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: It’s official. Michael Schumacher, the most successful F-1 driver of all time, will close out his fabulous and sometimes controversial career at the end of the season.
Schumacher and Ferrari kept the fans and media in limbo all through the Italian Grand Prix weekend. As the race ended, Ferrari officials handed out a press release saying that Schumacher was retiring. Then, after he had won the race, Schumacher finally explained things, first on TV then in a press release.
“At the end of the year, I’ve decided together with the team, that I’m going to retire from racing,” he said. “It has been an exceptional, really exceptional time, what motorsport has given to me in more than 30 years. I’ve really loved every single moment of the good and the bad times. Those ones make life so special.”
He made his decision after this year’s United States Grand Prix.
“It has obviously, naturally, been difficult in a way,” Schumacher said. “But at one moment I simply knew that all the effort, all the energy, all the motivation you need in order to be competitive — and that’s’ the only reason I want to be here — I can’t see I’m going to have that for further years.”
Winners: Dan Wheldon did all he could by winning Sunday’s IRL Peak Antifreeze Indy 300 at Chicagoland Speedway, but it wasn’t enough to keep Sam Hornish Jr. from winning the championship that was decided by a tiebreaker.
It’s the first time in IndyCar Series history that a tiebreaker was used to determine the champion. Both drivers finished with 475 points, but Hornish won the title with four victories to Wheldon’s two.
As expected, it was a fight to the finish, with the only four drivers in contention for the title racing each other all day. Wheldon defeated Target Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Scott Dixon by .1897 seconds.
Hornish was third, with Penske Racing teammate Helio Castroneves fourth and Ed Carpenter Jr. fifth.
“This is perhaps a bittersweet end,” said Wheldon, who won last year’s championship with Andretti Green Racing. “I was very determined to win. I have had a frustrating year, and I didn’t want to let it slip away.”
40 Years Ago — 1986
News: The 1987 running of The Winston, A NASCAR Winston Cup race for winners only, will be held at Charlotte Motor Speedway, May 17, a date in the past used by Delaware’s Dover Downs for the first of its two annual Winston Cup events.
Gerald H. Long, president and chief executive officer of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co, made the announcement at a news conference at the company’s Winston-Salem, N.C., headquarters.
Long said the purse for The Winston will be boosted to $600,000, a $100,000 increase over 1986.
The RJR executive alson announced that the companion race in 1987 will be called the Winston Open. The 100-lap, 150-mile race will have a $200,000 purse.
All drivers who enter and attempt to qualify for a NASCAR Winston Cup race in 1986 and through the Winston 500 in 1987 will be eligible to compete in the Winston Open at Charlotte. The race will include the fastest 30 qualifiers.
And the winner of the Winston Open will earn a starting spot in the 1987 running of the Winston, thus giving him a chance to win two races in one day.
Winners: In one of the most thrilling finishes in midget auto racing history, Rich Vogler held off Tom Bigelow to score the closest victory in the 34-year history of the Hut Hundred midget race at Indiana’s Terre Haute Action Track.
Vogler, driving the Jonathan Byrd Volkswagon, finished about 12 inches ahead of Bigelow in the 100-lap race around the half-mile dirt track, with fast qualifier Kevin Olson third, Steve Lotshaw fourth and Paul Clark fifth.
With 12 feature victories here, Vogler becomes the winningest USAC driver in Action Track history. His triumphs include eight midget victories and four sprint car triumphs. Sunday’s conquest was Vogler’s fifth in the past six runnings of the Hut Hundred and fourth in a row.
“On those last laps, the bottom started going away and the top was coming in, and that’s when I got worried because that’s where Bigelow started coming up on me later in the race,” Vogler explained. “This track is different every time you run it, but that’s why they call it the Action Track.”
60 Years Ago— 1966
News: The Automobile Racing Club of Florida surprised the racing world with the announcement that the 1967 Florida 12-hour International Grand Prix of Endurance will be shifted from Sebring to West Palm Beach.
Alec Ulmann, president of ARCF, said through public relations director Walter Haessner, that the 1967 Grand Prix will be held on a new course to be built that will cost more than $1.5 milliion.
“The Auto Racing Club of Florida is indebted to the city of Sebring for its cooperation over the last 15 years in allowing the Florida 12-hour Grand Prix to be held there annually,” said Ullman. “But due to the expansion in industrial development in Sebring and other circumstances it was necessary that the new race site be located.
“With the increase in attendance in the last two years, it was becoming more and more difficult for the spectators to find suitable accommodations that are expected for an International race.”
Joseph Buchek, a Riviera Beach road building contractor and president of Palm Beach Int’l Raceway said: “It was a great day for me personally as well as for the Pal Beach race corporation when it was agreed they would host the Florida 12-hour race in the future.”
The two-year-old Palm Beach layout which has yet to host an international race, will be expanded from its present 2.5-mile course to a circuit of more than five miles.
Winners: Mario Andretti took a giant step toward his second straight national driving championship as he capitalized on A.J. Foyt’s bad luck to win the Hoosier Hundred at the Indiana State Fairgrounds one-mile dirt track.
Andretti moved into the top spot in the point standings as he took the lead on the 98th lap after the brake pedal snapped on Foyt’s Sheraton-Thompson Special when the Texan had an unprecedented fifth Hoosier Hundred victory all but wrapped up.
It had been Foyt’s race from the start until the almost unbelievably bad luck that has plagued him all season yanked his 33rd championship victory from his grasp.
He was about four seconds ahead of Andretti when his brake pedal snapped off as he was going through the first and second turn. The four-time national driving champion hit the inside fence, damaged a wheel and slid high toward the outside rail before getting things under control.
That came on the 97th lap, and Andretti zipped by on the inside as the two went into the first turn of the 98th circuit.
The victory gave Andretti 200 points in the battle for the national championship and pushed him ahead of Gordon Johncock.
