“Stilfontein, Johannesburg and Victoria were the three tracks we mainly raced at. I won at all three race tracks and I brought home five all silver trophy cups. We didn’t really get anything but trophies, but my trip was all paid so that was a fun deal for us.”
Hamilton made his Copper World Classic debut in 1978. At the time, the Copper World Classic was the richest and most prestigious pavement sprint car race on the West Coast. The “Pink Lady” felt right at home on the one-mile Phoenix Raceway oval. In 10 Copper World Classic starts, Hamilton finished outside of the top 10 only three times. He was victorious in 1980 and ’84.
“I bought the Pink Lady from Art Segia before the 1980 Copper World Classic and took it down there. That’s the first time I won it,” Hamilton explained. “George Snider qualified and broke the track record. I went out and broke his record. I’m a damned farm boy from Idaho and that couldn’t be. So Dennis Wood goes back to Snider and says, ‘You wanna go out and try to retake it?’ He said, ‘No, no, I already had a beer.’ Dennis gave him the pole and me the track record. I won the race. For a farm boy from Idaho, it was a big deal to me.”
From 1981-’82 Hamilton attempted to race an Indy car on his own dime. After two failed attempts to crack the Indy 500 starting lineup, Hamilton bowed out of Indy car racing.
“Prior to 1981, I bought an Indy car from Rolla Vollstedt that he had started Janet Guthrie in. It was out of my own pocket, but I did have a sponsor that was supposedly gonna give me $60,000,” Hamilton explained. “He did give me a check for $10,000 and I went back to Indianapolis. Of course, it costs a lot of money. My sponsor was gonna put money in my bank account every week until I got to $60,000. After the first week my bank called and said a check bounced, and I had insufficient funds.
“I call the guy. He had been in commodity markets and made a bad buy, and wrote a bum check,” Hamilton added. “He loaded up his family and moved to Canada overnight. I lost an engine and couldn’t get the second one to run. I loaded up after the second weekend of qualifications and came home in debt.”
Today, at age 82, Hamilton shows no signs of slowing. He participated in a supermodified event this past December in Las Vegas and has a full schedule of West Coast vintage events planned with the “Pink Lady.” He will once again be the center of attention during the annual Pink Lady Classic, run in honor of his famous car at Meridian Speedway in late September.
Hamilton will be inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Iowa, on June 3.
This story appeared in the March 29, 2023 edition of the SPEED SPORT Insider.
