. Yeah.
(01:09):
How many tellI got a not references.
Are we going to get so many?
Yeah.
Maybe if you just one of the,
like, two of the charactersare pretty yokel.
Which fit the Talladega Nights.
Actually,not all three of them are sweet.
Sweet. Baby Jesus.
I'm your host this week.
I'm your host this week, Sean.
These two are as distractingas always.
My ever popular co-hosts,John and Aaron.
(01:29):
I'm Aaron.
Oh, he's actually said something
that's not a direct quotefrom the movie. From the movie?
Talking quote.
Yeah.
So you try to think aboutwhat else?
Yeah.So welcome back to this week's.
This fortnight's episode three.
You're doing a, Charactersof characters of NASCAR.
Yeah. Let's startwith NASCAR characters.
(01:50):
I seen, highlights from Shanevan Gisbergen.
Yeah, he'scurrently driving. The gears.
Because. Yeah, I. Mean,when he's on fake NASCAR.
Tracks, onesthat aren't just left hand.
Yeah, yeah.
There is such a complaintthis year.
All right, we're gonna getinto a bit of NASCAR.
That's okay.
The Americanscan't say his name.
Have you seen near the car?Have you seen the clips?
(02:12):
To Joburg.
I can't say van Gisbergen.
It's like they can't get it.
It's working. It's so funny.
It's not. Hard. It'snot a very difficult working.
Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny.
Now they're all,They're all blowing up
about how many road coursesthey're on.
He's tearing it up over there.
Yeah,like they. Can't road courses.
They can't just do superspeedwaycourses every every race.
(02:33):
It would be pretty boring.
And obviously then they becomethese highlight events.
They do Daytona,they do Talladega.
They got North Carolina'swhat like the Super Speedway
tracksare like the highlight events.
And that's okay.
Especiallybecause their scoring system
and how they decideat the end of the season is.
Not NASCAR playoffs. Yeah.
Yeah, NASCAR playoffs now,
which was previously knownas the race to the Cup.
(02:54):
Before thatit was the sprint to the cup.
Before that, it was something.
It's a little complicatedand I'm not
going to get into the specifics.
Yeah I'm not going. To getthis cup.
I'm not going to get toointo the specifics of NASCAR
in this episode.
So if you
if you are here
to enjoy the history of NASCAR,I hate to tell you
I'm not going to be coveringthe history of NASCAR.
That would take me a long time.
(03:15):
Another week.
Another week. I hate you.
But for those that aren't,for those that are listening
from countriesthat don't understand NASCAR,
I everywhere except the SouthEast of the United States.
Picture yourselflooking at an oval NASCAR.
Icon beforeyou get into the story.
Sean.
I think there's a little bit
more housekeepingwe need to take care of.
(03:36):
What's that?Did we do our homework?
No. Do you mean, didyou eat two kilos of nuggets?
No, that's not the one.
Coming out this channelthat Sean.
Eight, ten kilos of chickennuggets not being.
Discussed to do that.
Oh. It has.Did you watch War of the worlds?
No, I neither did I.I had a dog.
I watched a video.
It was called APointless Husband on YouTube.
(03:58):
He did
a breakdown of the movie,and he was not complimentary.
I watched the small little intro
bit that runs on the home page.
I was like, prime when youhover over, and that was enough.
Oh, well, that's still comingin, so that's bad.
Well, we'll, we. Needto put ourselves through that.
Yeah. What I saw was awful.
We will defer our homeworkthis week for.
(04:19):
You to watch The Warof the worlds
while Jon eats two kilos.
And that's a referencethat very few people get.
But only the nugget eatingis going to be more interesting.
I'll eat the vegetarian nuggets.You'll eat some nuggets.
Yeah, I will, I will partake.
But John, after Sean and I wentto the Brisbane Expedition
exhibition exhibition,
we were talking about a two
kilo nugget food optionthat you could get.
(04:40):
And John was like, oh, I couldeat two kilos of nuggets.
And that kicked offprobably an hour of us
just berating him and saying
that he had to put his moneywhere his mouth was.
Getting the commentsand let us know, like,
not if I could do it,but particularly
the nuggets in that cinema.
So my own
kilos of nuggets is so muchwhat are you talking about?
All right.
We're going to get down to.
Rabbitgetting down the rabbit hole.
(05:00):
John's going to eattwo kilos of nuggets
while we watch moreof the world. Yes.
Anyway.One more, one more before we go.
I did make a promise.
I have to shout outto my daughter, Jasmine.
Happy birthday for yesterday.She turned 30.
Happy birthday.
To you.
Hip, hip.
Hooray! Hip hip! Hooray!
Yay, paper!
I am not editing that out, but.
(05:23):
Like you could.
And just make that a little bit,just for a bit of fun.
Oh, good.
Thank you. I'msure she'll appreciate it.
I think she will. Yeah.
Two tiny ideas in the house now.
Teenage NASCAR, for allour non-American viewers,
including us, NASCAR is stockcar racing.
The original
premise was Moonshine Runners,but it came from the concept
(05:43):
that the stock,the cars were stock.
You could buy a body in ain a chassis that had to be one
that you could buy offthe stock.
Chassis when. Theythat was stock bodies as well.
So when they originally startedthere was three categories.
So they had like sport,like compact.
The main sort of cup series.
And then they had a modifiedseries.
Now the modified series
is actually still going the openwheeled, but they're just oh.
(06:05):
Is that a NASCAR series?
Yeah, it's officially a NASCAR.
It's woohoo downdown the tier list.
And they just look exactlylike NASCAR bodies.
If they just kind of likepapier maché,
whichjust the middle of the car.
So it looks like,
just a framed versionof a regular NASCAR
doesn't look like a cool openwheel.
Anyway,
so they started outwith those ones,
and it became the mainsort of series
(06:26):
became the most popular,which we call
they call it the Cup Series.
It's had lots of differentsponsors over the years,
most famously for a long timeit was the Winston Cup,
then the Nextel Cupand the Nextel Sprint Cup.
Then a Winston.
Winston was a cigaret company.
Don't do cigar.
It was a cigaret company. Yeah.And the lower tier one was the.
And I am going to talk about ita little bit.
(06:46):
I'm going to bring upthe Busch Series
and that was Busch beer.
It was yeah.
I'm like Amstrad Buschor whatever it was called. Yeah.
So that I do cover thata little bit,
I briefly glance over it,but that's what the lower tier
series was called in the 80sthrough the 90s.
Unlike other sports,they actually held
most of these sponsorsfor like 20 years at a time.
Like it was pretty impressive.
(07:07):
Well, when they had like, beerand cigarets.
Yeah. Those companiesare going to stick around. Yeah.
So so that's NASCAR now.
There's lotsof different types of tracks,
but the super speedways
are the ones that we bring
the most, the most attention tobecause they're the ones
that get covered the mostbecause they also kind of funny
big round oval tracksand they go really fast.
Are you trying to wave? He'swaving. I'm doing green flag.
Yeah. This is notas the story started.
(07:28):
So this is a visual pun.All right.
Visual green flag showing guy.
Green flag green flag.
So I'm going to talk about
three weird charactersin the history of NASCAR.
And they're allpretty interesting.
So we're gonna start offwith that first one Bobby.
The Lordwatches over idiots and drunks.
So I had them covered onboth ends. Wow.
(07:48):
Clinton Delmar Catlettwas a swimming pool contractor
from Savannah, Georgia.
Savannah, Savannah.
So I see lots of white suits.
Probably not if he was aswimming pool contractor.
He would have had money. Hey.
If he's okay, if he spilledchlorine on himself, you know.
Yeah. I mean, he wasn't like a
CSR. Yeah.
(08:09):
He began racing in this area.
It is things.
Here began racing in the secondtier of NASCAR, known then
as the Late Model Sportsman
Division in the 1970s,which became the Busch Series.
Delmar never claimedto be an amazing driver.
He just really loved the sport,loved racing.
It was his hobby.
Alreadymaking a name for himself
as a larrikin at the time,
(08:29):
he famously crashedinto a wrecked car at full speed
that was in the middleof the track to himself.
All the drivers were injured,but another.
Survived.
But another driver
was critically injuredby trying to avoid the arrow.
Amazing. Yeah, what a dick.
Yeah, he wasn't.He wasn't very good.
He did it because it was fun.
Apparently he just didn't know.
The crash guy. Paccar.
(08:49):
Yeah, he did it.
Well, it spun out like wreckedin the middle of the track.
He just didn't notice and hitit full speed.
After a rather uneventful careerin the lower tier,
he decided that it was smart
to enter the Winston Cup Series,NASCAR's highest division.
He stated that due to changes
in the structureof the lower tier, it was now
just as financially viableto race in the Cup Series
as it was in the lower tiers,
which is kind of crazythat like, they changed it
(09:11):
now, like, oh, this is whyit's going to be like, man,
I can race in the top tierand it cost me the same.
I lose and I winthe same amount of money cost.
Me the same or less. Yeah.
So in 1991, Delmar finallyqualified for the Atlanta
Journal 500 and finished 18th.
Oddly enough,it was one of his best finishes.
He actually, his highest overallfinish was 17th,
(09:33):
which was at thefirecracker 400.
At 18 stars out of.
He had 21 races total.
You know how many,how many races?
How many races?About 40 actually.
Like middle of the pack,middle. Of.
The morning, middle of the pack.
Nothing to sneeze at.
Now you say like fields of 40.
It is phenomenalwhen you see those videos
of like at the start of the race
when only 40 go by a top speed,it is like
(09:56):
like 30s.
Well, that was only five cars.
You missing 35. True.
Now, back in the old days at thesuperspeedway tracks that had
minimum speed, so they had torun like you had to be over
a certain amount of speedand it'll come up later.
But like in in the 70sand 80s was like 180mph.
They got 40 cars doing 300 carsnow, but it was.
(10:16):
Yeah, in like old cars.Pretty impressive.
Yeah. Like one wrong move.
You are dead as theseeveryone around you that.
Big steel boxes.
So there's a little bitof protection.
It's not like fiberglass.
So. Yeah.
Delmar, he specializedin the superspeedway tracks.
He'd really only likesome of the golf
as the only into the majors.
He just wentand tried to qualify
for the really big ticket oneslike Daytona and Talladega.
(10:38):
He did apparently once folk,once race in North Carolina
in 1992and did poorly, as you'd expect.
Yeah.
Throughout his career,his car numbers were small.
He only used three total.
He raced at number49 at Daytona.
Did not qualify number 37once in the lower tier.
Didn't qualify again,but most famously,
(11:00):
he was had number zeroon the side of his car.
Nice.
And the reason he picked
number zero is he said thatthat was his chance of winning.
There'sa great photo of him, like,
just like next to his carpointing at the number zero.
It will be in probablyin the supplemental content.
And just like number zero,he was just just didn't mind.
He just was happyto be part of the pack.
(11:20):
And everyonewas very fond of him.
Always a zero. Never here.
Yeah.
Pretty much in 1992 and 1992at the Daytona 500, he finally.
Made it.Now he finally made the pack.
And he actually madehis trademark quote that year
where he said, Iain't never won a race, though.
I ain't lost a party.
That's pretty sick.Due to an accident.
During qualifying,Delma managed to qualify 13th
(11:42):
nice and officiallymade the big race,
which he was very excited about.
So when he didmake the big race,
he went out and hired a doctorand he said, when we made
the race, I went out and hireda team physician.
I figured we needed a teamphysician.
I figured we needed onefor all the physical
requirements of the crew.
What does the doctorspecialize in?
He's a vet because we're all,oh, we got it.
(12:03):
Our crewis a bunch of dogs. Are.
That was an officiallike an official statement.
So I would love to see thatwith like all the sponsor
stuff behind like,you know, on the line.
Know like, well,what do you think you qualify.
Well you still had to go out,get ourselves a doctor
because I got a bunch of dogsin this team right.
(12:24):
After my car was there.
Oh it was I just got transportedto, what, 1977, 1992?
So I was very hot over here.
After qualifying,
he decided to throw a big partyfor everybody.
As you can imagine,it's larrikin.
And apparently he didn't go homeor even near the track
until Sunday.
When the race was on.
When pretty much the race,he just didn't
(12:44):
go anywhere nearany prep or anything.
Rocked up on Sunday.
Yep, that year's race had a lotof dramas and dealt with.
Managed to finish 25th,earning him enough money
to buy a big screen TVand for the travel
to the next race in Rockingham,where he finished 35th.
What, what year was this?
92, 92, 92?
Also, big TV would have beenlike a. Big flat screen TV.
(13:05):
It was huge. Yeah,it was a huge no.
It was like a huge reprojection.Oh, one of them.
Yeah. One of the bigget big dog. On its own stand.
Yeah. He's like 65.
It takes. Five men to liftI. Bigger.
The number was the numberthat he won was irrelevant.
But I think he got like $20,000for coming
25th or something like that.
Like it wasn't really too bad.
Not bad.
Delma had very little success.These. Days.
(13:26):
He had very little successafter that.
He pretty muchnever really ever qualified
for Daytona ever again.He'd rock up and try it.
And, every year until 1997,he didn't make it
his last race was the WinstonOpen of 1997,
where he was flagged offthe racetrack shortly
after the start due to the car
not passing inspectionsas it wasn't ready.
He just decided to drive it outanyway
(13:48):
when they said,start your engines.
Yeah, well.
Apparently that his
his justification was he goes,this is, it's not for pride.
It's not for price,it's for money.
And the team makes moneyif I race for the team
and he just decided to go outand try and race,
he goes,we put all this money into it.
We did everything.
Because now working on the car,the entire time
that like,I missed all the scrutiny
(14:08):
and I missed all the check oversbecause they'll still go on.
And like just beforethey said started engines,
they said I was not ready to go.
He just walked in the car andturned it on and went for it.
And they went.
Get out of here, get. Out ofhere, black flag. Off you go.
And everyone was like.
He's kind of likean independent.
He was part of all the teams,
like,a lot of them at the time were,
like, funded by whatever you hadall sorts of funny teams.
(14:30):
And I'll talk abouta weird team.
In one of the latest stories,
he had one sponsoredby like, anybody.
And basically it was dueto this thing, like, like,
how about this used to beif you qualified, you're in.
Yeah, I'mjust trying to picture that
because you would never happento know if someone just.
It would never happen today. No.
Because the entering.Into the race.
The money would be insane.
You know,like we're back in the 70s.
It was like if you had a ChevyChevelle ice and stripped
(14:51):
all the insides out of it,you could race in NASCAR.
Yeah, like it was.
It was wild.
Simpler times.
And then also there'sthis weird thing
which I'll talk aboutcalled Alabamas Right to Work.
But we'll get into that.
In 1998, he retired from racing.
Sweet home Alabama.
Yes, in 1990.
Doo doo doo doo doo doo.
Lord, I'm coming home to you.
(15:12):
Oh, no. No.
But do I need to include my hottake from the other night?
Yeah. Go ahead. Walk.
Tell us why you hate.
Oh, on. Let's get it.You have to cut it.
Why does Sean hatewhen it's getting it?
Oh, I just said my hottake is when it's gone.
It's. Yeah, I said it to the bar
the other nightand Zayn slapped me.
And in the process, he followedthrough and also slapped Irish.
This love.
Sean and then went through itall to me.
(15:33):
Three Stooges style.I guess he was rejected.
UK was.Not prepared. He was like oh
look.
I wasjust sitting there like, oh,
it was really very funnyto be a part of
what I need to tell the story.
Yeah.
So in 1998,he retired from racing at a pub.
He was sitting at a bar
and just declared his retirementto everybody.
He stated, I'm a dinosaur.
(15:54):
There ain't no roomfor guys like me no more.
To me, racing was a hobby.
Now you got to have money.Yeah, yeah.
Which is not enough.
It was around that time that.
Yeah, you couldn't do anythingunless you had
corporate sponsorship and, like,you couldn't self-fund.
You can. Yeah.
Now they almost saidsome kind of wacky.
Wacky. Stuff.
And so we found outhe was a massive racist.
(16:15):
To put in, like,his black like his, like his
laughing clown sort of act.
I thought I'd include threeof my favorite of his.
Wasn't wearing a white suit.Boy, he was wearing white.
He put the hood on.
I was gonna say,yeah, what with my curtains.
He can't.
Bring up chicken. Housesays, no.
We can't bring up the Klan.We can't.
No, you're the onethat brought up the crazy.
(16:35):
You're. He says the Klan.
We were all you know,we were alluding everybody.
All of that said, the keyword.
Everybody.
It's 60.
It's true.
Well, no, I think it'salso a major allegation.
To throw this random guy.
A very nice man by.All right. Okay.
(16:56):
Sounds like a great guy. Yeah.
Anyway, I don't knowwhere you going to play.
You requested short. I don'tknow. What you're going to.
I don't know where he got a clipthat.
He's secret is.
He's not
just clips.
Some of.
Maybe I'mgoing to edit this episode.
Yeah, I it every time threefavorite quotes from Del man.
So I. Delma delma.
(17:17):
Clinton delma count I don't knowwhere delma came from.
There was no I don't know.
There's a characterinside the park called Del Main.
And I thought this mighthave been a reference to him.
So three of my favorite quotes.
He said, one timemy spotter asked me
about a wreck in turn two,and I told him what wreck.
By the time
I got around to it,they had plenty of time
to clean it allup, insinuating he's very.
Slow behind.
(17:37):
One of his other quotes.
It's pretty simple.
All the big racespay the most money,
and if you luck up
and win the race, well,last place pays $48,000
and Lord knowsI can use the money.
I got three ex-wives.
I'm so brokeI can't pay attention.
I'm I guy. Yeah.
Which I think
I heard of thatthat I'm so broke
I can't pay attentionto the country song once.
(17:58):
And I didn't realize thatmaybe it was very common,
but let's just say that is 100%Adele MacArthur original.
But I love. It.
Oh, sir, I do say. And my.
Loss of the whole quite boileddown. My last day on the.
Board, even to pay attention.
My lost alma, while I still makequite I got smashed.
I just smashed it to the floor
and told the good Lord
(18:18):
that if he'd help me get throughturns one and two,
I'd take it from there.Yeah, not.
Sounds like all mythat rode the wall
and then changed the rules.Yeah.
Just he was a hell
of a character,and I'm sure he would have been
the most fun personto be around in the field. He.
Right. He did.
He. I can'tremember if he passed away.
I didn't how it went down.
I think he has passed.
(18:39):
But he was fairly oldwhen he retired. Like, in fact.
Check everything later.
All right.
Up next.
The disappearing driver. Ooh.
I've had this one in the notespage for like, two years,
so I'm excited to cover ittoo. Spooky.
In April 1982, in Nashville. Oh.
So October. Yep.
(19:01):
In April 1982,a Nashville newspaper
was contactedto promote a driver
that had declared
that he was enteringthe Winston 500 as a racer.
Is it Harold Hope? No.
Nation got him.
I'm just about to get onthe plane to fly over the rice
and NASCAR guys.
I'm just gonna take a swim.
(19:22):
His name was LW, right?
And he was apparently partof the Music City Racing team,
which was at the timea racing team that had drivers
in events and was sponsored by
country musicsingers and record people.
And it was like a pretty nicething.
Mo Haggard, like WaylonJennings, T.J.
Shepherd,like it was pretty popular.
Problem was,no one had ever heard of him.
(19:43):
To enter a raceonly required a few things.
He had to pay the entry fee,which he paid for the check.
He had to pay the race license,
which he also paidfor with the check,
and have a car, which he did.
I'm glad you said thatbecause I was.
I was ready to jumpon. You need a car.
He had a car.
Now, this might not seem right,but due to the rights to work
laws that existed at the time,NASCAR were obliged.
(20:06):
And as they have said,they were handcuffed
to the fact that they hadto let him into the race
like they had to let himenter qualifying. Yeah.
Like he didn'thave to make the big race,
but he was had to legallybe allowed to attempt qualifying
because he paid the feesand he had a car.
Yeah.
What you did
now, right, approachedthe head of a Nashville
based marketing agencyfor assistance
with sponsorshipand buying a car.
(20:28):
He somehow managed to talkthe head of the company,
Bernie Terrell, into giving him$30,000, a trailer truck
and 7500 dollarsto cover expenses.
Right.
Use the moneyto buy a Chevy Monte Carlo
from Sterling Marlin,a fellow racer, for $20,000,
which he paid for with17,000 in cash and a check.
Sterling was very
(20:48):
suspicious of all this money
getting thrown around froma person he'd never heard of.
Yeah, so he decided to volunteerto be his crew chief
and follow him to Talladegafor the race.
A good idea in the end.
With huge confidence and a storyabout competing in over
40 Busch Series races,
which is the lower tierthat I talked about before.
Wrightconducted a newspaper interview
(21:08):
about his entry to the race,stating that T.G.
Sheppard, a country singer,as another sponsor.
Sheppard immediately denied itand said he'd never even heard
of right or his races.
Right, then statedthat his races were actually not
part of the push series,
but they were sportsmanclasses at the same racetracks
on the same days.
Smart starting to sorry,did you think that?
(21:29):
I said Busch said. Oh,I said the Busch race track.
I said, I was there.
This began tobuild the suspicions about this
mysterious new driver,
and Sterling started to noticethat the driver would ask
questions of other racesthat any and every racer
should already know.
Hey, which pedals the fast one?
What's this circle thing do.
(21:49):
Heading out for qualification,right. All right.
Open the door.
Heading out for qualification.
Right.
Managed to qualify for the racejust in 36th spot
with a top speed of 187mph,
seven miles per hour overthe minimum requirement.
For context ofhow fast cars were at the time,
(22:10):
Benny Parsons becamethe first driver ever to qualify
at over 200mph in pole positionfor the same race.
Big difference.
13 mile an hour.
He was math.
We got a bad trackhistory of maths in there.
Yeah,we had bad the bad messing.
(22:32):
Once the green flag fell right.
Did everything in his power
to get out of the wayof the other cars.
Yeah.
After 13 miserable
laps, unable to maintain 190mph.
Probably due to fear,as you'd imagine,
he'd probably wasn'tknowing what he was doing.
He was ordered off the track.
What's most amazing, however,is that once back in the pit,
(22:52):
he abandoned the carand disappeared forever. Wow.
For 40 years must 40 years.
It's been. 40 years.
Tyrrell,the boss of the marketing agency
from beforehe managed to recover the car.
And every single checkthat rod had.
You used to pay people
for tires, jackets, parts, fuel,the car rent for his house.
(23:13):
They bounced for insufficientfunds.
Cool.
Unsurprisingly,there, Sterling was interviewed
about his disappearanceand said, I didn't.
It didn't really surprise me.I sort of expected it.
Then why did you keep giving himstuff?
That's why you followed him.
Stop expecting checks, Sterling.
He was the one that sellingthe car.
I went, oh,I'm going to follow this dude.
He didn't give him anythingelse. He's lost it.
All right.Night. All right. Yeah.
(23:35):
To be fair, he did qualify.
He did so right.
Was eventually tracked downabout 39 years later.
And a warrant had been afterhis arrest the entire time,
and they never. Risked. Arrest.
He didn't give any did like,fraudulent give people.
Yeah.
So in 2022, a podcastthat found riot interviewed him
(23:56):
to clear his name,and he got it.
He verballyconfirmed in the podcast
and with the videoabout who he was, he got him to
because obviouslyI wanted to see him in 40 years.
He brought out,
like his original racing suitwith his name stitched on
that was could be identified allthe way down to the stitching.
Yeah, everything matched up.
So he did thisbig long interview
to try and get himto clear his name.
What was his real name? D.B.Cooper.
It was.
(24:16):
Something like l likehis name was something.
Right? Yeah.
He went with LW private.His name started with. No.
So he in this podcast,he covered over
a few more specificsof the things.
In particular,you get a feeling of like
how littlehe knew what he was doing.
He brought in a crew of peoplethat were not race experts.
He just found some people alongthe way.
(24:36):
In particular,his brother was in the crew
and he remember
he stood on the trackand looked at the main straight
towards turn one and saidto his brother, God help me.
I don't knowif I'm going to be able
to make it aroundthat at the right speed.
He was like,
this is going to be sothis is going to be real scary.
Like. It's gonna be real scary.
I gotta go fast,I gotta. Go fast.
Gotta go fast.
Three was upsomething on the coast. 300.
(24:57):
There's other cars.
He had to go 300 cars now.
Like he was like, oh,in a 1966 Chevrolet Monte Carlo.
Like.
Not like that would be.
Scary in today's road.
That's scary.
And it looked like.
Can you imagine getting in my
basicallymy Volvo was newer than that.
Would you get in with a van,go 300km an hour right now?
Would you go 150km an hourin that car?
(25:19):
No, that is scary.
For the 30 40th
anniversary of that race,the podcast
that released the recordingsand the interview with.
Right, and it was a massive hit.
Unsurprisingly,the next year, Robert
was officially arrested by theUS marshals fugitive Task Force.
Oh man.
For theft,burglary and evading arrest.
What's the differencebetween theft and burglary?
(25:40):
I don't know, I didn't bother,didn't bother checking, but I'm.
At one point in my lifeI did know the difference.
I'm sure that there issome specific American thing.
I think burglary requiresyou to break in.
There we go.
He died one year laterat the age of 74.
Oh, unknown where he waswhen he died.
Therewasn't any information about it,
but he passed awayone year later. In jail.
As well. No,I'm assuming is an old man.
(26:01):
Took time.
Probably took a yearto do the damn trial. But
no cigarets, no crime.
Right? Yeah. He was.
He's been on my list for ages.
He was the oneI really wanted to cover.
And now.
That I want to be right,and he wanted to race
without any left. Hand. Well,then they left hands, you know.
That's good. That's a good joke.
(26:22):
After two G's.
Oh, geez.
Okay. Oh.
After two of the cheekycharacters in the NASCAR
cheeky verse,where now? Up to the last one.
Cheeky drivers,who is easily the most famous.
And he's not a driver this time.
(26:54):
It's smokey unique.
Okay.
If you haven't heard of SmokeyUnique.
He's actuallyquite a famous bloke.
I thought you gonna sayit was lightning McQueen.
Henry.
Smokey unique is very wellknown these days,
and this is purely due
to his utter adherenceto the theory of loopholes.
Okay, Smokey.
Already Smokey pushed boundarieslike no one else could.
Acrossmultiple disciplines of racing,
(27:16):
Smokey found ways to improvewhat a car was capable of.
Giant wings on Indy carsto reverse torque engines that
rotated the other way
for better cornering.
Yeah.
Yeah yeah. Pretty cool.
Yeah. Didn't necessarily workthat well. Still cool.
But like show you like tryingto use the centrifugal force
(27:36):
of the tail.
To turn better.That's nice. It's crazy.
I like this guybecause it's not like.
Is it a legal?
No. Is it legal?
No. Let's do it. Do it. Yeah.
And if you've never really
experienced how engines move,it's quite fascinating.
Boxer engineswere a really good example.
If you ever get on a motorcycle.
Motorcycle with a boxer engine.
No no no no no.
Oh, yeah.
(27:56):
But they go outwardsfrom each other.
I know you're doinga boxing pose, but
I got like this.
If you get on a motorcyclethat has a boxer engine
like a BMW or a motor,an automatic is a BMW.
When you twist thethrottle, the whole bike goes
and it tilts towards whicheverthe first cylinder firing is.
It's actuallyquite a funny experience.
And you can imaginethey were like. He was like.
(28:18):
That doesn't seem fun.
That pretty cool.
So just to clarify on that,the normal alignment
of cylinders in an engine
is either in a linewhich is inline or a V.
I'll do the inline one.
Yeah.
Or a V, which is like that
where they gosort of like 45 degrees.
And then a boxer,they go outwards.
Yeah.
Please don't try and explainrotary bikes.
(28:40):
No, we're not going to.
While engine.
Rotary is. Magic,it's witchcraft.
It's justyou want to look at rock magic.
It's a triangle in a circle,and it goes fast.
And it's very inefficient,but it does go fast.
And it sounds great.
And then you've got boxes,you got V got v twins.
Transversemounted v twins. Yeah.
There's all sorts of differentengine configurations.
Yeah. Anyway,
(29:02):
he even dabbledin drag racing apparently,
but I couldn't findmuch information about that.
But I think I knowbeing that he had
he had his own garage calledthe best damn garage in town.
In in Tallahassee, in Florida.
He he did some racing.
Some racing.
He did go fast.
Now, he did drive a little bit
in his lifetimeand he did some rising.
But there was a timemore of a pit crew.
(29:22):
He was an engineer.
He was an engineerand a mechanic.
By the time we get toall this stuff,
he's in his 40s and his 50sand he isn't that
fussed about racing anymore.
He wants to make cars go better.
So Smokey loved racingand he loved finding ways
to be faster, using his smarts,not his driving skills.
What yearwe in? At the moment, we're.
Now entering the 60s.
Okay, we're going to find outthat he like
(29:44):
designs like the fastbackMustang or something. No
but he I do, I cover it.
Yeah. I will brieflytalk about it. I'm sorry.
I'm just tryinga bit of Nostradamus happening.
So in NASCAR
is where some of the most farfetched rule
stretching occurreddue to the stringent rules
that were in place in NASCARat the time.
(30:06):
Due to his successin other disciplines, Smokey
and Ori ended upbecoming quite famous
and he ran the Chevrolet factoryrace team for NASCAR.
Much of the work
done on Chevy's high performance302 engine, the Hemi
at the time
using in multiple typesof racing, had Smokey's fingers
all over it.
Like this is like thethis is the pony car era, right?
Mustangs were killing it
(30:27):
and Chevroletgeneral Motors are like,
we gotta dosomething about this.
So they were trying to makethe Camaros and everything.
They're tryingto make it better.
And they raced in a seriescalled Trans Am Z28.
Well, the 22.
Z 28 was the special Fast Boy
homologation of the ChevroletCamaro. Yeah.
So the 302 Hemi,the small block V8
Smokey was involvedin the way that they did that.
(30:48):
If I was to buy a musclelike a muscle car,
like I had unlimited moneyall by myself as a 28.
They had to like.
You know,why they called Hammies?
It's something to do with
I did look it upand now I've forgotten.
Pretty sure it's becausethe pistons are hemispherical.
Yeah, not flat out flat. Yeah.
It's really,
we get in the weedswith everything
(31:09):
that Smokey unit didin his career.
He was very successfulwhen you got the Gt500.
A nice car, but I'd rather takeit a 28 Todd take.
Is that 28 as well?
Had nothing in it.
Didn't even have radio brake on.
Just like some leather trim.
It's just for fast boy.
Oh, they said you had to sella thousand to make it.
All right,so you know how many they sell?
They sell like 800in the first year.
(31:30):
And then they needed.
No, they needed they soldlike 800 in the first year.
And then the need to sella couple more
the next year to reach that.
You know, how many they soldthe next year?
6500. Yeah.
The year after that, 20something thousand.
You sayingthat reminds me of a story
and I don't knowwhere I seen it.
Might have been in researchfor an episode
and I didn't knowwhere I was going to slotted in,
but I slotted in here.
I cannot tell youwhat kind of car it was,
(31:52):
but again, I'm not payingfor rally like you have to sell.
I say a story.
From the Grand Touris it's it's yeah, to build a.
Thousand to build a thousandcars. The homologation.
Built 500.
500 went and inspected at onecar park, took the garden lunch.
And what I did that,
I drove them to another car yardand then got them
to inspect the signfrom under somewhere.
Yeah, he'sa thousand cars. Yeah.
(32:12):
This sounds like this. Dude,
this dude was.
He hada repo. He adhered to the rules.
That's not a loophole.
That's just that's justthat's just lying.
And I believeI believe that was Lancia.
I think you're right.
I think they go, yeah, Lancia.
So I went.
NASCAR said that a fuel tankcould only be 22 gallons.
Smokey was like,
okay, how. Many fuel tanks?
(32:34):
One fuel tank. Okay.
But didn't say anythingabout the fuel lines.
So, so yeah.
He replaced the fuel ones with11ft of two inch diameter pipe,
which held five gallons of fueljust in the pipes alone.
Ingenious, ingenious.
Sounds like a massive firehazard.
(32:54):
Yeah, until NASCAR found out.
Now, there's
there's this story about himdriving away with no fuel tank
like, and
and this whole thingwhere they like,
they took the fueltank of the car
and that was scrutinizing it.
And they said, like, here's
nine things that are wrongwith the car
that you need to fix,and you guys better make it ten.
And he started the carand drove away.
Apparently. Apparently that's
(33:15):
apparently that'sbeen blown out of proportion.
Apparently he did start the carwith no fuel tank attached,
and it was runningbecause of fuel lines
and five gallon ceiling.
It was at the launch.
Fascinating.
Apparently he didn't say, better
make a turn and then drove away.
But he could haveand it would be very funny.
Let's just say you did.
Another rumoris that he put a basketball
inside the fuel tank,inflated to prove that it was.
(33:38):
It fit 22 gallons,then deflated.
That somehow
deflated the basketball.And then it fit more.
But I don't thinkthat's actually true.
That'd be very, very funny.
But I don't think it's true.
He did really like
pissing off NASCARwith this kind of stuff,
and he even experimented brieflywith putting fuel
in the roll cage.
He was like,okay, to do nothing.
(33:59):
But if you went the wrong cage.
This thing designedto protect me in a crash
really has gota lot of wasted space in it.
What if I fill it with highlyflammable fuel?
It's not that. It'snot that uncommon.
Old motorcycles from the 60shave,
like all tribes,have oil in the frame.
Right?
Even some modern motorcycleshave oil
in the frame of the bikebill, for instance,
which is a sport bikethat uses Holley engines.
(34:21):
Oil is in the frame of the bike.
I'm not going to get into thatscience.
Well, this is not a car
or vehicular science podcast,but it could be anyway.
Cheeky mechanics.
So it's it's stated in the rulesthat defenders of a car
could be modifiedand removed to remove
excess weight in the car,and the front bumpers
said, could do.
(34:42):
They had to, but he could now.
Smokey was very,
very clever. He knew a lot aboutaerodynamics.
He'd been in IndyCar racing.
He was one of the first peopleto put a wing on on an Indy car.
He was like he'dseen someone experiment
with wings on openwheeled races.
He's like, it's stick a wing.
So he put
another one and another one onand then discovered
that he could cornerlike ridiculous speeds.
(35:02):
But his straight linespeed was wrong.
Like he knew about aerodynamics.
He worked out that his ChevelleSS was way faster
with the stock bumpersand the stock
fenders, but it was heavier,but it was more aerodynamic.
So he did qualifying.
He rocked upand all the other drivers like,
well,have you got of that on there?
He goes.
Doesn't say, I have to get ridof these heads.
I can get rid of them.
(35:23):
And then whenwhatever man qualified first
or like very high up and thenimmediately started cutting it
off, started like modifyingthe fenders to within the rules,
it said you could do this much.So he started doing it.
Everyone got to like, hey,you can't do that.
I guess doesn't say when.
It doesn't say when it says,I can't.
It doesn't say when they changethe rules after that.
(35:44):
Yeah, yeah.
I love stuff like thatwhere they, like,
force peopleto become more specific with.
Rules or just something happensand it forces a rule change.
Like, like I said before,the guy that rode
the wheel is never been donebefore.
Just hit the walland put the foot to the floor.
His exact quote was these rulessay you may remove them.
They don't say you have to.
The rules also don'tsay when I can remove them.
(36:05):
Realizing the effectof weight distribution on cars,
he also experimented
with shiftingthe center of gravity of a car
by offsetting the bodyto the left
to create a fastercornering car.
He just moved the body
to the left because he saidthat the dimensions of the car
had to be the stock dimensions,but it didn't say anything
about wherethose dimensions were.
(36:25):
It didn't say anythingabout relatively
to relativity, to the wheelbase.
It just said that the body hadto be the body and the chassis.
The body rollfrom the cornering.
There was less body roll for himbecause the right was already.
The weight was already overthe on the left.
He just movedthe whole body of the car.
Apparently it worked really,really well.
It in theorysounds like it would.
So they immediatelychanged the tolerances
of how far the body could be
from the axis of the wheelsand all these things like that.
(36:46):
And he was very pissy at that.I like this dude.
Yeah. For like, oh, he washe was great.
His most famous gambithas been debunked in a way.
But the legend is huge.
And it's the storyof the 7/8 car.
I don't know if you've heardthis one. It's so good.
And his 1966Chevelle, number 13,
of course,famously was said to be 7/8.
(37:08):
The size of a. Full sized car.
It's a great story, but in
reality, what he'd actually donewas he got busted.
In cold. Water.
Well, he got a bit trickybecause the dimensions were not.
The dimensions were not thatwell measured.
It was like length. Yeah.
And that was about it.
So what he did washe raised the floor of the car,
which lowered the body,
(37:29):
but it didn't likelowered the suspension
because the chassis wasthe same.
He just raised the floorso the body was lower.
He apparently moved it backthree inches.
That one's in dispute.
But that's why
if you look at photos, somehowthe front looks a bit shorter.
He, like, somehowmoved the body back on the frame
three inches to then changethe center of gravity of the car
and make it way better.
(37:50):
He did, however, modify the roofand the windows
to lower like the profileof the car to make it faster.
More aerodynamic.
Again, yes,and then just basically
make a much better balanced car.
Now he is
where the story gets a bitkooky, because I don't know
if this is true,that it could be.
Apparently he made another one
that wasn't paintedlike a race car,
and he would pocket outsidethe racetrack
(38:13):
at the front of the car park
so that if someone saidthat car's not right,
that'snot the right size of cars
going at the issue of alfrom the car by conveniently,
it's this Chevelle.Sitting right. There.
Oh, we'll just pick this one.Bring it in. Ha!
They're the same size.
It's exactly the same that
Smokey rode on.
Smokey. Smokey.
Well done. My hero. Genius.
And he had. A
(38:35):
the whole time he wrote.
Yeah he'sthat he's the huckster.
There's the CherylShelby huckster edition.
He's just he's great. Yeah.
How? Shelby. Nostalgia.
Kelly. Yeah. You show me.
Yeah. He's
he's bizarro.
Carroll. ShelbyI really like that one.
That was a good one.
Oh, Cheryl.Shelby. Smokey was. He was.
(38:55):
He was a kook. He was great.I was that smart.
That's all I got. Yeah,I like that.
Sadly, Smokeydidn't stay in NASCAR.
Past 1970.
He always had a big thingabout safety
to protect his wonderful driversthat he was very big fan of.
One of his best friendswas, one of his drivers,
Fireball Roberts. Great name.
Not a great namefor a NASCAR driver.
Not in hindsight.
(39:16):
Yeah. At the time.
Yeah,he passed. Away in a fireball.
Sensitive job.
So, he.
Won or not.
He regularly butted headswith the NASCAR
founder, Bill France senior,who's one of the guys?
He's the founder of NASCAR.
Apparently,once he threw a hammer at him,
maybe, I don't know.
He could have.
There's a storythat he threw a hammer at.
(39:37):
His nicknameshould have been Thor.
It should have been now.
In 1964,
Smokey's driver and closefriend, Fireball Roberts,
crashed in Charlotte, NorthCarolina.
After 40 days in painfrom the burns.
He finally passed away
and Smokey went on a rampage,trying to raise
the safety standards
for drivers, for the tracks,for the crew, for everybody.
After many, many setbacksand failed attempts
(40:00):
from Bill France seniorbasically no friends
to say his name right,I write it down.
I always get itwrong. Bill Francina.
After many setbacksand failed attempts, Smokey
then left NASCAR in 1970, fed up
with constantlygetting pushback about safety,
something that should have beenthe most important thing.
Yeah, ratherthan all these other antics.
Yeah.
Famously, Smokey is not
(40:21):
in the NASCAR Hall of Fame,and he should be.
And this big thingonline at the moment
about like get Smokey uniquein the NASCAR.
Hall cost us just smokey. Smoke.
Where do we need to go to?
I don't know how, but.
For Smokeyno I think he knowing nothing
about NASCAR before today.I think he needs to be included.
In the NASCAR. He's significantto the story of NASCAR.
Okay, so email Jackie taquitosemail NASCAR's customer service.
(40:45):
It sounds like he implemented
a whole
bunch of different words,like forced NASCAR to implement
a whole bunch of differentrules. Yeah, yeah.
If you ever see them with thesebig templates over top of cars.
Yeah.
Smokey NASCAR, small Chevelle.
Yeah, that'swhy I got these big templates.
Check everything okay.It's the right size. Yeah.
So I think somebody a while agogot disqualified for putting
their hand over the,
(41:06):
there'slike, vents in the windows.
They were putting their handover that
to stop the air coming inso that they had it better.
It changed the aerodynamics.Yeah. Yeah.
They're very things like thatthese days.
They are on.
Yeah.
In the 1980sSmokey designed the first safety
firewall for racing circuitsthat used tires and plywood
to absorb impactrather than steel barricades.
(41:26):
NASCAR still not trustingSmokey, did not implement it.
Okay.
His legend still lives on today,and stories of his exploits
are spun up constantly.
Whether all of them are trueis completely unimportant,
because he'll always be one ofthe most storied characters
in NASCAR history.
When he passed away,he didn't want,
like, his effects to be burdened
(41:48):
by someone managing his museum,
so he insisted that all of itbe sold
and like detailedhow everything needs to be like,
sell everything, do this, passthe money on to somebody else.
Don't make some museum for me.
Yeah, get rid of that
because he'd seen someone elsethat passed away
and like, their daughterhad to run their museum.
And he said it made himmiserable.
He's like,absolutely not sell everything.
And a lot of people have boughtlike, his cars and things like,
(42:09):
and then put themin their own museums.
But there's no smokingin a museum. What to do?
So that's NASCAR's,in my opinion, three hilarious.
Three quirkiest blogs.
Yeah, that was fun.
Yeah, NASCAR is fun.
NASCARI mean. These days not so much.
I think these daysit's a bit too
like sterile clinical.
Yeah. Yeah.
(42:29):
And also like they try and forcedrama through like
this driver doesn't like this.
Driver social mediaand all. This off with that.
Just make the cars dumband go quick.
Because the racing is the racingis pretty entertaining.
There's no DRS, there'sno like inside active stuff.
It's just inside this carand psyche the head just
doesn't go quick.
(42:49):
Like if youif you if you watch formula one
and if you're like, man,you get frustrated with things
like formula one, formulawith all.
The we are in the midst
of one of the greatest seasonsof all time.
Yeah, a formula one. Yeah.
But if you get frustratedwith all the like,
you thinkthey're overwriting stuff.
But if you're frustrated
with all the scienceand theories
and they can't follow too closebecause it affects
the aerodynamics,go watch NASCAR.
It is just a V8 motorand they just drive to.
(43:10):
Make it back.
Shake him back.
They drive itby the skin of their pants
and they just go real fast.
He's got to go fast.I gotta go fast.
I gotta. Go fast. Like it'sit's really entertaining.
So thanks.
Thanks for listening.
Spilled my macchiato.
I didn't get a chance to usethat.
I want to do.
All of the TalladegaNights and cars. But
(43:32):
please go and watch TalladegaNights in this communal.
And then what's the one thatTalladega Nights is based on?
Like it's days of Thunder?
Yeah, yeah, yeah,that's the Tom cruise one.
Yeah it is, it is.
Go watch that one too.
So this has been threeinteresting
characters in NASCAR.Yeah, that was fun.
The Three Horsemenof the apocalypse.
(43:54):
All right. That was terrible.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night. Take it easy.
You've been listeningto Cheeky Tales podcast.
If you'd like to seesupplemental images
related to our episodesor to interact
with us about our episodes,hit us up on at Cheeky Tales
Pod on Instagram, Facebookand YouTube.
You can
watch our episodes on YouTubeor listen to them on Spotify,
Apple Podcasts, or whatever.You get your podcasts.
In the1920s and 30s, Daytona Beach,
Florida became the capitalof the Speed world,
with two long straights,one on sand and one on road,
connected by two deeplyrutted sandy corners.
15 different landspeed records were set there.
With the repeal of prohibition,
Moonshine runnersneeded a reason
to drive their hot rodsand racing was the way to go.
NASCAR was formed in Daytonaand is now the USA's
(00:23):
most popular racing series.
And even though the tracksare simple, no offense to them,
the characters behindthe cars are far from plain.
Join me as I take us throughthree of NASCAR's wackiest
characters here on Cheeky Tales.
(00:49):
I don't.
I don't.What do I do with my hands?
I don't know what to dowith my hands.
Cheeky verse.
If you haven't listenedto Aaron's Prohibition episode,
go back and listen to thatbefore this one
becauseyou're going to get some.
It's a subtle link.
Yeah, there's a link.It's like I was in a spaceship.
Oh. Real fast.
Welcome to this week'sepisode. Hey.
Hey. Yeah.
(01:09):
How many tellI got a not references.
Are we going to get so many?
Yeah.
Maybe if you just one of the,
like, two of the charactersare pretty yokel.
Which fit the Talladega Nights.
Actually,not all three of them are sweet.
Sweet. Baby Jesus.
I'm your host this week.
I'm your host this week, Sean.
These two are as distractingas always.
My ever popular co-hosts,John and Aaron.
(01:29):
I'm Aaron.
Oh, he's actually said something
that's not a direct quotefrom the movie. From the movie?
Talking quote.
Yeah.
So you try to think aboutwhat else?
Yeah.So welcome back to this week's.
This fortnight's episode three.
You're doing a, Charactersof characters of NASCAR.
Yeah. Let's startwith NASCAR characters.
(01:50):
I seen, highlights from Shanevan Gisbergen.
Yeah, he'scurrently driving. The gears.
Because. Yeah, I. Mean,when he's on fake NASCAR.
Tracks, onesthat aren't just left hand.
Yeah, yeah.
There is such a complaintthis year.
All right, we're gonna getinto a bit of NASCAR.
That's okay.
The Americanscan't say his name.
Have you seen near the car?Have you seen the clips?
(02:12):
To Joburg.
I can't say van Gisbergen.
It's like they can't get it.
It's working. It's so funny.
It's not. Hard. It'snot a very difficult working.
Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny.
Now they're all,They're all blowing up
about how many road coursesthey're on.
He's tearing it up over there.
Yeah,like they. Can't road courses.
They can't just do superspeedwaycourses every every race.
(02:33):
It would be pretty boring.
And obviously then they becomethese highlight events.
They do Daytona,they do Talladega.
They got North Carolina'swhat like the Super Speedway
tracksare like the highlight events.
And that's okay.
Especiallybecause their scoring system
and how they decideat the end of the season is.
Not NASCAR playoffs. Yeah.
Yeah, NASCAR playoffs now,
which was previously knownas the race to the Cup.
(02:54):
Before thatit was the sprint to the cup.
Before that, it was something.
It's a little complicatedand I'm not
going to get into the specifics.
Yeah I'm not going. To getthis cup.
I'm not going to get toointo the specifics of NASCAR
in this episode.
So if you
if you are here
to enjoy the history of NASCAR,I hate to tell you
I'm not going to be coveringthe history of NASCAR.
That would take me a long time.
(03:15):
Another week.
Another week. I hate you.
But for those that aren't,for those that are listening
from countriesthat don't understand NASCAR,
I everywhere except the SouthEast of the United States.
Picture yourselflooking at an oval NASCAR.
Icon beforeyou get into the story.
Sean.
I think there's a little bit
more housekeepingwe need to take care of.
(03:36):
What's that?Did we do our homework?
No. Do you mean, didyou eat two kilos of nuggets?
No, that's not the one.
Coming out this channelthat Sean.
Eight, ten kilos of chickennuggets not being.
Discussed to do that.
Oh. It has.Did you watch War of the worlds?
No, I neither did I.I had a dog.
I watched a video.
It was called APointless Husband on YouTube.
(03:58):
He did
a breakdown of the movie,and he was not complimentary.
I watched the small little intro
bit that runs on the home page.
I was like, prime when youhover over, and that was enough.
Oh, well, that's still comingin, so that's bad.
Well, we'll, we. Needto put ourselves through that.
Yeah. What I saw was awful.
We will defer our homeworkthis week for.
(04:19):
You to watch The Warof the worlds
while Jon eats two kilos.
And that's a referencethat very few people get.
But only the nugget eatingis going to be more interesting.
I'll eat the vegetarian nuggets.You'll eat some nuggets.
Yeah, I will, I will partake.
But John, after Sean and I wentto the Brisbane Expedition
exhibition exhibition,
we were talking about a two
kilo nugget food optionthat you could get.
(04:40):
And John was like, oh, I couldeat two kilos of nuggets.
And that kicked offprobably an hour of us
just berating him and saying
that he had to put his moneywhere his mouth was.
Getting the commentsand let us know, like,
not if I could do it,but particularly
the nuggets in that cinema.
So my own
kilos of nuggets is so muchwhat are you talking about?
All right.
We're going to get down to.
Rabbitgetting down the rabbit hole.
(05:00):
John's going to eattwo kilos of nuggets
while we watch moreof the world. Yes.
Anyway.One more, one more before we go.
I did make a promise.
I have to shout outto my daughter, Jasmine.
Happy birthday for yesterday.She turned 30.
Happy birthday.
To you.
Hip, hip.
Hooray! Hip hip! Hooray!
Yay, paper!
I am not editing that out, but.
(05:23):
Like you could.
And just make that a little bit,just for a bit of fun.
Oh, good.
Thank you. I'msure she'll appreciate it.
I think she will. Yeah.
Two tiny ideas in the house now.
Teenage NASCAR, for allour non-American viewers,
including us, NASCAR is stockcar racing.
The original
premise was Moonshine Runners,but it came from the concept
(05:43):
that the stock,the cars were stock.
You could buy a body in ain a chassis that had to be one
that you could buy offthe stock.
Chassis when. Theythat was stock bodies as well.
So when they originally startedthere was three categories.
So they had like sport,like compact.
The main sort of cup series.
And then they had a modifiedseries.
Now the modified series
is actually still going the openwheeled, but they're just oh.
(06:05):
Is that a NASCAR series?
Yeah, it's officially a NASCAR.
It's woohoo downdown the tier list.
And they just look exactlylike NASCAR bodies.
If they just kind of likepapier maché,
whichjust the middle of the car.
So it looks like,
just a framed versionof a regular NASCAR
doesn't look like a cool openwheel.
Anyway,
so they started outwith those ones,
and it became the mainsort of series
(06:26):
became the most popular,which we call
they call it the Cup Series.
It's had lots of differentsponsors over the years,
most famously for a long timeit was the Winston Cup,
then the Nextel Cupand the Nextel Sprint Cup.
Then a Winston.
Winston was a cigaret company.
Don't do cigar.
It was a cigaret company. Yeah.And the lower tier one was the.
And I am going to talk about ita little bit.
(06:46):
I'm going to bring upthe Busch Series
and that was Busch beer.
It was yeah.
I'm like Amstrad Buschor whatever it was called. Yeah.
So that I do cover thata little bit,
I briefly glance over it,but that's what the lower tier
series was called in the 80sthrough the 90s.
Unlike other sports,they actually held
most of these sponsorsfor like 20 years at a time.
Like it was pretty impressive.
(07:07):
Well, when they had like, beerand cigarets.
Yeah. Those companiesare going to stick around. Yeah.
So so that's NASCAR now.
There's lotsof different types of tracks,
but the super speedways
are the ones that we bring
the most, the most attention tobecause they're the ones
that get covered the mostbecause they also kind of funny
big round oval tracksand they go really fast.
Are you trying to wave? He'swaving. I'm doing green flag.
Yeah. This is notas the story started.
(07:28):
So this is a visual pun.All right.
Visual green flag showing guy.
Green flag green flag.
So I'm going to talk about
three weird charactersin the history of NASCAR.
And they're allpretty interesting.
So we're gonna start offwith that first one Bobby.
The Lordwatches over idiots and drunks.
So I had them covered onboth ends. Wow.
(07:48):
Clinton Delmar Catlettwas a swimming pool contractor
from Savannah, Georgia.
Savannah, Savannah.
So I see lots of white suits.
Probably not if he was aswimming pool contractor.
He would have had money. Hey.
If he's okay, if he spilledchlorine on himself, you know.
Yeah. I mean, he wasn't like a
CSR. Yeah.
(08:09):
He began racing in this area.
It is things.
Here began racing in the secondtier of NASCAR, known then
as the Late Model Sportsman
Division in the 1970s,which became the Busch Series.
Delmar never claimedto be an amazing driver.
He just really loved the sport,loved racing.
It was his hobby.
Alreadymaking a name for himself
as a larrikin at the time,
(08:29):
he famously crashedinto a wrecked car at full speed
that was in the middleof the track to himself.
All the drivers were injured,but another.
Survived.
But another driver
was critically injuredby trying to avoid the arrow.
Amazing. Yeah, what a dick.
Yeah, he wasn't.He wasn't very good.
He did it because it was fun.
Apparently he just didn't know.
The crash guy. Paccar.
(08:49):
Yeah, he did it.
Well, it spun out like wreckedin the middle of the track.
He just didn't notice and hitit full speed.
After a rather uneventful careerin the lower tier,
he decided that it was smart
to enter the Winston Cup Series,NASCAR's highest division.
He stated that due to changes
in the structureof the lower tier, it was now
just as financially viableto race in the Cup Series
as it was in the lower tiers,
which is kind of crazythat like, they changed it
(09:11):
now, like, oh, this is whyit's going to be like, man,
I can race in the top tierand it cost me the same.
I lose and I winthe same amount of money cost.
Me the same or less. Yeah.
So in 1991, Delmar finallyqualified for the Atlanta
Journal 500 and finished 18th.
Oddly enough,it was one of his best finishes.
He actually, his highest overallfinish was 17th,
(09:33):
which was at thefirecracker 400.
At 18 stars out of.
He had 21 races total.
You know how many,how many races?
How many races?About 40 actually.
Like middle of the pack,middle. Of.
The morning, middle of the pack.
Nothing to sneeze at.
Now you say like fields of 40.
It is phenomenalwhen you see those videos
of like at the start of the race
when only 40 go by a top speed,it is like
(09:56):
like 30s.
Well, that was only five cars.
You missing 35. True.
Now, back in the old days at thesuperspeedway tracks that had
minimum speed, so they had torun like you had to be over
a certain amount of speedand it'll come up later.
But like in in the 70sand 80s was like 180mph.
They got 40 cars doing 300 carsnow, but it was.
(10:16):
Yeah, in like old cars.Pretty impressive.
Yeah. Like one wrong move.
You are dead as theseeveryone around you that.
Big steel boxes.
So there's a little bitof protection.
It's not like fiberglass.
So. Yeah.
Delmar, he specializedin the superspeedway tracks.
He'd really only likesome of the golf
as the only into the majors.
He just wentand tried to qualify
for the really big ticket oneslike Daytona and Talladega.
(10:38):
He did apparently once folk,once race in North Carolina
in 1992and did poorly, as you'd expect.
Yeah.
Throughout his career,his car numbers were small.
He only used three total.
He raced at number49 at Daytona.
Did not qualify number 37once in the lower tier.
Didn't qualify again,but most famously,
(11:00):
he was had number zeroon the side of his car.
Nice.
And the reason he picked
number zero is he said thatthat was his chance of winning.
There'sa great photo of him, like,
just like next to his carpointing at the number zero.
It will be in probablyin the supplemental content.
And just like number zero,he was just just didn't mind.
He just was happyto be part of the pack.
(11:20):
And everyonewas very fond of him.
Always a zero. Never here.
Yeah.
Pretty much in 1992 and 1992at the Daytona 500, he finally.
Made it.Now he finally made the pack.
And he actually madehis trademark quote that year
where he said, Iain't never won a race, though.
I ain't lost a party.
That's pretty sick.Due to an accident.
During qualifying,Delma managed to qualify 13th
(11:42):
nice and officiallymade the big race,
which he was very excited about.
So when he didmake the big race,
he went out and hired a doctorand he said, when we made
the race, I went out and hireda team physician.
I figured we needed a teamphysician.
I figured we needed onefor all the physical
requirements of the crew.
What does the doctorspecialize in?
He's a vet because we're all,oh, we got it.
(12:03):
Our crewis a bunch of dogs. Are.
That was an officiallike an official statement.
So I would love to see thatwith like all the sponsor
stuff behind like,you know, on the line.
Know like, well,what do you think you qualify.
Well you still had to go out,get ourselves a doctor
because I got a bunch of dogsin this team right.
(12:24):
After my car was there.
Oh it was I just got transportedto, what, 1977, 1992?
So I was very hot over here.
After qualifying,
he decided to throw a big partyfor everybody.
As you can imagine,it's larrikin.
And apparently he didn't go homeor even near the track
until Sunday.
When the race was on.
When pretty much the race,he just didn't
(12:44):
go anywhere nearany prep or anything.
Rocked up on Sunday.
Yep, that year's race had a lotof dramas and dealt with.
Managed to finish 25th,earning him enough money
to buy a big screen TVand for the travel
to the next race in Rockingham,where he finished 35th.
What, what year was this?
92, 92, 92?
Also, big TV would have beenlike a. Big flat screen TV.
(13:05):
It was huge. Yeah,it was a huge no.
It was like a huge reprojection.Oh, one of them.
Yeah. One of the bigget big dog. On its own stand.
Yeah. He's like 65.
It takes. Five men to liftI. Bigger.
The number was the numberthat he won was irrelevant.
But I think he got like $20,000for coming
25th or something like that.
Like it wasn't really too bad.
Not bad.
Delma had very little success.These. Days.
(13:26):
He had very little successafter that.
He pretty muchnever really ever qualified
for Daytona ever again.He'd rock up and try it.
And, every year until 1997,he didn't make it
his last race was the WinstonOpen of 1997,
where he was flagged offthe racetrack shortly
after the start due to the car
not passing inspectionsas it wasn't ready.
He just decided to drive it outanyway
(13:48):
when they said,start your engines.
Yeah, well.
Apparently that his
his justification was he goes,this is, it's not for pride.
It's not for price,it's for money.
And the team makes moneyif I race for the team
and he just decided to go outand try and race,
he goes,we put all this money into it.
We did everything.
Because now working on the car,the entire time
that like,I missed all the scrutiny
(14:08):
and I missed all the check oversbecause they'll still go on.
And like just beforethey said started engines,
they said I was not ready to go.
He just walked in the car andturned it on and went for it.
And they went.
Get out of here, get. Out ofhere, black flag. Off you go.
And everyone was like.
He's kind of likean independent.
He was part of all the teams,
like,a lot of them at the time were,
like, funded by whatever you hadall sorts of funny teams.
(14:30):
And I'll talk abouta weird team.
In one of the latest stories,
he had one sponsoredby like, anybody.
And basically it was dueto this thing, like, like,
how about this used to beif you qualified, you're in.
Yeah, I'mjust trying to picture that
because you would never happento know if someone just.
It would never happen today. No.
Because the entering.Into the race.
The money would be insane.
You know,like we're back in the 70s.
It was like if you had a ChevyChevelle ice and stripped
(14:51):
all the insides out of it,you could race in NASCAR.
Yeah, like it was.
It was wild.
Simpler times.
And then also there'sthis weird thing
which I'll talk aboutcalled Alabamas Right to Work.
But we'll get into that.
In 1998, he retired from racing.
Sweet home Alabama.
Yes, in 1990.
Doo doo doo doo doo doo.
Lord, I'm coming home to you.
(15:12):
Oh, no. No.
But do I need to include my hottake from the other night?
Yeah. Go ahead. Walk.
Tell us why you hate.
Oh, on. Let's get it.You have to cut it.
Why does Sean hatewhen it's getting it?
Oh, I just said my hottake is when it's gone.
It's. Yeah, I said it to the bar
the other nightand Zayn slapped me.
And in the process, he followedthrough and also slapped Irish.
This love.
Sean and then went through itall to me.
(15:33):
Three Stooges style.I guess he was rejected.
UK was.Not prepared. He was like oh
look.
I wasjust sitting there like, oh,
it was really very funnyto be a part of
what I need to tell the story.
Yeah.
So in 1998,he retired from racing at a pub.
He was sitting at a bar
and just declared his retirementto everybody.
He stated, I'm a dinosaur.
(15:54):
There ain't no roomfor guys like me no more.
To me, racing was a hobby.
Now you got to have money.Yeah, yeah.
Which is not enough.
It was around that time that.
Yeah, you couldn't do anythingunless you had
corporate sponsorship and, like,you couldn't self-fund.
You can. Yeah.
Now they almost saidsome kind of wacky.
Wacky. Stuff.
And so we found outhe was a massive racist.
(16:15):
To put in, like,his black like his, like his
laughing clown sort of act.
I thought I'd include threeof my favorite of his.
Wasn't wearing a white suit.Boy, he was wearing white.
He put the hood on.
I was gonna say,yeah, what with my curtains.
He can't.
Bring up chicken. Housesays, no.
We can't bring up the Klan.We can't.
No, you're the onethat brought up the crazy.
(16:35):
You're. He says the Klan.
We were all you know,we were alluding everybody.
All of that said, the keyword.
Everybody.
It's 60.
It's true.
Well, no, I think it'salso a major allegation.
To throw this random guy.
A very nice man by.All right. Okay.
(16:56):
Sounds like a great guy. Yeah.
Anyway, I don't knowwhere you going to play.
You requested short. I don'tknow. What you're going to.
I don't know where he got a clipthat.
He's secret is.
He's not
just clips.
Some of.
Maybe I'mgoing to edit this episode.
Yeah, I it every time threefavorite quotes from Del man.
So I. Delma delma.
(17:17):
Clinton delma count I don't knowwhere delma came from.
There was no I don't know.
There's a characterinside the park called Del Main.
And I thought this mighthave been a reference to him.
So three of my favorite quotes.
He said, one timemy spotter asked me
about a wreck in turn two,and I told him what wreck.
By the time
I got around to it,they had plenty of time
to clean it allup, insinuating he's very.
Slow behind.
(17:37):
One of his other quotes.
It's pretty simple.
All the big racespay the most money,
and if you luck up
and win the race, well,last place pays $48,000
and Lord knowsI can use the money.
I got three ex-wives.
I'm so brokeI can't pay attention.
I'm I guy. Yeah.
Which I think
I heard of thatthat I'm so broke
I can't pay attentionto the country song once.
(17:58):
And I didn't realize thatmaybe it was very common,
but let's just say that is 100%Adele MacArthur original.
But I love. It.
Oh, sir, I do say. And my.
Loss of the whole quite boileddown. My last day on the.
Board, even to pay attention.
My lost alma, while I still makequite I got smashed.
I just smashed it to the floor
and told the good Lord
(18:18):
that if he'd help me get throughturns one and two,
I'd take it from there.Yeah, not.
Sounds like all mythat rode the wall
and then changed the rules.Yeah.
Just he was a hell
of a character,and I'm sure he would have been
the most fun personto be around in the field. He.
Right. He did.
He. I can'tremember if he passed away.
I didn't how it went down.
I think he has passed.
(18:39):
But he was fairly oldwhen he retired. Like, in fact.
Check everything later.
All right.
Up next.
The disappearing driver. Ooh.
I've had this one in the notespage for like, two years,
so I'm excited to cover ittoo. Spooky.
In April 1982, in Nashville. Oh.
So October. Yep.
(19:01):
In April 1982,a Nashville newspaper
was contactedto promote a driver
that had declared
that he was enteringthe Winston 500 as a racer.
Is it Harold Hope? No.
Nation got him.
I'm just about to get onthe plane to fly over the rice
and NASCAR guys.
I'm just gonna take a swim.
(19:22):
His name was LW, right?
And he was apparently partof the Music City Racing team,
which was at the timea racing team that had drivers
in events and was sponsored by
country musicsingers and record people.
And it was like a pretty nicething.
Mo Haggard, like WaylonJennings, T.J.
Shepherd,like it was pretty popular.
Problem was,no one had ever heard of him.
(19:43):
To enter a raceonly required a few things.
He had to pay the entry fee,which he paid for the check.
He had to pay the race license,
which he also paidfor with the check,
and have a car, which he did.
I'm glad you said thatbecause I was.
I was ready to jumpon. You need a car.
He had a car.
Now, this might not seem right,but due to the rights to work
laws that existed at the time,NASCAR were obliged.
(20:06):
And as they have said,they were handcuffed
to the fact that they hadto let him into the race
like they had to let himenter qualifying. Yeah.
Like he didn'thave to make the big race,
but he was had to legallybe allowed to attempt qualifying
because he paid the feesand he had a car.
Yeah.
What you did
now, right, approachedthe head of a Nashville
based marketing agencyfor assistance
with sponsorshipand buying a car.
(20:28):
He somehow managed to talkthe head of the company,
Bernie Terrell, into giving him$30,000, a trailer truck
and 7500 dollarsto cover expenses.
Right.
Use the moneyto buy a Chevy Monte Carlo
from Sterling Marlin,a fellow racer, for $20,000,
which he paid for with17,000 in cash and a check.
Sterling was very
(20:48):
suspicious of all this money
getting thrown around froma person he'd never heard of.
Yeah, so he decided to volunteerto be his crew chief
and follow him to Talladegafor the race.
A good idea in the end.
With huge confidence and a storyabout competing in over
40 Busch Series races,
which is the lower tierthat I talked about before.
Wrightconducted a newspaper interview
(21:08):
about his entry to the race,stating that T.G.
Sheppard, a country singer,as another sponsor.
Sheppard immediately denied itand said he'd never even heard
of right or his races.
Right, then statedthat his races were actually not
part of the push series,
but they were sportsmanclasses at the same racetracks
on the same days.
Smart starting to sorry,did you think that?
(21:29):
I said Busch said. Oh,I said the Busch race track.
I said, I was there.
This began tobuild the suspicions about this
mysterious new driver,
and Sterling started to noticethat the driver would ask
questions of other racesthat any and every racer
should already know.
Hey, which pedals the fast one?
What's this circle thing do.
(21:49):
Heading out for qualification,right. All right.
Open the door.
Heading out for qualification.
Right.
Managed to qualify for the racejust in 36th spot
with a top speed of 187mph,
seven miles per hour overthe minimum requirement.
For context ofhow fast cars were at the time,
(22:10):
Benny Parsons becamethe first driver ever to qualify
at over 200mph in pole positionfor the same race.
Big difference.
13 mile an hour.
He was math.
We got a bad trackhistory of maths in there.
Yeah,we had bad the bad messing.
(22:32):
Once the green flag fell right.
Did everything in his power
to get out of the wayof the other cars.
Yeah.
After 13 miserable
laps, unable to maintain 190mph.
Probably due to fear,as you'd imagine,
he'd probably wasn'tknowing what he was doing.
He was ordered off the track.
What's most amazing, however,is that once back in the pit,
(22:52):
he abandoned the carand disappeared forever. Wow.
For 40 years must 40 years.
It's been. 40 years.
Tyrrell,the boss of the marketing agency
from beforehe managed to recover the car.
And every single checkthat rod had.
You used to pay people
for tires, jackets, parts, fuel,the car rent for his house.
(23:13):
They bounced for insufficientfunds.
Cool.
Unsurprisingly,there, Sterling was interviewed
about his disappearanceand said, I didn't.
It didn't really surprise me.I sort of expected it.
Then why did you keep giving himstuff?
That's why you followed him.
Stop expecting checks, Sterling.
He was the one that sellingthe car.
I went, oh,I'm going to follow this dude.
He didn't give him anythingelse. He's lost it.
All right.Night. All right. Yeah.
(23:35):
To be fair, he did qualify.
He did so right.
Was eventually tracked downabout 39 years later.
And a warrant had been afterhis arrest the entire time,
and they never. Risked. Arrest.
He didn't give any did like,fraudulent give people.
Yeah.
So in 2022, a podcastthat found riot interviewed him
(23:56):
to clear his name,and he got it.
He verballyconfirmed in the podcast
and with the videoabout who he was, he got him to
because obviouslyI wanted to see him in 40 years.
He brought out,
like his original racing suitwith his name stitched on
that was could be identified allthe way down to the stitching.
Yeah, everything matched up.
So he did thisbig long interview
to try and get himto clear his name.
What was his real name? D.B.Cooper.
It was.
(24:16):
Something like l likehis name was something.
Right? Yeah.
He went with LW private.His name started with. No.
So he in this podcast,he covered over
a few more specificsof the things.
In particular,you get a feeling of like
how littlehe knew what he was doing.
He brought in a crew of peoplethat were not race experts.
He just found some people alongthe way.
(24:36):
In particular,his brother was in the crew
and he remember
he stood on the trackand looked at the main straight
towards turn one and saidto his brother, God help me.
I don't knowif I'm going to be able
to make it aroundthat at the right speed.
He was like,
this is going to be sothis is going to be real scary.
Like. It's gonna be real scary.
I gotta go fast,I gotta. Go fast.
Gotta go fast.
Three was upsomething on the coast. 300.
(24:57):
There's other cars.
He had to go 300 cars now.
Like he was like, oh,in a 1966 Chevrolet Monte Carlo.
Like.
Not like that would be.
Scary in today's road.
That's scary.
And it looked like.
Can you imagine getting in my
basicallymy Volvo was newer than that.
Would you get in with a van,go 300km an hour right now?
Would you go 150km an hourin that car?
(25:19):
No, that is scary.
For the 30 40th
anniversary of that race,the podcast
that released the recordingsand the interview with.
Right, and it was a massive hit.
Unsurprisingly,the next year, Robert
was officially arrested by theUS marshals fugitive Task Force.
Oh man.
For theft,burglary and evading arrest.
What's the differencebetween theft and burglary?
(25:40):
I don't know, I didn't bother,didn't bother checking, but I'm.
At one point in my lifeI did know the difference.
I'm sure that there issome specific American thing.
I think burglary requiresyou to break in.
There we go.
He died one year laterat the age of 74.
Oh, unknown where he waswhen he died.
Therewasn't any information about it,
but he passed awayone year later. In jail.
As well. No,I'm assuming is an old man.
(26:01):
Took time.
Probably took a yearto do the damn trial. But
no cigarets, no crime.
Right? Yeah. He was.
He's been on my list for ages.
He was the oneI really wanted to cover.
And now.
That I want to be right,and he wanted to race
without any left. Hand. Well,then they left hands, you know.
That's good. That's a good joke.
(26:22):
After two G's.
Oh, geez.
Okay. Oh.
After two of the cheekycharacters in the NASCAR
cheeky verse,where now? Up to the last one.
Cheeky drivers,who is easily the most famous.
And he's not a driver this time.
(26:54):
It's smokey unique.
Okay.
If you haven't heard of SmokeyUnique.
He's actuallyquite a famous bloke.
I thought you gonna sayit was lightning McQueen.
Henry.
Smokey unique is very wellknown these days,
and this is purely due
to his utter adherenceto the theory of loopholes.
Okay, Smokey.
Already Smokey pushed boundarieslike no one else could.
Acrossmultiple disciplines of racing,
(27:16):
Smokey found ways to improvewhat a car was capable of.
Giant wings on Indy carsto reverse torque engines that
rotated the other way
for better cornering.
Yeah.
Yeah yeah. Pretty cool.
Yeah. Didn't necessarily workthat well. Still cool.
But like show you like tryingto use the centrifugal force
(27:36):
of the tail.
To turn better.That's nice. It's crazy.
I like this guybecause it's not like.
Is it a legal?
No. Is it legal?
No. Let's do it. Do it. Yeah.
And if you've never really
experienced how engines move,it's quite fascinating.
Boxer engineswere a really good example.
If you ever get on a motorcycle.
Motorcycle with a boxer engine.
No no no no no.
Oh, yeah.
(27:56):
But they go outwardsfrom each other.
I know you're doinga boxing pose, but
I got like this.
If you get on a motorcyclethat has a boxer engine
like a BMW or a motor,an automatic is a BMW.
When you twist thethrottle, the whole bike goes
and it tilts towards whicheverthe first cylinder firing is.
It's actuallyquite a funny experience.
And you can imaginethey were like. He was like.
(28:18):
That doesn't seem fun.
That pretty cool.
So just to clarify on that,the normal alignment
of cylinders in an engine
is either in a linewhich is inline or a V.
I'll do the inline one.
Yeah.
Or a V, which is like that
where they gosort of like 45 degrees.
And then a boxer,they go outwards.
Yeah.
Please don't try and explainrotary bikes.
(28:40):
No, we're not going to.
While engine.
Rotary is. Magic,it's witchcraft.
It's justyou want to look at rock magic.
It's a triangle in a circle,and it goes fast.
And it's very inefficient,but it does go fast.
And it sounds great.
And then you've got boxes,you got V got v twins.
Transversemounted v twins. Yeah.
There's all sorts of differentengine configurations.
Yeah. Anyway,
(29:02):
he even dabbledin drag racing apparently,
but I couldn't findmuch information about that.
But I think I knowbeing that he had
he had his own garage calledthe best damn garage in town.
In in Tallahassee, in Florida.
He he did some racing.
Some racing.
He did go fast.
Now, he did drive a little bit
in his lifetimeand he did some rising.
But there was a timemore of a pit crew.
(29:22):
He was an engineer.
He was an engineerand a mechanic.
By the time we get toall this stuff,
he's in his 40s and his 50sand he isn't that
fussed about racing anymore.
He wants to make cars go better.
So Smokey loved racingand he loved finding ways
to be faster, using his smarts,not his driving skills.
What yearwe in? At the moment, we're.
Now entering the 60s.
Okay, we're going to find outthat he like
(29:44):
designs like the fastbackMustang or something. No
but he I do, I cover it.
Yeah. I will brieflytalk about it. I'm sorry.
I'm just tryinga bit of Nostradamus happening.
So in NASCAR
is where some of the most farfetched rule
stretching occurreddue to the stringent rules
that were in place in NASCARat the time.
(30:06):
Due to his successin other disciplines, Smokey
and Ori ended upbecoming quite famous
and he ran the Chevrolet factoryrace team for NASCAR.
Much of the work
done on Chevy's high performance302 engine, the Hemi
at the time
using in multiple typesof racing, had Smokey's fingers
all over it.
Like this is like thethis is the pony car era, right?
Mustangs were killing it
(30:27):
and Chevroletgeneral Motors are like,
we gotta dosomething about this.
So they were trying to makethe Camaros and everything.
They're tryingto make it better.
And they raced in a seriescalled Trans Am Z28.
Well, the 22.
Z 28 was the special Fast Boy
homologation of the ChevroletCamaro. Yeah.
So the 302 Hemi,the small block V8
Smokey was involvedin the way that they did that.
(30:48):
If I was to buy a musclelike a muscle car,
like I had unlimited moneyall by myself as a 28.
They had to like.
You know,why they called Hammies?
It's something to do with
I did look it upand now I've forgotten.
Pretty sure it's becausethe pistons are hemispherical.
Yeah, not flat out flat. Yeah.
It's really,
we get in the weedswith everything
(31:09):
that Smokey unit didin his career.
He was very successfulwhen you got the Gt500.
A nice car, but I'd rather takeit a 28 Todd take.
Is that 28 as well?
Had nothing in it.
Didn't even have radio brake on.
Just like some leather trim.
It's just for fast boy.
Oh, they said you had to sella thousand to make it.
All right,so you know how many they sell?
They sell like 800in the first year.
(31:30):
And then they needed.
No, they needed they soldlike 800 in the first year.
And then the need to sella couple more
the next year to reach that.
You know, how many they soldthe next year?
6500. Yeah.
The year after that, 20something thousand.
You sayingthat reminds me of a story
and I don't knowwhere I seen it.
Might have been in researchfor an episode
and I didn't knowwhere I was going to slotted in,
but I slotted in here.
I cannot tell youwhat kind of car it was,
(31:52):
but again, I'm not payingfor rally like you have to sell.
I say a story.
From the Grand Touris it's it's yeah, to build a.
Thousand to build a thousandcars. The homologation.
Built 500.
500 went and inspected at onecar park, took the garden lunch.
And what I did that,
I drove them to another car yardand then got them
to inspect the signfrom under somewhere.
Yeah, he'sa thousand cars. Yeah.
(32:12):
This sounds like this. Dude,
this dude was.
He hada repo. He adhered to the rules.
That's not a loophole.
That's just that's justthat's just lying.
And I believeI believe that was Lancia.
I think you're right.
I think they go, yeah, Lancia.
So I went.
NASCAR said that a fuel tankcould only be 22 gallons.
Smokey was like,
okay, how. Many fuel tanks?
(32:34):
One fuel tank. Okay.
But didn't say anythingabout the fuel lines.
So, so yeah.
He replaced the fuel ones with11ft of two inch diameter pipe,
which held five gallons of fueljust in the pipes alone.
Ingenious, ingenious.
Sounds like a massive firehazard.
(32:54):
Yeah, until NASCAR found out.
Now, there's
there's this story about himdriving away with no fuel tank
like, and
and this whole thingwhere they like,
they took the fueltank of the car
and that was scrutinizing it.
And they said, like, here's
nine things that are wrongwith the car
that you need to fix,and you guys better make it ten.
And he started the carand drove away.
Apparently. Apparently that's
(33:15):
apparently that'sbeen blown out of proportion.
Apparently he did start the carwith no fuel tank attached,
and it was runningbecause of fuel lines
and five gallon ceiling.
It was at the launch.
Fascinating.
Apparently he didn't say, better
make a turn and then drove away.
But he could haveand it would be very funny.
Let's just say you did.
Another rumoris that he put a basketball
inside the fuel tank,inflated to prove that it was.
(33:38):
It fit 22 gallons,then deflated.
That somehow
deflated the basketball.And then it fit more.
But I don't thinkthat's actually true.
That'd be very, very funny.
But I don't think it's true.
He did really like
pissing off NASCARwith this kind of stuff,
and he even experimented brieflywith putting fuel
in the roll cage.
He was like,okay, to do nothing.
(33:59):
But if you went the wrong cage.
This thing designedto protect me in a crash
really has gota lot of wasted space in it.
What if I fill it with highlyflammable fuel?
It's not that. It'snot that uncommon.
Old motorcycles from the 60shave,
like all tribes,have oil in the frame.
Right?
Even some modern motorcycleshave oil
in the frame of the bikebill, for instance,
which is a sport bikethat uses Holley engines.
(34:21):
Oil is in the frame of the bike.
I'm not going to get into thatscience.
Well, this is not a car
or vehicular science podcast,but it could be anyway.
Cheeky mechanics.
So it's it's stated in the rulesthat defenders of a car
could be modifiedand removed to remove
excess weight in the car,and the front bumpers
said, could do.
(34:42):
They had to, but he could now.
Smokey was very,
very clever. He knew a lot aboutaerodynamics.
He'd been in IndyCar racing.
He was one of the first peopleto put a wing on on an Indy car.
He was like he'dseen someone experiment
with wings on openwheeled races.
He's like, it's stick a wing.
So he put
another one and another one onand then discovered
that he could cornerlike ridiculous speeds.
(35:02):
But his straight linespeed was wrong.
Like he knew about aerodynamics.
He worked out that his ChevelleSS was way faster
with the stock bumpersand the stock
fenders, but it was heavier,but it was more aerodynamic.
So he did qualifying.
He rocked upand all the other drivers like,
well,have you got of that on there?
He goes.
Doesn't say, I have to get ridof these heads.
I can get rid of them.
(35:23):
And then whenwhatever man qualified first
or like very high up and thenimmediately started cutting it
off, started like modifyingthe fenders to within the rules,
it said you could do this much.So he started doing it.
Everyone got to like, hey,you can't do that.
I guess doesn't say when.
It doesn't say when it says,I can't.
It doesn't say when they changethe rules after that.
(35:44):
Yeah, yeah.
I love stuff like thatwhere they, like,
force peopleto become more specific with.
Rules or just something happensand it forces a rule change.
Like, like I said before,the guy that rode
the wheel is never been donebefore.
Just hit the walland put the foot to the floor.
His exact quote was these rulessay you may remove them.
They don't say you have to.
The rules also don'tsay when I can remove them.
(36:05):
Realizing the effectof weight distribution on cars,
he also experimented
with shiftingthe center of gravity of a car
by offsetting the bodyto the left
to create a fastercornering car.
He just moved the body
to the left because he saidthat the dimensions of the car
had to be the stock dimensions,but it didn't say anything
about wherethose dimensions were.
(36:25):
It didn't say anythingabout relatively
to relativity, to the wheelbase.
It just said that the body hadto be the body and the chassis.
The body rollfrom the cornering.
There was less body roll for himbecause the right was already.
The weight was already overthe on the left.
He just movedthe whole body of the car.
Apparently it worked really,really well.
It in theorysounds like it would.
So they immediatelychanged the tolerances
of how far the body could be
from the axis of the wheelsand all these things like that.
(36:46):
And he was very pissy at that.I like this dude.
Yeah. For like, oh, he washe was great.
His most famous gambithas been debunked in a way.
But the legend is huge.
And it's the storyof the 7/8 car.
I don't know if you've heardthis one. It's so good.
And his 1966Chevelle, number 13,
of course,famously was said to be 7/8.
(37:08):
The size of a. Full sized car.
It's a great story, but in
reality, what he'd actually donewas he got busted.
In cold. Water.
Well, he got a bit trickybecause the dimensions were not.
The dimensions were not thatwell measured.
It was like length. Yeah.
And that was about it.
So what he did washe raised the floor of the car,
which lowered the body,
(37:29):
but it didn't likelowered the suspension
because the chassis wasthe same.
He just raised the floorso the body was lower.
He apparently moved it backthree inches.
That one's in dispute.
But that's why
if you look at photos, somehowthe front looks a bit shorter.
He, like, somehowmoved the body back on the frame
three inches to then changethe center of gravity of the car
and make it way better.
(37:50):
He did, however, modify the roofand the windows
to lower like the profileof the car to make it faster.
More aerodynamic.
Again, yes,and then just basically
make a much better balanced car.
Now he is
where the story gets a bitkooky, because I don't know
if this is true,that it could be.
Apparently he made another one
that wasn't paintedlike a race car,
and he would pocket outsidethe racetrack
(38:13):
at the front of the car park
so that if someone saidthat car's not right,
that'snot the right size of cars
going at the issue of alfrom the car by conveniently,
it's this Chevelle.Sitting right. There.
Oh, we'll just pick this one.Bring it in. Ha!
They're the same size.
It's exactly the same that
Smokey rode on.
Smokey. Smokey.
Well done. My hero. Genius.
And he had. A
(38:35):
the whole time he wrote.
Yeah he'sthat he's the huckster.
There's the CherylShelby huckster edition.
He's just he's great. Yeah.
How? Shelby. Nostalgia.
Kelly. Yeah. You show me.
Yeah. He's
he's bizarro.
Carroll. ShelbyI really like that one.
That was a good one.
Oh, Cheryl.Shelby. Smokey was. He was.
(38:55):
He was a kook. He was great.I was that smart.
That's all I got. Yeah,I like that.
Sadly, Smokeydidn't stay in NASCAR.
Past 1970.
He always had a big thingabout safety
to protect his wonderful driversthat he was very big fan of.
One of his best friendswas, one of his drivers,
Fireball Roberts. Great name.
Not a great namefor a NASCAR driver.
Not in hindsight.
(39:16):
Yeah. At the time.
Yeah,he passed. Away in a fireball.
Sensitive job.
So, he.
Won or not.
He regularly butted headswith the NASCAR
founder, Bill France senior,who's one of the guys?
He's the founder of NASCAR.
Apparently,once he threw a hammer at him,
maybe, I don't know.
He could have.
There's a storythat he threw a hammer at.
(39:37):
His nicknameshould have been Thor.
It should have been now.
In 1964,
Smokey's driver and closefriend, Fireball Roberts,
crashed in Charlotte, NorthCarolina.
After 40 days in painfrom the burns.
He finally passed away
and Smokey went on a rampage,trying to raise
the safety standards
for drivers, for the tracks,for the crew, for everybody.
After many, many setbacksand failed attempts
(40:00):
from Bill France seniorbasically no friends
to say his name right,I write it down.
I always get itwrong. Bill Francina.
After many setbacksand failed attempts, Smokey
then left NASCAR in 1970, fed up
with constantlygetting pushback about safety,
something that should have beenthe most important thing.
Yeah, ratherthan all these other antics.
Yeah.
Famously, Smokey is not
(40:21):
in the NASCAR Hall of Fame,and he should be.
And this big thingonline at the moment
about like get Smokey uniquein the NASCAR.
Hall cost us just smokey. Smoke.
Where do we need to go to?
I don't know how, but.
For Smokeyno I think he knowing nothing
about NASCAR before today.I think he needs to be included.
In the NASCAR. He's significantto the story of NASCAR.
Okay, so email Jackie taquitosemail NASCAR's customer service.
(40:45):
It sounds like he implemented
a whole
bunch of different words,like forced NASCAR to implement
a whole bunch of differentrules. Yeah, yeah.
If you ever see them with thesebig templates over top of cars.
Yeah.
Smokey NASCAR, small Chevelle.
Yeah, that'swhy I got these big templates.
Check everything okay.It's the right size. Yeah.
So I think somebody a while agogot disqualified for putting
their hand over the,
(41:06):
there'slike, vents in the windows.
They were putting their handover that
to stop the air coming inso that they had it better.
It changed the aerodynamics.Yeah. Yeah.
They're very things like thatthese days.
They are on.
Yeah.
In the 1980sSmokey designed the first safety
firewall for racing circuitsthat used tires and plywood
to absorb impactrather than steel barricades.
(41:26):
NASCAR still not trustingSmokey, did not implement it.
Okay.
His legend still lives on today,and stories of his exploits
are spun up constantly.
Whether all of them are trueis completely unimportant,
because he'll always be one ofthe most storied characters
in NASCAR history.
When he passed away,he didn't want,
like, his effects to be burdened
(41:48):
by someone managing his museum,
so he insisted that all of itbe sold
and like detailedhow everything needs to be like,
sell everything, do this, passthe money on to somebody else.
Don't make some museum for me.
Yeah, get rid of that
because he'd seen someone elsethat passed away
and like, their daughterhad to run their museum.
And he said it made himmiserable.
He's like,absolutely not sell everything.
And a lot of people have boughtlike, his cars and things like,
(42:09):
and then put themin their own museums.
But there's no smokingin a museum. What to do?
So that's NASCAR's,in my opinion, three hilarious.
Three quirkiest blogs.
Yeah, that was fun.
Yeah, NASCAR is fun.
NASCARI mean. These days not so much.
I think these daysit's a bit too
like sterile clinical.
Yeah. Yeah.
(42:29):
And also like they try and forcedrama through like
this driver doesn't like this.
Driver social mediaand all. This off with that.
Just make the cars dumband go quick.
Because the racing is the racingis pretty entertaining.
There's no DRS, there'sno like inside active stuff.
It's just inside this carand psyche the head just
doesn't go quick.
(42:49):
Like if youif you if you watch formula one
and if you're like, man,you get frustrated with things
like formula one, formulawith all.
The we are in the midst
of one of the greatest seasonsof all time.
Yeah, a formula one. Yeah.
But if you get frustratedwith all the like,
you thinkthey're overwriting stuff.
But if you're frustrated
with all the scienceand theories
and they can't follow too closebecause it affects
the aerodynamics,go watch NASCAR.
It is just a V8 motorand they just drive to.
(43:10):
Make it back.
Shake him back.
They drive itby the skin of their pants
and they just go real fast.
He's got to go fast.I gotta go fast.
I gotta. Go fast. Like it'sit's really entertaining.
So thanks.
Thanks for listening.
Spilled my macchiato.
I didn't get a chance to usethat.
I want to do.
All of the TalladegaNights and cars. But
(43:32):
please go and watch TalladegaNights in this communal.
And then what's the one thatTalladega Nights is based on?
Like it's days of Thunder?
Yeah, yeah, yeah,that's the Tom cruise one.
Yeah it is, it is.
Go watch that one too.
So this has been threeinteresting
characters in NASCAR.Yeah, that was fun.
The Three Horsemenof the apocalypse.
(43:54):
All right. That was terrible.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night. Take it easy.
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