Last year I did a story on Vic Edelbrock and some of his vintage cars. Among
them, the Smokey Yunick "cheater" Camaro for Trans-Am. Park it alongside a
legal (i.e. Penske) Camaro of late '60s vintage and the differences become
obvious.
Thing is, in vintage/historic events, Edelbrock runs it in its full cheater
configuration because, historically, that was what the car was! The point of
vintage is not really to win races or even see who has the fastest car, but
to exercise cars from the era on the track and if they have some history all
the better. Yunick's car definitely has history, so it is appropriate that
it run in the configuration in which it made that history.
It should be noted that, according to Edelbrock, Yunick really set the car
up for record runs on the Salt Flats, and AFAIK it never actually raced
Trans-Am in that configuration, but it did show up for a Riverside Trans-Am
test day once and rather embarrassed all the others that day. Of course, if
you know anything about Smokey, you know he loved the stir it caused.
--Rocky Entriken
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Babcock <BillB@bnj.com>
Cc: fot@autox.team.net <fot@autox.team.net>
Date: Wednesday, August 08, 2001 6:59 PM
Subject: Justification for cheating
>I overheard this the other day at a Vintage race and loved it so much I
>thought about getting a plaque made. Giving Tim static about LEGAL made me
>remember it. The gist of the conversation was this guy said he was more
>likely to bend the rules in a vintage race car than in the SCCA. Because
>in Vintage it doesn't matter, the cars are all so different anyway. And he
>races vintage because it's the best seat in the house for looking at
>wonderful cars at speed--he just wanted to move his seat to the front.
>
>I almost blew root beer out my nose.
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