In this Dave Innes photo at Pine Brook on July 24, 1970, Phil Davoulas and the Bob Pouleson #7o7 are upside down against the backstretch fence at the far left as Bing Metz (33), Doug Craig (55), Frank Holz (41), and Joe Lacy (18) pass the accident scene. Paul Weisel is facing the wrong way in Don Crabtree's #71, which had served at the launching pad for Davoulas. Here’s the story, as told by Paul. It’s a long story, but it captures the time perfectly.
Bob Wilkey and Larry Rice were graduates of the ATQMRA ranks, both moving on to the United Racing Club sprint cars by the late 1960s. With sprint car experience on their resumes, both also took occasional ARDC midget rides whenever their schedules permitted. Since I spent three seasons stooging for Bob Wilkey’s brother, Tom, on the ATQMRA tour, I was well acquainted with Bob Wilkey, his wife Mary, and their two children. Bob drove Dr. Rex Green’s #31 TQ and I got my first ATQMRA ride in Convention Hall in January of 1969 with Verona, NJ’s Willard McCumsey. Willie apparently bought Doc Green’s first TQ after a party following an Atlantic City indoor event in 1968, although neither Doc nor Willie could recall the details of the transaction. Those of you who attended those parties can understand how the details of minor events, i.e. the sale of a race car, could have been lost in the moment. When morning dawned Willie owned a race car and Doc was pleased his old car found a good home. With help from Karl Kindberg and John Fick, Willie’s #34 was ready for the first indoor race of the 1969 campaign and I was in the seat.
Larry Rice hailed from Little Falls, New Jersey, wore glasses, sported a crew cut, and was married with two children. My only personal experience with Larry came after Bob Wilkey won the July 27, 1968 Saturday afternoon URC event at the Delaware State Fair at Harrington driving for John Wergland. Everyone was heading to Reading for USAC sprint cars on Saturday night and there was no time to spare to make the start of the USAC program. Wergland led the procession towing his sprint car, Wilkey followed in the family sedan, and I brought up the rear in my Chevy. Larry decided he wanted to go along and since all the other vehicles were full, he hopped into the shotgun seat with me. Wergland took off, flying low, with Bob on his bumper. It was all I could do to keep up. Larry’s chatty disposition turned suddenly quiet as we began careening around the corners on US 13, heading north to Pennsylvania. Larry moved toward the passenger door and took a firm grip on the arm rest. He thanked me for the ride when we got to Reading, just as the sprinters were being pushed onto the track for warm-ups. He was never in need of another ride after that!
By 1968 roll cages were accepted on sprint cars running as supermodifieds all across the nation, including the iconic tracks comprising the central PA circuit. However, real sprint cars had roll bars, as did midgets and TQs. It was necessary to be 21 years of age to drive roll bar equipped open wheel race cars, regardless of their size. That’s exactly why I raced stock cars from 1966 to 1968, but I spent every free moment stooging for Tom Wilkey or just hanging around the open wheel pit areas. Open wheel clubs featured owners and drivers with very few men driving their own equipment. Sons of car owners carried on the family tradition and became car owners in their own right. At the end of the night, car owners paid their drivers. A core of veteran drivers served as the backbone of most open wheel clubs and they were quite content with the arrangement. Even after veteran Bert Brooks’ death in an ARDC event at Hershey on September 2, 1968, the ARDC membership voted against the use of roll cages for 1969.
On Thursday night, May 29, 1969, Bob Wilkey had a free night on his schedule and accepted a ride in Leigh Earnshaw, Sr.’s #51 Kurtis-Kraft Offy for the ARDC race at Reading. He was a racer on the rise and being offered the seat in a first-rate Offy midget was one of the perks of his career success to date. Bob started the main event outside the front row and drove hard into turn one, where he hooked a rut and barrel rolled the East End Garage Offy atop the outer concrete wall. Bob suffered a severe cerebral concussion and died of his injuries on June 3rd. From a somber waiting area in the Reading Hospital emergency room, I will always remember seeing a nurse cross the corridor with one of Bob’s boots in each hand. While Bob clung to life in Reading, I was off to run Willie’s TQ at Pine Brook the next night. I wasn’t alone, everyone else was there as well.
On June 15th, ARDC president, Ken Brenn, called for another vote on cages and the membership made cages optional for the remainder of the 1969 season. On July 3rd, during the running of the Bob Wilkey Memorial at Reading, Don Kreitz, Sr., driving a midget equipped with a cage, virtually duplicated the Wilkey crash in turn one and escaped with only a broken arm. Roll cages became mandatory in ARDC in 1970.
Larry Rice was between sprint car rides in 1969 when ARDC owner George Germond called him to drive his Offy midget at Islip, New York, on August 16th. Rice jumped at the offer. On the second lap of the scheduled 35-lap main event he tangled with Dutch Schaefer in Mike Sheehan’s Offy. In the melee, Schaefer’s car apparently struck Rice, rendering him unconscious before he crashed heavily into the outer guard rail. Rice was fatally injured, assistant starter, Dave Dannenberg, was struck and received a broken leg, and Schaefer was hospitalized in critical condition with a broken shoulder and pelvis.
So... kind of a long background to get to the Bob Wilkey / Larry Rice Memorial at Pine Brook in 1970. Although roll cages were mandatory in ARDC for 1970, they were not yet required in ATQMRA in 1970. No one seemed to mind as car counts were strong. Forty plus cars jammed the pits each Friday night at Pine Brook to battle for the sixteen starting spots in the feature. Cars were handicapped into four heats. Heat race qualifiers transferred to two semi-features with qualifiers from the semis going directly to the ‘A’ and non-qualifiers handicapped to the front of the ‘B’ Main. Non-qualifiers from the heats ran a consolation event with the qualifiers tagging the rear of the ‘B’ Main field. Qualifiers from the ‘B’ were added to the back of the ‘A’. It was no small trick to make the ‘A’ Main at Pine Brook in a field peppered with ARDC and URC veterans, plus the best from the Long Island and northern New Jersey stock car ranks.
The 1969 season was enough to retire Willie McCumsey from the owner ranks, but he will always be special in my book as my first open cockpit owner. I bought Ronnie Denman’s Crosley to run indoors in January and February of 1970, but I was always available to drive for someone else, especially someone else with a better race car. That someone in 1970 was Don Crabtree, a radiator shop entrepreneur from Caldwell, NJ. Don’s orange #71 wasn’t going to win any beauty contests, but his car’s Crosley engine was strong. On Friday, July 24th, we qualified in the heat, qualified in the semi, and started outside Bing Metz in the 35-lap ‘A’ Main honoring two guys I liked and respected.
Bing grabbed the lead at the green, but I was able to slip into second. A few laps into the event, Phil Davoulas in the Bob Pouleson Crosley powered roadster #7o7 motored around the outside of the #71 to take second. Veteran Jimmy Maguire had recently vacated Pouleson’s top-shelf ride to concentrate on the ARDC midget schedule for 1970. The roadster provided Jimmy with an opportunity to make an open wheel comeback from the loss of his right arm in a USAC sprint car crash at New Bremen, Ohio, on May 3, 1964. Jimmy regained his pre-injury form and became a contender in ARDC midgets for more than a decade.
As the event unfolded Doug Craig, Frank Holz, and Joe Lacy filed past on the outside, but we clicked off a lot of laps and when Nick Fornoro wiggled five fingers from the starter’s stand to signify five laps to go, we were solidly in sixth place. No one had gone by in quite a few laps and, aside from a few shots in the back bumper from the troops behind, things were looking pretty good. What I didn’t notice was, the guys who passed me earlier were now out of sight. What I couldn’t see was, I had eight cars, four rows two abreast, directly behind me and the leaders were now beginning to lap the tail enders. Pete Sindone, driving his own #40, had spent thirty laps trapped behind the #71, stuck in the lower groove I wasn’t giving up. With five to go, he ran out of patience, drove his bumper into my left rear, and spun the #71 exiting turn two.
I allowed the car to spin 180 degrees before I pulled the brake handle to prevent it from landing sideways in front of traffic. I knew there was a lot of traffic behind or I would have let the car spin to the infield, involving Sindone in his own mess. However, there were too many cars coming for that and Crabtree’s race car would have paid the price, so I decided to return the favor in an event to be determined. Who knows, maybe he had help? Things were going well until Sindone squirted to the inside and whoever was on the outside groove moved around on the high side. The second row also split me and the third row would apparently do the same, but there was a problem with the fourth row.
Phil Davoulas was leading the event and had moved between the final pair of cars in an effort to work his way through lapped traffic. Phil first noticed me when the third row split, but by then it was too late for him to miss the #71. When I saw Davoulas coming, I knew it was time to abandon the hand brake on the left side of the car. While lap belts were mandated, drivers of roll bar race cars never used shoulder harnesses because in a roll over you didn’t want to be held upright. With shoulder harnesses, YOU became the roll bar... not good! The idea was to bend in whatever direction was required and let the roll bar take the impact. We did, however, use Sam Brown belts which came around your waist and over your right shoulder and clipped into a steel chain or ring attached to the roll bar on the left side of the car. This setup was very effective for holding you in the car through left hand turns, but with Davoulas’ roadster bearing down, I needed to move RIGHT, something the Sam Brown belt would not permit.
By the time the #7o7 caromed over the front end of Crabtree’s #71, I had pulled my left hand into my chest and taken my right hand off the steering wheel. I’m told people under great stress see their life flash before their eyes – I saw Bob Pouleson’s roadster flash before me at eye level. Well, I saw at least half of Pouleson’s car before I turned my head to the right. I felt the #71 take slight contact before the #7o7 peeled off to the right in mid-flight like a WWII Corsair.
When all became quiet, Phil and the roadster were upside down against the outside fence, halfway down the Pine Brook backstretch. The left front tire on Crabtree’s car was flat and the hood was scuffed up a bit, but all my pieces were attached and working. As I took my goggles down and moved to the left to unhook my Sam Brown, I noticed a nasty tire mark about shoulder level on the left side of the roll bar on the #71. WOW! Six more inches toward the cockpit and Maguire and I could have been bookends! Twelve inches more toward the cockpit and, well, history would have been changed – for a lot of people!
Emergency crews were attending to Phil by the time Don Crabtree and his crew arrived. I exited the car, showed Don the tire mark on the roll bar, and helped them push the car to the pits. As we exited the track in turn two, Don asked me, “Are you all right?” Why do people ask race drivers if they’re “all right?” Good grief, we weren’t “all right” before we got into the car! I told Don that I was fine. That’s when he mentioned the tire mark on the left side of my helmet. When we got to the pits, I took off my helmet (open face – the only style available), admired Phil’s work, and put it in my helmet bag. Don wasn’t upset about the car, hell, we were running sixth in the main event, so we decided to run Pine Brook again the following Friday night. We continued together for the rest of the 1970 Pine Brook events.
I’m not sure Phil and I ever discussed the incident. We got along fine. It was unfortunate that Phil’s shot at winning the main event was lost, but he was aware I didn’t lose control of the #71, I was punted. He was uninjured. I was uninjured. Neither of the cars was seriously damaged. All in all, great fun! After all these years, I have only one question about the incident. Phil, perhaps you can clarify? Did you hit me in the helmet with the left front or the left rear? In any case, nice piece of driving... or flying... or whatever combination of the two it was!
Note: If Paul’s face appears rather expressionless in the photo (click the photo for an enlarged view), it’s because he is wearing an unusual one-piece face shield that gave him the appearance of a robot or The Invisible Man.