Motor Racing : Shelby, Aston Martin to Relive Historic Win

Thirty years ago, Carroll Shelby and Roy Salvadori drove an Aston Martin to victory in the 24 Hours of LeMans.

This weekend, at Laguna Seca Raceway on the Monterey Peninsula, Shelby, Salvadori and the Aston Martin will be reunited as part of the 16th annual Monterey Historic Automobile Races.

In celebration of its LeMans win, Aston Martin is building a replica of the LeMans pit area in the paddock at Laguna Seca, complete with all three of its cars and drivers who were there.

“That was the biggest win of my career,” Shelby said before leaving his Bel Air home for the reunion. “You know, back then, LeMans way overshadowed the Indianapolis 500, world-wide. Winning LeMans at that time was as good as it could get.

“The only tragic thing about our get-together is that we lost John Wyer last April.”

Wyer, who lived in Scottsdale, Ariz., was the team manager for Sir David Brown, Aston Martin’s founder. Brown, 86, will be at Laguna Seca.

Only five DBR1 models, which finished first and second in 1959 at LeMans, were built, and four of them--including the winning one--will be on the track at Laguna Seca.

Paul Frere of Belgium and Maurice Trintignant of France, who drove the second-place car, will also be on hand, as will Stirling Moss and Jack Fairman of England, who were unable to finish the race in a third Aston Martin.

“This is probably the last time the whole group will be together,” Shelby said. “A lot of us are getting up there (in years), and Sir David is 86, so it’s going to be pretty emotional.”

Moss will be right at home. He won the Pacific Grand Prix at Laguna Seca in 1960 and 1961 in a Lotus-Climax 19.

Others who will drive the assortment of Aston Martins, some of which are valued in excess of $5 million, include former world champion Phil Hill of Santa Monica, Innes Ireland and Tony Brooks of England--all either teammates or rivals of Shelby when he drove as part of Aston Martin’s Formula One effort.

“I’m looking forward to seeing Salvadori again,” Shelby said. “I’ll remind him that he ruined the brakes in the first hour, and we had to drive 23 hours with warped calipers. But we won.”

Shelby, 66, who later gained fame as creator of the Ford-AC Cobra, is building Shelby CSX cars and Shelby Dakota pickups at his factory in Whittier. The CSX is a Dodge Shadow with a hopped-up engine, plastic wheels and a new-type turbocharger designed to eliminate lag time.

Besides 11 factory-owned Aston Martins, there will be close to 30 privately owned ones entered in the three days of racing on the historic hillside road circuit. The oldest is a 1925 Grand Prix car brought from Japan by Tetsuya Takahashi.

Although Aston Martin is the featured marque, the main event Sunday will be a race for 1966 to 1983 Formula One cars. Pete Lovely of Tacoma, Wash., who won the first race at Laguna Seca in a Ferrari when the track opened in November 1957, will drive a 1969 Lotus 49B. George Follmer, a former Trans-Am and Can-Am champion from Montclair, will drive a 1973 Shadow, a car he helped develop.

The record entry of 350 drivers will be competing on a new layout. The historic races have been staged on Laguna Seca’s original 1.9-mile course for the last 15 years, but this weekend, they will use the 2.214-mile Grand Prix loop that was built last fall so that the track could be used by the United States Grand Prix for motorcycles.

STOCK CARS--Bill Sedgwick’s win last Saturday night in the Winston West 200 at Saugus Speedway clinched the series’ rookie-of-the-year award for the Van Nuys driver. Sedgwick, 34, beat Hershel McGriff, 61, by five car lengths. McGriff earlier set a track record of 72.860 m.p.h. in qualifying. Sedgwick, driving a Chevrolet Monte Carlo, became the first rookie to win three races in a single season. He previously won at Madera and Eureka. Defending series champion Roy Smith’s third-place finish enabled him to pass Bill Schmitt for the series lead, 1,489 points to 1,485, with two events remaining, Sears Point on Oct. 1 and Phoenix on Nov. 5. . . . Saugus will celebrate Trucker’s Night Saturday as the track resumes its weekly sportsman series. . . . Sportsman cars will also be featured Saturday night at Orange Show and Cajon Speedways. . . . Five NASCAR divisions will compete Sunday night at Ascot Park in the Curb Motorsports Winston Racing Series.

SPRINT CARS--California Racing Assn. leader Jerry Meyer, who expanded his margin over Rip Williams and Ron Shuman last week by winning his sixth main event in the Parnelli Jones Firestone series, will be back Saturday night at Ascot Park, looking for a seventh win. The victory last week was car owner Bruce Bromme’s 139th CRA victory.

SPEEDWAY CYCLES--Speedway USA in Victorville will hold the fourth round of qualifying for the United States Speedway championship Saturday night. Races Sept. 7 at Ascot and Sept. 8 at Costa Mesa will set the 16-rider field for the U.S. Nationals on Oct. 7 at Costa Mesa. . . . Ronnie Correy of Fullerton finished 11th in the Intercontinental Finals last Sunday in England to gain the final qualifying spot as the only American rider in the Sept. 2 World Finals at Munich, West Germany.

LAND SPEED--The 41st running of the Bonneville Nationals, sanctioned by the SoCal Timing Assn., will start Sunday and run for a week on the Bonneville Salt Flats. The main target is the 409.27 m.p.h. record for a piston-driven machine, established by Bob Summers of Ontario in the Summers Brothers streamliner in 1965. Among the 300 entries are Jim Lattin of Pomona, president of Bonneville Nationals, Inc., drag racing’s Don Garlits and motorcycling’s Don Vesco.

MOTOCROSS--The eighth round of the Continental Motosport Club’s Dodge Truck California summer series will be held Sunday at Sunrise Park in Adelanto. The series will end Aug. 27 at Carlsbad Raceway. . . . CMC riders will hold their weekly meeting Friday night program at Ascot Park.

DRAG RACING--Jet dragsters, alcohol funny cars and top gas dragsters will run Saturday at Los Angeles County Raceway in Palmdale.

OFF-ROAD--Young Robby Gordon’s domination of the Nevada 500 race was so complete that he brought his Ford pickup home nearly one hour ahead of runner-up Danny Letner’s Porsche-powered two-seat desert buggy in the 441-mile race. Gordon finished in 7 hours 58 minutes, Letner in 8 hours 41 minutes. It was the second overall win for Gordon, who also won the Baja Internacional.

HOSPITAL REPORT--Indy-car driver Phil Krueger, 38, remained unconscious in Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, where his condition is listed as serious. Krueger, who went to high school in Tustin, has not regained consciousness since his car hit the wall Aug. 6 during the Marlboro 500 at Michigan International Speedway. He also suffered broken ribs and a broken left arm.

NECROLOGY--Ole Bardahl, whose Miss Bardahl hydroplanes won six national championships, five Gold Cups and two world championships, died of emphysema last week in Seattle, his hometown since 1922. Bardahl, 87, also sponsored cars for 21 years in the Indianapolis 500. Four times they finished third, twice driven by Rodger Ward and once each by Jimmy Davies and Bobby Unser, the last time in 1969.