- 2 -  Notes roughly coordinated with Tam McPartland's Old Race Car site  - 2 -

Bob Bondurant: Bondurant was a promoter in many ways. I believe he had something to do with the SCCA Regional/National Orange County International Raceway (OCIR) races I worked as a Steward Of The Meet, late 60s, early 70s. I spent most of the two days in the tower near what would have been the drag strip start line. Bondurant was there much of the time I was. He was pleasant, very quick to pick up the moods and threads fluctuating around him, and frequently funny in a subtle way. He also brought a strikingly attractive woman into the tower, an act that endeared him to the rest of the men in there.

When my daughter married I offered her a choice: she and her husband could do a three-day Bob Bondurant school (at Sears Point, in those days) or go on a Caribbean cruise. She chose the cruise. I felt as if I had somehow failed, even though she had become a local autocross champion and national competitor. Several years later her choice came up in conversation, and her husband was miffed: he'd never heard the offer. Guess what his choice would have been? He's a top time of day driver in his rotor-motor Spitfire.

Dave MacDonald: I really enjoyed watching him run that Corvette-like special. It was vivid Orange Orange, as I remember. It seemed graceful compared to the actual Chevies.

And of course there was the flying fiberglass incident at Pomona: I remember an experience with the MacDonald "00" production Corvette. Just before the location where you see the MG TD and the Healey going around a left sweeper in the Pomona photos, the track bent to the right, around one flag station. Another flag station was a little to the left of a line continuing that straight, and on the inside of the track. I was working that outside station, facing traffic, during one Corvette race.

MacDonald and someone were racing very hard and came together in Turn Two or Three, fracturing some of MacDonald's left-side fiberglass. A relatively flat piece twelve or fifteen inches square hung on the car until just before the right turn. When it flew off it spun flat, like a Frisbee™, sailed most of the fifty yards from the track to the flag position, and skidded the rest of the way, sliding to a stop at my feet. I took it to the Steves Chevrolet pits after the races, and the mechanics seemed happy to have it.

Jack Brabham: I don't remember much about him, although we were at several Riverside Raceway events at the same time. I believe on one occasion he was saddled with a sluggish Jaguar prototype, well before the XKE hit the market. (See a photo from the Road & Track report on the 1960 Times Grand Prix For Sports Cars)

(I found some clippings about one or another of these Mansfield events. It looks as if I'll have to study them to get the names and activities right.)

Hap Sharp: As a new guy in the Red River Region SCCA my first job in the race organization was with the pit control team. Hap Sharp and Jim Hall brought a Buick-powered D-type Jag to the airport at Mansfield, Louisiana. Their protégé, Ronnie Hissom, was to drive as part of his being developed into a third driver in their organization. I'm not sure if he ever fulfilled their plans for him, but he was fast, if a little wild.

As Hissom was overhauling the leader in the last few laps, Hall and Sharp crossed the pit lane, along with several of their support personnel, and stood at the edge of the track, urging him on. I walked up to them and told them they had exceeded the number of allowed crew and violated location rules, and they would have to get themselves and their workers back in line. They nodded and did. I never saw either of them, in all the subsequent years I watched them, act with anything other than courtesy, consideration, and genuineness.

Ronnie Bucknum: I was a Bucknum fan from the first time I saw him. He drove British cars and did well. How could a young MG-er not be fascinated? While he did do a Healey, I remember his giant-killer drives in an A.C. Bristol, dark red unless I am mistaken. I told everyone it had everything a contemporary car should have: independent suspension all around, overhead cam, tube frame... And it sounded good, as a six-cylinder high-tune power plant should.

When I was racing the MGB I bought a number of parts from Hollywood Sports Cars, a Bucknum sponsor in these early years.

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