Roy,
What were your racing days?
Scott
Scott,
Here I go again taking the thread astray sorry Barry/Hoist.
“My racing days” was I guess a statement taking in all my experience from racing, maybe not an accurate statement as you guys are not going to know me from seeing me on tv but I have to look at all the involvement I have had in my work job and all the money time I spent on racing.
My first job working at a large Mobile service station / Goodyear dealer gave me quite a bit of info on tires and how to interpret failed condition, we moved a lot of tires in those days and I knew tires. Being from Tinley Park and having friends with the Bettenhausen family I was kind of in the loop of what was going on at Indy when it was going on, you didn’t see that stuff on TV back then. I would also would go to stock car races when it was usac, you could go to a race at Michigan to see the twin 200 that was 200 miles of indy cars and 200 miles of 426-428 ci stock cars, those cars would take your breath away. I would go with these guys in the mobile home and they knew what was going on, I was just a kid back then.
I raced dirt bikes as a kid
“ “ Snowmobiles getting pretty serious drag and snow pro but not professional
“ “ Hobby stock dirt and asphalt (amateur)
“ “ demo derby (obviously amateur)
“ “ Drag racing from bracket to Pro Gas (you could call it amateur ask Otis)
Being a mechanic I got most of what I know today as far as making things go fast and last in drag racing. The pro gas car was a 850hp 1970 Challenger and I miss that car and those days. I pretty much leaned how to spend every dime I had getting the motor to run then doing the work myself instead of paying the machine shops. At that time they didn’t have schools for that.
I even helped a friend take his 58 ft sportfish with twin 1080hp diesels from Chicago to Lauderdale and back 12 times, let me tell you the way we ran that boat it was like the hardest racing I’ve ever done
These days I work at a Peterbilt dealership and still have contact reading tire condition, new problems with the super single tires some of these guys run.
Not to get too far off topic of my “racing days” I wanted to sum it up by saying my experience early on at the Mobile/Goodyear dealer going to the races over the years and reading tires from the various racing I did has given me an understanding that is what I would say is hands on experience. I have also seen quite a bit of data from engineers over the years on explanations of why tires fail and both give what I think is a good understanding.
This is the best way I could explain my experience……..Roy