Trans Am

The 1969 SCCA Trans Am series was a big deal for the road racing faithful, and we showed up at Seattle International Raceway in force. Dan Gurney, Mark Donohue, Peter Revsen, Parnelli Jones, and others were winners in Formula 1 and Indy Cars. There were two Mustang teams, Carroll Shelby (pictured here) ran one with blue cars (Peter's car was #1 had a flourescant orange rear view mirror) and Bud Moore ran the other team.
Dan Gurney's Indy car used Olsonite as a sponsor, and sure enough, it's on his #2 Mustang.










Of course, Mark Donohue got Pole Position in Roger Penske's Sunoco #6 Camaro. And somehow fittingly, it was the prettiest car on the track. Mark Donohue went on the win the Indy 500 and race in Formula 1, where he met his unfortunate end. He had written a book called "The Unfair Advantage", and it's highly recommended. The cover shows Mark in Roger Penske's Sunoco Porsche 917 CanAm car, which was reported to develop 1000 bhp from it's turbocharged flat 12 boxer motor, but that was years later.

Big Jerry Grant was there, too. He had also raced Indy Cars, and AMC had signed him to drive their Javelin #3. I love this photo, because it shows big Jerry with a camo hat, but there is a yellow flower on his dashboard. Note the door handle, because this is a stock car, in the purest sense.
The race was won by Ronnie Bucknum in Roger Penske's #9 Sunoco Camaro, who had lapped everyone.
And the last photo is Parnelli Jones in Bud Moore's #15 Mustang at speed over the rumble strips at the apex - well, the front tires is on the concrete, but the rear isn't, and it would loose traction if it did.

Summer of 1969

A lot of people went to Woodstock in the summer of 1969, but I went to the races with my Petrie FT SLR and it's 200mm telephoto lens. The first race was the SCCA Formula Continental Championship Series at Seattle International Raceway near Kent, WA. There were several classes of cars, and Formula 5000 had the biggest engines, 5 liter V-8 from Chevy, Ford and others. Number 77 here has a Chevy engine which shares parts with the Trans AM cars and was driven by Fred Corbett. This race was won by former RAF pilot John Cannon in number 2, one of Dan Gurney's Eagles with a Chevy engine.
I remember very impressive fast lap times (compared to the local sports cars driven by weekend warriors), in these light powerful cars with high wings mounted over the rear of the car. Only the latest from McLaren, Lotus and Lola had wings on the front of the car, and they weren't faster, possibly because those wings created more drag than downforce? Here's a shot of what looks like a McLaren in the pits being admired.
Little know fact - we have a corkscrew on the backstraight, coming off of turn one, down a hill, with a tight right handed, then left handed turn on to the straight. During the race, we would watch them enter turn one, then run over to the esses (as we called it) where the cars were slower and we could see them longer.