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Johnny Boyd
Johnny Boyd (August 19, 1926 – October 27, 2003) was an American racecar driver. Racing career Born in Fresno, California, Boyd drove in the AAA and USAC Championship Car series from 1954 to 1966 with 56 starts. He finished in the top ten 31 times, with his best finish in 2nd position, in 1959 at Milwaukee. Boyd qualified for the Indianapolis 500 for the first time in 1955 but finished 29th after being involved in an accident that killed driver Bill Vukovich. In a dozen starts, his best race was in 1958, when he led 18 laps and finished 3rd. In total, he finished in the Top 10 at the 500 five times. After 1949 Boyd had become close friends with Bob Sweikert of Hayward, California when he met him on the California racing circuit. The two often raced together, and Boyd qualified for entry in the 1955 Indianapolis 500 when Sweikert helped him overcome mechanical handling problems in Boyd's car. Sweikert won the race that day, but was overshadowed by the death of Vukovich. Boy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kurtis Kraft
Kurtis Kraft was an American designer and builder of race cars. The company built midget cars, quartermidgets, sports cars, sprint cars, Bonneville cars, and USAC Championship cars. It was founded by Frank Kurtis when he built his own midget car chassis in the late 1930s.Biography at the Kurtis built some very low fiberglass bodied two-seaters sports cars under his own name in between 1949 and 1955. |
1957 Indianapolis 500
The 41st International 500-Mile Sweepstakes was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Thursday, May 30, 1957. The event was part of the 1957 USAC National Championship Trail and it was race 3 of 8 in the 1957 World Championship of Drivers. Sam Hanks won the Indianapolis 500 in his thirteenth attempt (the most such by any 500 winner). He retired from competition at Indy in victory lane. Contrary to popular belief, Hanks did not completely retire from racing until the end of the year. He skipped the Race of Two Worlds when his entrant withdrew, but competed in USAC Stock Car events later in the year, winning the event at Trenton, and finished third in points championships for 1957. Hanks received a record $103,844 purse, the first driver to win a $100,000 single-race payday. The total race purse was also a record, over $300,000 for the first time. Hanks won the race in George Salih's "Lay-down Offy". The Offenhauser engine was mounted on its side and shifted off-center. Thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1955 Monaco Grand Prix
The 1955 Monaco Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held at Monaco on 22 May 1955. It was race 2 of 7 in the 1955 World Championship of Drivers and was given an honorary name, ''Grand Prix d'Europe''. The 100-lap race was won by Ferrari driver Maurice Trintignant after he started from ninth position. Eugenio Castellotti finished second for the Lancia team and Maserati drivers Jean Behra and Cesare Perdisa came in third. Race report Stirling Moss had been signed by Mercedes for the new season and Maserati had replaced him with Jean Behra. The Silver Arrows of Fangio and Moss dominated, running 1–2 until half distance, trailed by Ascari and Castellotti. At the halfway mark, Fangio retired with transmission trouble,Kettlewell, p.1383. giving the lead to Moss. Almost a lap ahead, a seemingly sure win for Moss was ended on Lap 80 when his Benz's engine blew. The new leader, Ascari, miscalculated the chicane coming out of the tunnel, and his Lancia crashed through the barrier ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1955 Argentine Grand Prix
The 1955 Argentine Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held at Buenos Aires on 16 January 1955. It was race 1 of 7 in the 1955 World Championship of Drivers. The race was won from third on the grid by Juan Manuel Fangio for Mercedes. Ferrari drivers Nino Farina and Maurice Trintignant finished both second and third in two three-way shared drives with José Froilán González and Umberto Maglioli respectively. The high temperatures of the Argentinian summer proved to be very taxing for both drivers and cars. Fangio and Roberto Mieres were the only two drivers able to complete the race without handing their car to another driver. According to former Ferrari and Maserati chief mechanic Giulio Borsari, Fangio acclimatized himself by moving to Argentina one month prior to the race and reducing his water consumption to one liter a day to cope with the extreme heat.Giulio Borsari and Cesare De Agostini, ''La Ferrari in tuta'', Il Borgo, Bologna, 1980. Fangio also suffered sev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Straight-4
A straight-four engine (also called an inline-four) is a four-cylinder piston engine where cylinders are arranged in a line along a common crankshaft. The vast majority of automotive four-cylinder engines use a straight-four layout (with the exceptions of the flat-four engines produced by Subaru and Porsche) and the layout is also very common in motorcycles and other machinery. Therefore the term "four-cylinder engine" is usually synonymous with straight-four engines. When a straight-four engine is installed at an inclined angle (instead of with the cylinders oriented vertically), it is sometimes called a slant-four. Between 2005 and 2008, the proportion of new vehicles sold in the United States with four-cylinder engines rose from 30% to 47%. By the 2020 model year, the share for light-duty vehicles had risen to 59%. Design A four-stroke straight-four engine always has a cylinder on its power stroke, unlike engines with fewer cylinders where there is no power stroke occu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Offenhauser
The Offenhauser Racing Engine, or Offy, is a racing engine design that dominated American open wheel racing for more than 50 years and is still popular among vintage sprint and midget car racers. History The Offenhauser engine, familiarly known as the "Offy", was an overhead cam monoblock 4-stroke internal combustion engine developed by Fred Offenhauser and Harry Arminius Miller. Originally, it was sold as a marine engine. In 1930 a four-cylinder Miller engine installed in a race car set a new international land speed record of . Miller developed this engine into a twin overhead cam, four-cylinder, four-valve-per-cylinder racing engine. Variations of this design were used in midgets and sprints into the 1960s, with a choice of carburetion or Hilborn fuel injection. When both Miller and the company to whom he had sold much of the equipment and rights went bankrupt in 1933, Offenhauser opened a shop a block away and bought rights to engines, special tooling and drawings ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1955 Formula One Season
The 1955 Formula One season was the ninth season of FIA Formula One motor racing. It featured the 1955 World Championship of Drivers, which commenced on 16 January 1955 and ended on 11 September after seven races. Juan Manuel Fangio won his second consecutive World Championship title in a season curtailed by tragedies. The season also included several non-championship Formula One races. Season summary Mercedes drivers again dominated the championship, with Fangio taking four races and his new teammate Stirling Moss winning the British Grand Prix. Ferrari won at Monaco after all of the Mercedes cars broke down and Lancia driver Alberto Ascari crashed into the harbour. Although Ascari was apparently unscathed, the double World Champion crashed fatally at Monza while testing sportscars four days later. The disaster at the 24 Hours of Le Mans on 11 June, which killed Pierre Levegh and over 80 spectators, led to the cancellations of the French, German, Spanish, and Swiss Grands Pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1966 Indianapolis 500
The 50th International 500-Mile Sweepstakes was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana on Monday, May 30, 1966. The official program cover for the race celebrated both the 50th running of the race, and 150th anniversary of Indiana statehood. Eleven of the 33 starters were eliminated in a first-lap accident right after receiving the green flag on the main stretch. Only A. J. Foyt was injured, hurting his hand scaling the catch fence trying to escape the wreck scene. Only seven cars, the fewest finishers ever, were still running by the end of the race. First-time starter Jackie Stewart led by over a lap late in the race in John Mecom's Lola T90-Ford.Kettlewell, p. 2192. However, inside ten laps to go, his oil pressure dropped too low due to a broken scavenge pump. Stewart parked the car, and after briefly attempting to push some ways, he walked back to the pits. Fellow rookie Graham Hill inherited the lead and led a total of 10 laps to win, the first rookie wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1965 Indianapolis 500
The 49th International 500-Mile Sweepstakes was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana on Monday, May 31, 1965. The five-year-old "British Invasion" finally broke through as Jim Clark and Colin Chapman triumphed in dominating fashion with the first rear-engined Indy-winning car, a Lotus 38 powered by Ford. With only six of the 33 cars in the field having front engines, it was the first 500 in history to have a majority of cars as rear-engined machines. Clark, of Scotland, started from the front row, and led 190 laps, the most since Bill Vukovich (195) in 1953. He became the first non-American winner of the Indianapolis 500 since 1920 When Frenchman Gaston Chevrolet won. Clark would go on to win the 1965 World Championship (which Indianapolis was not part of any longer). He is the only driver in history to win the Indy 500 and Formula One World Championship in the same year. Clark actually chose to skip Monaco to compete at Indy. ABC Sports covered the race ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1964 Indianapolis 500
The 48th International 500-Mile Sweepstakes was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana on Saturday, May 30, 1964. The race was won by A. J. Foyt, but is primarily remembered for a fiery seven-car accident which resulted in the deaths of racers Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald. It is also the last race won by a front-engined "roadster", as all subsequent races have been won by rear-engined, formula-style cars. It was Foyt's second of four Indy 500 victories. Jim Clark, who finished second the previous year, won the pole position in the Lotus 34 quad-cam Ford V-8. He took the lead at the start, and led for a total of 14 laps. However, a tire failure caused a broken suspension, and he dropped out on lap 47. Team manager Colin Chapman had chosen special soft-compound Dunlop tires for qualifying, and the rules dictated that the same type of tires be used for the race, where they suffered from a high wear rate. Clark's Lotus teammate Dan Gurney was later pulled from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1963 Indianapolis 500
The 47th International 500-Mile Sweepstakes was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana on Thursday, May 30, 1963. Rufus Parnell Jones, also known as "Parnelli," took his only Indy 500 win. This win was controversial because his car (nicknamed "Calhoun") spewing oil from a cracked overflow tank for many laps, which allegedly caused at least one driver to spin and crash. USAC officials put off black-flagging Jones after car owner J. C. Agajanian ran down pit lane and convinced them that the oil leak was below the level of a known crack and would not leak any further. Lotus owner Colin Chapman, whose English-built, rear-engined Lotus-Ford finished second in the hands of Scotsman Jim Clark, accused USAC officials of being biased in favor of the American driver and car. The non-black flagging of Jones remains controversial. Many, including Chapman and writer Brock Yates, believed that officials would have black flagged Jones if an American driver and car had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
