Editor’s Note: In a nod to our 92 years of history, each week SPEED SPORT will look back at the top stories from 20, 40 and 60 years ago as told in the pages of National Speed Sport News.
20 Years Ago — 2006
News: NASCAR already has conquered every other form of racing in the United States. Now it has stolen away one of Formula One’s top drivers.
Juan Pablo Montoya stunned the racing world Sunday when the Colombian driver announced he’ll be leaving the McLaren F-1 team for the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series in 2007.
Montoya, who won the Indianapolis 500 in 2000 and the CART championship in 1999, will replace Casey Mears in team owner Chip Ganassi’s three-car stable. Montoya drove for Ganassi in CART in 1999 Nextel Cup and 2000.
Montoya will become the first F-1 regular to join the Nextel Cup ranks when he becomes the driver of the No. 42 Dodge.
“Juan Pablo is one of the best race-car drivers in the world,” Ganassi said. “He is a former CART champion, Indy 500 winner and Formula One driver that will bring a much-needed veteran presence to our team.”
The 30-year-old Montoya has made 137 starts in the CART, IndyCar and F-1 ranks. He has a combined 18 wins, 26 poles, 60 top-five and 79 top-10 finishes.
Over his five complete seasons in Formula One, Montoya has finished sixth or better in the standings.
He captured the CART championship and rookie honors in 1999, becoming the youngest champion in the history of the series. The following year he visited victory lane three times for the Ganassi team, including a win in the Indianapolis 500.
His arrival is huge news for NASCAR, which will benefit tremendously with international television rights and a presence in South America.
Winners: It wasn’t easy or pretty, but Jeff Gordon finally won a Nextel Cup race at Chicagoland Speedway.
The victory in Sunday’s USG Sheetrock 400 was Gordon’s first at Chicagoland, and it moved him into 10th place in the point standings.
Gordon tapped leader Matt Kenseth on the rear bumper with four laps to go, sending Kenseth into the infield and giving Gordon the lead.
In a somewhat subdued TV interview after the race, Gordon hinted that he thought Kenseth blocked him.
”I got in there real hard, and he blocked me a couple times, and I got back in the gas,” Gordon said.
Gordon denied that the on-track problem and subsequent shoving match between the two at Bristol, Tenn., precipitated the incident.
Kenseth, who made contact with rookie David Stremme and spun into the outside wall on the final lap, disagreed with Gordon’s remark about the Bristol incident.
“It was intentional, yes,” Kenseth said. ”NASCAR brought him into the trailer (at Bristol), and he’s too smart to do anything the next week or the week after that. I know it was intentional. It wasn’t an accident. He just ran over me.”
Kenseth accepted partial blame.
”I was so tight in the middle I knew he would catch me,” Kenseth said. ”He was so much faster in two laps, and he could have passed me clean.”
40 Years Ago — 1986
News: The Bavarian Motor Werke shocked the international racing community last week when it announced it would no longer supply engines for Formula One racing after this season. The Brabham, Benneton and Arrows teams utilize the four-cylinder BMW unit designed by Paul Rosche.
Starting in 1987, the company’s motorsports activities will be centered on Group A sedan racing, the BMW statement said. The company will soon introduce its new M3, an answer to the Mercedes Cosworth 190, and a new M6 model.
BMW officials said their decision to withdraw from Formula One after four seasons of supplying engines – which resulted in one world championship in 1983 – was due to the necessity of controlling an entire team, which means building its own car, which was felt unfeasible. Such a move would have required too much manpower and money, so the decision to withdraw was made.
Unconfirmed reports indicate Renault is considering whether to continue supplying engines to F-1 teams. The Lotus, Ligier and Tyrrell teams rely on the French V-6 powerplant.
A spokesman for the U.S.-based IMSA BMW team told National Speed Sport News the company’s withdrawal from Formula One would have no bearing on BMW North America’s racing plans. The engines used in IMSA are bored-out versions of the F-1 engine.
Winners: Danny Sullivan won his second consecutive CART Championship race and projected himself into the battle for the PPG Cup Sunday.
The 36-year-old former New York City cab driver had a relatively easy afternoon of it in the Miller American March.
He was able to ease off the throttle the last third of the race and still win the Budweiser Cleveland Grand Prix by 44.25 seconds over runner-up Michael Andretti, who drove the KracoSTP-Lean Machine March.
Sullivan’s only real challenge evaporated at the 60-lap mark of the 88-lap, 218.5-mile event when an engine problem sidelined Emerson Fittipaldi, the twice world’s champion from Brazil.
Emmo had led the first 28 laps of the sunbaked road race on bumpy Burke Lakefront Airport and was the only driver able to run competitively with Sullivan.
A quicker service stop by the Penske team had allowed Sullivan to go from a two-second deficit before they each made their first pit stop at 28 laps to a lead of the same duration over Fittipaldi. A similar advantage on the second set of stops after 58 laps furtherboosted his lead to about 10seconds.
Sullivan incurred a stop-and-go penalty for brushing against a tire leaving the pit after that one. But it became meaningless when Fittipaldi parked his Marlboro March/Cos worth just before turn 11 after losing oil pressure two laps later.
Coming in for the penalty stop, Sullivan saw him parked there and breathed a sigh of relief.
Abandoning the Roger Penske team’s Penske/Chevrolet at least temporarily, Sullivan achieved his victory in a Cosworth (engined March the team said was virtually a brand-new car. He averaged a record 127.106 mph, beating the old mark of 124.081 set last year by AI Unser Jr. by more than 3 mph.
The victory jumped Sullivan into third place in CART /PPG Cup points with 65, only one behind Tom Sneva, who finished fifth Sunday. Michael Andretti’s 16 points for the runner-up spot, boosted his series-leading total to 86.
60 Years Ago— 1966
News: The Ferrari Motor Co. suspended racing activities last week because of a mechanics’ strike and pulled its cars out of the British Grand Prix.
The company said if the labor situation returned to normal their cars might make the German Grand Prix on Aug. 7, but could not make a firm commitment.
The strikes have been staged at intervals since June 1 as part of a nationwide effort to produce a new contract for the metal and engineering workers.
“Our sports department had been in trouble because of this,” the company said in a statement. “Our defeat in Le Mans was due to a good extent to insufficient preparation due to the strike.”
Ferrari employs 424 in its sports department and only about 30 refused to join the strikers, the company said. Ferrari said the 30 were under pressure to take part in the strike and they worked mostly at night, arriving at the factory after midnight to avoid the pickets.
The company canceled its daylight tryouts during the strike. A few menchaics went undercover to the French Grand Prix last month.
Winners: Leading all but six laps, polesitter David Pearson drove his 1965 Dodge to an easy victory over rookie Jim Hylton to win the Bridgehampton 150-mile stock car race Sunday.
Pearson lost his main competition before the race when Richard Petty was forced to scratch his 1966 Plymouth because of a damaged engine bearing.
Hylton, in a Dodge, in which Pearson had campaigned Iast season, gave the winner an unexpected battle, taking the lead for the six laps after Pearson made his first pit stop.
Third at the end of the 52 laps over the 2.85-mile course was Marvin Panch, driving a 1964 Ford.
Pearson, thus, won his 10th victory of the season and took aim at the NASCAR record of 18 set in 1952 by Tim Flock.
Pearson, who drives for the Cotton Owens Factory Dodge team, has 22 more races in which to make it. His average speed for this first stop of a four-race northern NASCAR tour was 88.3 mph.
He lapped all of the 22 cars that finished except Hylton.
