Last night I was reminded of you, Mr.Gruber, in of all things a little search on an unsuccessful racecar of nearly 50 years ago. Partly because some guy tagged himself the 'Ayn Rand of autoracing.' But more because I happened across someone calling the buyer of some of those cars "Hapless." I figured you'd have been real interested in Lindsey Hopkins. And it'll help me explain why I think you can do better than Yaron Brook.
The problem with Mr. Brook is he has a lot of opinion and a lot of philosophy, but has he ever really been out there, I don't know, running a Radio Shack store or anything? He needs people like you to fill in the gaps. My point is I think if Yaron Brook read this he'd agree with what I have to say, but he can't really offer a story or a real theme such as this. Meanwhile. . . .
If you've ever heard of Lindsey Hopkins Technical College in Florida, the short version is he made it happen. He is known for things such as being part owner of the original New Orleans Saints and of the Atlanta Falcons, which sponsored one of his Indycars. Having started a number of companies and becoming the head of Coca Cola meant he could afford expensive hobbies, such as racing. Would we have this great story to tell if he hadn't?
Hapless? That means unlucky. He certainly watched twice as his cars were comfortably leading the last lap and could seemingly coast home first, but then run out of gas and prove coasting wasn't enough, coming in 2nd and 3rd. He also watched his entry leading in the final laps of the Indy 500 when there was a wreck that killed the driver. Mostly, he wasn't all THAT rich, he didn't have the best equipment. In 1972, he was going to change that.
The problem there was that he picked a new car, the first to be designed by computer, at a time when computers themselves were like a pedestrian on the side of the freeway compared to your home computer. The software/programming was probably written in 1969/70, when the fast lap in Indy qualifying was 170mph. When the designing is underway in '71 the record was raised to 179mph. Had the car arrived even by then it would have at least been competitive.
Another owner, Pat Patrick, was much like Hopkins, fielding older cars, buying almost worn out engines from other teams, just trying to hang on awhile until something falls into place. Having elected to buy the same cars Hopkins was buying, he'd attempted to sell his old cars to fans through magazine ads, etc. Instead the new cars were late and his drivers were still using the old in the first races. When the new finally came barely in time to take to Indy, they hadn't been 'Sorted out,' the team had no time to run them and understand them. Almost time to qualify and it was turning out that the design software had ideas about aerodynamics that had been superceded by the conventional designs. The entire field was to beat the speed of the fast qualifier just the year before. The Patrick team threw in the towel on their new cars quickly.
Lindsay Hopkins received only 2 of his 3 cars. While the lucky to be left out driver got his rush updated old car into the race fairly easily, the two new cars were a handful and only one made it. There was some performance clause that the cars had to make the race. Both Patrick cars and one of Hopkins' returned to the builder. But because it qualified and lasted a few laps, guess who was stuck with the other car. It sat in the garage.
This all sounds like an unhappy ending so far. but not so fast. (Oh, wrong thing to say in racing.) Wally Dallenbach, the driver who couldn't qualify the car, found another team needing a replacement for an injured driver and finished the season with them, recording some of his best drives ever at the time. Johnny Rutherford, a struggling driver with one win and experiencing his 7th winless season since then, parted ways with the Patrick team, finished the first half of the season with no points, then ran well enough in the second half to rise to 7th in the standings. Patrick bought some more old cars for the following season, but at least newer than he had; hiring Dallenbach and giving him at the age of almost 40 the chance to win his first 3 races that year, with more to follow. Patricks' other new driver also won 3, including the Indy 500. The Pat Patrick team had arrived.
Rutherford, meanwhile, wound up with the McLaren team the following year, the half season with a new team at least establishing him as a prospect afterall. At the age of 35 he was fast qualifier at Indy and got the second win of his career. He would win Indy three times and pick up win 27 at the age of 48.
Things would look up for Lindsey Hopkins, too. Team McLaren was the fast qualifier the year before, they'd brought that old car as a backup but would rather sell it than take it home and Hopkins put Roger McCluskey, the guy who got the disasterous car into the Indy 500, at the front of the pack for a change, he won his first race in years and wound up 3rd in the points. The following year all 3 of Hopkins' drivers had used but at least competitive cars, running 3rd, 4th and 7th at the Indy 500. McCluskey would win again, but also take the Indycar Championship at the age of 43, after decades of mostly struggle. Hapless? It wasn't all bad luck, was it?
Even those 3 cars that never qualified for the Indy 500 would be reworked and rebodied, never front runners but they raced.
So I can see where Yaron Brook would explain where there's nothing nihilistic about Mr. Hopkins. He wasn't paying for cars on the track to be altruistic toward the drivers, right? I don't want to compare it to, say, the promoters/sanctioning bodies who just don't care about the drivers, there's plenty of stories where there were hazards and a driver wound up dead because the business people wanted to cover up there was a problem. As the Lindsey Hopkins Technical College proved he was ready to do things for those in need, but business is business and none of his operations would have survived if he'd ran them as charities.
But what incredible stories. What a boring life without there being people like Roger Penske (Ever see that name on the side of yellow rental trucks?) Pat Patrick and yes, Lindsey Hopkins. I'm not sure Hopkins had the money to spend as did Penske, who overpaid wildly during Hopkins' car crisis for an engine in an emergency for the driver who went on to get the first of Penske's 18 wins at Indianapolis that year. And there's more to that story if you know your racing. But Penske is known for saying '. . . .Do it first class, only race the cars you can afford.' And Penske could afford to win that year, as well as other years. It didn't seem that Hopkins could afford to be competitive so much of the time.
But at least he kept these drivers on the track, where they could hope and await their chance. Imagine if only the best funded, most prepared were allowed to compete. There sure would be a smaller number of competitors. And the disaster of that terrible car started the snowball rolling down the hill for so many.
Do they even have stories like this under Communism? How bad do they want them? This is what Yaron Brook talks about, but could he ever bring it to life?
I'd sure rather have been out there racing myself, but it's too expensive, never gonna happen. At least I got to witness all these adventures.
And Lindsey Hopkins had a logo, the rabbit pulled from the hat. When his cars won, it was like that.
Oh the video is another more practical look that Brook would agree with but never make so interesting.
[youtube]7S_Xl2eOeeY[/youtube]