Sebring 1960: John and Jack Win the Index

The next year I went down to Sebring as part of Bentley’s pit crew, he had a really crappy looking Elva MK.3 1100 set up with 4 Amal carbs and no paint on the body; in fact it was all lumpy. I said to myself who is this Ray Nichols guy who doesn’t know how to finish off a car? I kept doing driver schools and regional races and picked up a few trophies along the way. In 1959 the SCCA gave me a National ticket and I did one race at Montgomery airport but my drive-to-work Alfa was not competitive with the big boys from Cleveland and Chicago. It was about then that Bentley suggested we go halves on an OSCA for Sebring and we were off and running.

In February 1960, only a month before the race, Bentley went to the docks in Long Island to pick up the OSCA, which had just arrived from Italy. We had master mechanic John Sabiston install 2 additional headlights for night driving. With great élan, we named our racing team Ecurie Lapin Agile. (Agile Rabbit)

There was room below the factory headlights for one-gallon zerex cans to be used as enclosures. Sabiston had a Mark X Jaguar which made a good tow car. He mounted an extra gas tank on the trailer with a remotely controlled electric pump to transfer fuel into one of the fender-mounted tanks of the Jag; this provided extra cruising range. Good thing the safety marshals didn’t see this one.

Sebring was a two-day trip in those days (no Interstates). We managed to avoid all the speed traps in Georgia (or maybe they were race fans). We arrived at our quarters in a house near DeSoto City owned by a retired Marine Colonel, whose name is lost to the ages. What I do remember is, don’t ever park the racecar on the Colonel’s grass.

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When we went over to get registered, we found that Firestone was offering prize money if we would use their crummy tires. Money was nice and we decided to take the gamble even though the lap times would probably suffer. We were informed that the Firestones were 520 x 14 inch passenger-car tires for a Plymouth Valiant made in their Canadian factory. OSCA provided 3.5″ wide rims as standard equipment; later I bought a set of Junior wheels with 4.5″ rims (but here I’m getting ahead of the story).

Practice was uneventful, the factory had everything screwed together correctly and it appeared that three-hour shifts between refuelings with the 60-litre tank would be feasible with maybe twenty minutes to spare. Then we noticed a transverse wave develop across the tread of the Firestones as the concrete abraded the polybutadiene. (The transverse tread wave also developed gradually during the race.) It did not seem to be a safety problem, but proper racing tires don’t do that.

In practice, I had one interesting occurrence while chasing a Corvette. He blew his engine right in front of me leaving bits and pieces all over the concrete. I think I ran over a distributor; there wasn’t much ground clearance on the OSCA, so I was concerned about my manhood but the only thing that happened was a crease on the underside of the aluminum.

The race strategy was for Bentley to do the first shift and then I would do the night driving since my 28-year-old eyes were presumably in better shape than John’s. The start was at 10 am Saturday and we were off and running. Bentley did a 3:59.13 lap on lap #15. Great, but we had to slow him down to conserve Canadian tires.

At 1 pm the car got fuel and a fresh driver, me. I was cruising around having a good time watching all the Ferraris scream past down the Warehouse Straight, a piece of road that was only two lanes wide. I began to overtake an Alfa Spider, its enormous glass windshield still in place, holding it back. The Alfa, although being blue flagged, refused to make way and up behind me came this red thing with 3 liters and 12 cylinders. Think fast, Captain Flagg (that was a famous radio show from 1945). I held my left wheels on the left edge of the pavement and the Alfa fortunately did likewise on the right edge. With my right arm I waved the Ferrari through in the center lane which he promptly did. Talk about being eaten alive by sharks.

A while later I was interested to see Rees Makins with the 1.5 liter OSCA trying to dig his way out of the sandbank at the end of that same straight. Was I glad I didn’t have to do any of that, because at about 3:30 in the afternoon in the open rotisserie of an OSCA, on the hottest day of the year, and I started to feel really terrible. I did a couple more laps and knew I couldn’t handle any more. When got to the pits, they helped me out, seeing as I was white as a sheet.

There was an air-conditioned motor home nearby and they put me inside and tanked me up with Gatorade. In about twenty minutes I was fine. The lesson for me: always carry some sugar cubes in my coveralls pocket when I’m driving.

Close on to 7 pm the air temperature was cooling off, it was time for my shift. There was somewhat less traffic now; some of the cars were now having mechanical problems. Something like a Lola Mk 1 or an Elva or a Lotus Elite is too lightly constructed to stand up to the pounding a chassis gets at Sebring. I was cruising around minding my own business, lots of light provided by the four headlights when suddenly about 9:30 pm, I am cut off at the 45 deg left bend following the start/finish by a slowly moving Ferrari (what did that guy think he was doing? Or maybe he was just disoriented). The only thing I could do is lock up all four and try to avoid him. I got it sorted out, restarted the stalled engine and drove off.

Pretty soon I discovered the brakes had gone away. It’s decision time: shall I report to the pit for a brake bleed or shall I continue? I elected to continue using mostly engine braking to get the car thru the corners. I crossed the finish line at just about 11 hrs 58 minutes elapsed. I did a cool-down lap. It feels good to relax. I reported to the pit lane & dragged my left shoe on the pavement to get the car stopped.

The official elapsed time for car 63 according to the IBM computer is 12:01.59 but only the 12 hrs exactly counts. What counted is that we won the Index of Performance, second only in importance to the overall victory itself. If the winning Porsche RS 60 of Hans Herrmann and Olivier Gendebien had been only 4 sec. faster in the 12 hrs they would have been credited with a 197th lap and taken the Index prize. Such is motor racing.

The crew bled the brakes on the car and restored the stopping power to the OSCA but I had a big blister on my right foot from pushing the pedal too hard, this slowed me down for a few days. I was also stone deaf from the exhaust (pipes on right side of car but still much too loud). Lesson learned: wear earplugs. The $500.00 (per driver) check from Ray Firestone was nice to get, as was the engraved Omega self-winder watch which I am still using. Still have that nice silver Amoco trophy, too. Bentley had a duplicate made so we both had our own trophies, which was very nice of him, for forty-four years later the OSCA’s current owner (at the time), Oliver Collins, was able to appreciate the car’s most significant trophy.