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[QUOTE=willabee;2055002]More from the collection of Molly Ballou, here is one of boat racing's all time zany characters.....Gary Peacock. :eek: I'm not real sure about when Gary and I met, a guess would be the Miami 225 in 1970. If I could recall what he was driving back in 68/69, I could probably put a better handle on it.....anyone know what that might have been?
Gary at the Gold Coast Marathon, July 1970----
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I got to visit with Tom at OFF, 40 years later, still a nice guy!!!Quote:
Originally Posted by willabee
I knew Gary from around 59-60 till 64..Haven't seen him since..He is from one of Miami's pioneer familys that settled Coconut Grove. His older brother Pete raced a Powercat with 800's for awhile, but died in his 30's..They were both fun loving guys..Gary had a passion for cars and girls. He married my next door neighbor, Meg, who is now married to Chick..He liked to go to the races and even ran a few..A little wild to say the least, but fearless and fun.. Here is a picture of his brother Pete..
Good shot of you too Butch........Quote:
Originally Posted by lilabner
T2x
You sure have some very cool pictures in your collection! :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by GENE LANHAM
I see the #22, but can't tell if that is Gary or not. Can you read is name on the boat in the actual photo?
You say Gold Coast Marathon, I say Miami 225.....are they one and the same? The course inside the stadium was 1 2/3 miles, the one around the island (for the 225) was 2 1/2?
The name on #22 looks like'Aquarius'. The last year the GCM was run to Palm Beach and back was 1966. The Pelican Harbor Yacht Club struggled to keep the name alive by running annual races in North Biscayne Bay and at the Marine Stadium. They tried a different format/location each year until it died a natural death with a marathon at the Pelican Harbor 4.4 mile course in 1973.---The results for the1969 Gold Coast Marathon Invitational 225 show Gary finishing 17th in a 'Fantun'(?) on the 2.5 mile course at the stadium.Quote:
Originally Posted by willabee
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I think I have most of the Miami Herald article---
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Ol' Fred Hartmann came in 12th and he had to have been in his 70's back then driving a big Eltro vee bottom.....Quote:
Originally Posted by GENE LANHAM
A skinny Butch----Herby, Sheldon, Richie, Marty, the Youngs------were the South Florida mainstays of OPC in the early 60's---and Charlie Wolf was --'Leonard'.Quote:
Originally Posted by T2x
There is video of this race in "Title Drive", which is the OMC Promotional video of the 1969 racing season. The video was shown at all the big Boat Shows all over the world in 1970.Quote:
Originally Posted by T2x
There is video of # 22 Gary Peacock in, "Parker 1975 Testing". You can see his KT & two V-6 Molinari's. One of the Molinari's looks like the "sister" boat to Herring/Molinari's Mercury powered Tunnel that completed 700+ miles in 7 hours to win in 1975!Quote:
Originally Posted by lilabner
From the collection of Molly Ballou, here are a couple more of the guys that drove for Team Mercury back in the 70's.
Mike Downard was another hotshoe Checkmate driver in the late 60's. His father, Bill, was co-owner with Bill Combs of Checkmate boats. Mike was hired around 1970 and made the move from Bucyrus, Ohio to Oshkosh. His biggest win while with Merc was the Paris 6 Hour in 1971, co-driving with Pellolio. I think he was with Merc until sometime in 1972. He later joined the OMC Team and won Paris again, this time co-driving with Cesare Scotti! :cool: Unfortunately, his racing was cut short due to an accident, I believe it happened at Havasu. I have run into Mike a couple of times since he quit racing, enjoyed chatting with him about the days gone by. :smiletest:
Bob Spalding started receiving support from Merc for the races in Europe in the late 60's. He has said that Merc would give some of the selected drivers different amounts of money for finishing 1st, 2nd or 3rd and would supply the engines. The drivers had to buy their own boat. He was hired in 1973 to do a one year tour for the US Team, so he too moved to Oshkosh. He continued to race through the mid 80's and had much success, including some Paris wins and European championships. He had a bad accident in 1985 which cut his racing career short. Bob died in 1997. :(
Here are the head shots used by the PR department. There is a shot of Mike at Long Beach in 1971 and in the #32 Molinari that won Paris. Also a shot of Bob in one of the new "Stars & Stripes" boats Merc unveiled when they went to a four boat Team in 1973.
Continuing from the collection of Molly Ballou, here is another guy that moved to Oshkosh to drive for the Black Angels back in the day.
Bob Hering came to Merc from stock outboard racing. He was living in Sheboygan, Wi. and apparently had been talking with Gary Garbrecht about the possibility of driving for Team Mercury. I remember Gary introducing me to Bob one summer afternoon back in 69 or 70. Gary asked me to show Bob the 18' Molinari I had been using for tests and to explain how it was set up and how it ran. He wanted Bob to run the boat that same day and asked me to make that happen. It was getting late so I told Bob he would run it on a course we had on the river near the plant. I did tell him about some tricky wind that comes through a certain area on that course and off we went.
He wasn't a guy to do much warming up, he was into the throttle pretty quickly after seeing where the course was laid out. On his first pass coming back towards the safety boat, the nose of the Molinari started to raise and I waved to try to get him to back off. He didn't, but managed to stay upright and turned to begin another lap. This time as he was going through that tricky air area, the nose got high enough to do the ol' death quiver. He did back off for a moment but was right back in it again so I pulled out onto the course to make him stop. He was puzzled, why did he have to stop? I asked what he did when the nose started to climb, he smiled and said he just feathers the pedal and it comes right back down. I told him I was sure that he was going to end up on his head if he continued to try that and gave him a couple of suggestions. He didn't take any of them, just continued to run as he had been. Why he didn't blow over I'll never know.....I swear you can't get that boat that far out of shape lap after lap and not get wet!
Anyway, Bob was eventually hired and he started working on his first factory ride, the 18' Molinari rocker. The start of his career in OPC wasn't too promising. We went to a race in St. Mary's, Ohio where they used a pace boat start. Bob blew over (surprise, surprise)..... before the green flag was dropped! :( At the next race, he didn't fire at the start and never completed a lap.....two races, no laps.....not good. When we checked his engine to figure out why it had not started, we discovered Bob had done a no-no. He had changed the AC plugs to a Champion he wanted to use. Bad,Bad,Bad.....Bob, drive the boat, do not touch the engines. :nonod:
Obviously, things got better for Bob as he went on to become one of the most respected drivers in the history of the sport. Many wins here and in Europe for Merc as well as OMC. Here is the PR headshot Merc used, Bob in the 17' Molinari sprint he drove to a 4 hour lap record at Havasu in 70 and one of him driving the first Twistercraft built by Merc (Carl Stippich and Jack Ferris).
Bob also had a couple of wicked bad accidents as I recall, and he was always all about records......Quote:
Originally Posted by willabee
The stock outboard background made him very detail and weight oriented and absolutely manic about propeller choice......this served him well in later years as Hering Propellers are among the best in the world today......
He tends to be rather reticent and almost never offers advice....... Once when I got a Moilnari sprint hull he had run in only one race before the team converted to Seebolds, he probably saved me from going on my head. The boat had been built with sponsons canted inward in the forward section and had concave, negative lift areas on the deck forward of the cockpit between the pickleforks.... which became S.O.P. for the V-6 boats. These features were calculated to allow a lower attack angle and better bite in the turns...... The problem is that the down force on the nose drove the sponsons deeper on entry and made the boat want to hook at each turn. Bobby and i were at a pre-race party and we were talking about the boat. Suddenly he said " I watched you out there today in testing. That boat is mean and there's only one way to drive it"..... "feather the throttle 30 feet earlier than you do now and let it coast until you feel it take its own set....Do not turn the wheel until you feel that happen. Your lap times will go down since you will carve the turn much more cleanly"...... I did as instructed and that became the best tunnel boat I ever drove. Since he was pretty protective of his "secrets", I really think he did it out of concern for someone else's safety....Needless to say, I like the guy......
T2x
Hering was a long established champion in kneel down racing with connections to the factory before his OPC days.