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| Racing
Legend Smokey Yunick dies DAYTONA BEACH - Henry "Smokey" Yunick, one of auto racing's most brilliant mechanics and innovators, died early Wednesday morning at his home after a year-long battle with leukemia. Yunick, 77, was born in Neshaminy, Pa., and settled here in 1946 after serving as an Air force bomber pilot in World War II. His first glimpse of Daytona Beach was from a pilot's seat in a B-17. After one look, he decided to call this area home once his tour of service was complete. In 1947, he opened an automobile repair shop on Beach Street he dubbed "The Best Damn Garage In Town." He closed the garage to the public in the mid-1980s but continued work on his research and development projects. Yunick quickly became a major player in the racing community here, boasting several big victories on the old beach-road course before winning both the Daytona 500 as a car owner and the Indianapolis 500 as a mechanic. His black Pontiacs with gold trim twice claimed the Daytona 500, with Marvin Panch in 1961 and Daytona native Fireball Roberts in '62. Yunick's cars won four of the first eight Winston Cup races at Daytona International Speedway. Turning the clock back even further, Yunick was the chief mechanic for Herb Thomas, who won Winston Cup (then known as Strictly Stock) championships in 1951 and '53. According to the Stock Car Racing Encyclopedia, Yunick had 61 starts as a car owner, scoring eight career victories. He won more than 50 times as a crew chief, chief mechanic or engine builder. He scored 49 victories working with Thomas in the early 1950s. Yunick was especially fond of bending the NASCAR rule book. In 1968 during Speed Weeks, NASCAR officials pulled the gas tank out of his Pontiac after they thought his car was getting excessive fuel mileage. After passing a rigid inspection, Yunick got in the car-- with the gas tank lying on the ground -- fired it up and drove back to his space in the garage area, leaving NASCAR inspectors dumbfounded. "Smokey looked and saw where the NASCAR rule book wouldn't define something and he'd make his own improvisations," said Bobby Allison, who made a couple of starts in Yunick-prepared cars. "There's that gas tank story. The gas tank was the right size but he made the fuel line so it held a couple of gallons of gas. So he was able to drive away without the gas tank. I don't want to say he didn't step outside the lines, but he was really smart about those things." Racing was fun for Yunick. Building a car from the ground up to assault Indianapolis Motor Speedway was his absolute first love. His open-wheel creations made 10 appearances at the famed Brickyard between 1958 and 1975. He won the Indy 500 in 1960 when the car he prepared carried Jim Rathmann to Victory Lane. In 1959 he brought a car with the engine turned upside down. He called it the Reverse Torque Special. The car finished seventh. In 1964 he showed up at Indy with the strangest machine ever to turn laps at the 2.5-mile track. It was his "sidesaddle" car wheeled by Bobby Johns. "The whole car was built out of backyard kind of stuff," said Yunick. Yunick worked with some of the greatest race car drivers in the 20th century, including Hall of Famers Tim flock, Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt, Curtus Turner, Bobby Unser, Buck Baker and Paul Goldsmith, who captured the last Daytona Beach-road course race in 1958. "We've lost one of the greatest mechanics to ever work in our sport," said Ray Evernham, who fields two stock cars in Winston Cup. Tired of what he perceived as politics in stock-car racing, Yunick stopped fielding a Winston Cup entry in 1970 after a heated argument with NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. Even though the two racing giants lived in the same town, they hardly spoke to each other for the next 20 years. France died in 1992. Yunick battled health problems over the last few years. He was admitted to Halifax Medical Center more than two weeks ago for treatment of pneumonia. He had recently started chemotherapy in hopes of sending the leukemia into remission. The treatments failed. A steady stream of family and friends visited his hospital bedside until he went home on Tuesday. He died at 1 a.m. Wednesday with his family around him. "I feel like hell," he told the News-Journal in a hospital interview on April 27. "I wouldn't wish this on anyone." Yunick was easy to recognize. Most of the time he would be dressed in a bright white overalls and a cowboy hat as he chewed on a corn cob pipe. "Smokey was quite a character," said Tony George, president of Indianapolis Motor Speedway. "That's what racing needs today, more characters. He will be missed." Yunick had no formal education but was considered one of the top minds in automobile engine design. He helped develop Chevrolets original small-block engine in 1955. The basic blueprints of that design are still used in racing to this day. Yunick also did research and development on hydraulics, fuel intakes and engine mileage. He built an engine in the 1970's that he boasted could go nearly 100 miles on a gallon of regular gasoline. He also was interested in creating other gadgets. During the energy crisis in the mid 1970s, he built a windmill and solar panel over his shop hoping to generate enough electricity to power his business. Yunick was never afraid of a microphone or stating his honest opinion. "He never wanted for words, whether it was a cuss word or a nice word," said Ray Fox, who worked with Yunick in the 1950's before starting his own racing operation. "He was one heck of a guy." Motorcycle racing was Yunick's first foray into the speed business. At 16, he had a short career but earned his nickname by piloting a motorcycle with an engine that smoked. A fellow competitor who had trouble remembering Yunick's first name simply called him "Smokey." Despite failing health, Yunick continued to frequent racetracks across the country, with his wife Margie by his side, as a spokesman for an oil additive. Most recently Yunick was working on two projects. The first was writing a book dealing with his life and racing exploits. The three-volume work will be released July 6. "The people who knew how things really were in racing's early days were all gone," said Yunick, explaining why he wrote the tell-all trilogy. He penned numerous magazine articles during his long career. He had the ear of Detroit's automakers and even found time to do some consulting work for NASA. His other recent project was leading a charge for improved safety measures in racing. Yunick was preparing a round-table discussion of safety issues with some of the industry's top names at a conference in Indianapolis in November. Yunick was in the first group of 20 men inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1990. Survivors in addition to his wife include three sons, Smokey Jr., Holly Hill, Sam, Jacksonville, and Steve, Ormond Beach; a sister, Renee Walker, Rockwell, Texas; and nine grandchildren. Donations may be made to the Stewart-Marchman Treatment Center. Ormond Funeral Home, Ormond Beach, is in charge. Article courtesy of THE NEWS-JOURNAL; Thursday, May 10, 2001, (section A:page 1); Godwin Kelly |
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