Heart and soul of racing dies with crusty mechanic

Ed Hinton
SENTINEL STAFF WRITER
Posted May 10, 2001

Innovator, inventor, genius, philosopher, wizard, rebel, visionary, pioneer, eccentric, curmudgeon -- all those words apply to Henry "Smokey" Yunick, but none adequately.

In the wee hours of Wednesday, he and the very essence of what once made American automobile racing wondrous took their last breaths.

He deserved to die where he belonged -- the pits at Indy or Daytona, or the jungles of the Amazon. But he died almost forgotten, at home in Daytona Beach of leukemia, the worst form.

"Lord have mercy," Junior Johnson said when told. His voice cracked. "Give me a little time . . . call me back . . . "

Yunick (it was an adopted surname for an orphan, but he put it at the pinnacle of motor racing lore) was almost 78 -- old enough that he'd propelled Fireball Roberts to stardom, young enough that he left an invention meant to stop the slaughter of race drivers against concrete walls.

He died obsessed with the safety of his drivers. Some had actually worked for him, won four of the first eight major races at Daytona International Speedway and the 1960 Indianapolis 500 for him. But they were all his drivers -- everyone who ever strapped into a race car at Indy or Le Mans, Darlington or Daytona, Monaco or Monza -- and he loved them, every one.

Smokey was so much of the reason they've all gone so fast, for so many decades, that he felt responsible. He, maybe more than anyone, knew how brave they were. "But somebody," he said several years ago, "needs to save the poor, dumb bastards from themselves."

He was the wiliest cheater ever to field NASCAR stock cars, and the orneriest maverick ever to stomp and cuss through Gasoline Alley at Indy. He was the owner of Daytona's "Best Damn Garage In Town," and owner of the best damn (and only) hotel in the Ecuadorian backwaters of the Amazon, where he had mining interests. He painted the roof orange so you could spot it in the jungle from skiff or canoe and named it the Jose Johnson.

He was a self-educated nuclear physicist, thermodynamicist, aerodynamicist, petrochemist, metallurgist and mechanical engineer. A marvelous sampler of all mankind's technology down through the ages died with Smokey Yunick's brain cells.

His formal education was virtually nil, but "some of the best books in the world can be bought for a quarter," he said some 20 years ago, cradling on his lap a battered volume, fraught with formulas and higher mathematics, that nobody else had wanted from a used book store.

He understood G-spikes and deceleration syndrome and the terrible things they did to the bodies of his drivers, long before they became headline issues in motor racing.

In the early '90s he was invited up to Indy to inspect the new concrete wall -- higher and thicker than the old one -- built to keep the monstrous NASCAR stock cars out of the grandstands in preparation for the inaugural Brickyard 400 in 1994.

"What about the drivers?" Smokey asked his hosts. "All you're gonna do with this is kill 'em deader, quicker."

He went home and tinkered and came up with a moveable soft barrier. It would soften the blows of crashes; it would move on impact, so it wouldn't "snag" or "catch" the cars. And the supply of raw materials for it was inexhaustible -- used racing tires, bound tightly together in stacks, with thin steel rods.

"Guess nobody's interested," he said weakly, dying of leukemia years later, just last winter, just weeks before Dale Earnhardt died against the bare concrete wall at Daytona.

A prototype of that barrier still stood, still ignored by world motor racing's moguls, on Wednesday inside the fenced compound of Smokey's Automotive, still the "Best Damn Garage In Town," on Beach Street.

Every engine, in every NASCAR Winston Cup race to this day, is based on Smokey's design of 46 years ago on commission from General Motors, descended down through many millions of passenger cars and thousands of race cars. Classic car buffs know it as the "small block," based on the "265 Chevy V-8" of 1955.

When the trumpeter blows "Taps" at the Indy 500 on May 27, it should be solely for Smokey this time. Every engine in the starting field will be of a type he fought to institute -- profoundly and profanely -- 30 years ahead of his time. The engines are called "stock configuration" now. He called them "stock blocks."

In the early 1960s he helped GM fight public wars with a consumer advocate he would always remember gruffly as "a little [expletive], by the name of Ralph Nader."

By the '90s, his old friends at GM were furious with him for making a remark to me that I printed widely. It was about the dominant Indy car engine of the time, touted as the "Chevy Indy V-8." Far from Smokey's design of '55, this one had been developed by Swiss engineer Mario Illion and British entrepreneur Paul Morgan at their Ilmor Engineering Ltd. plant in England.

"Chevrolet would like the American public to believe it's an American engine," Smokey said. "All I know is, the Queen of England just knighted the two engineers who developed it. Somebody's lying, and it's either the Queen of England or the PR guys from Chevrolet."

Several years ago, some Las Vegas casino moguls aspired to start a rival league to NASCAR, maybe blow it out of existence. They came to the only man who would take on the France family empire: Smokey Yunick.

He had but one question for them: "Will you write a check for a billion dollars?"

That, he reckoned, would be the ante if you wanted to play against the Frances. He knew them well -- had loved them, hated them, had fallen out with Big Bill decades earlier, so that they almost never spoke in the 20 years before the NASCAR founder's death in 1992.

Smokey just never could stand the stifling notion Big Bill had about racing cars resembling those sold from showrooms. That shackled Smokey's mind unbearably.

When the Vegas boys wouldn't pay the price of poker with the Frances, Smokey turned his thoughts entirely to the safety of his drivers. Nobody listened. And lately, his drivers have been dying by the bushel. That is what killed Smokey -- not the worst form of leukemia.

Smokey could not remember much of his childhood in a Philadelphia orphanage, busy as his mind was, to the end with so many philosophical and scientific matters du jour.

All he remembered was that as an Army Air Corps pilot during World War II, ferrying bombers from New Jersey to Miami, he would pass over Daytona Beach and think to himself that it looked like a pretty place. So when the war ended he came down to stay. The primary activity was automobile racing, so that is what he set his mind to.

Had he drifted instead to Boston as a youth, MIT might long since have developed cold fission, and this planet might be vastly lovelier to live on.

But he drifted to Daytona Beach instead, and so all we have now is an auto racing legend, remembered only by the savvy. An uneducated genius passed by, virtually forgotten, a titanic mind ignored.

That is an American tragedy of a higher order than any of us will ever imagine.

Ed Hinton can be reached at [email protected].
Copyright © 2001, Orlando Sentinel

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Wednesday, May 9, 2001

'Best Damn Mechanic'... Ever

Jason Mitchell
Staff Writer

Legendary racing mechanic Henry “Smokey” Yunick, who earned more than 50 NASCAR Winston Cup (then Grand National) victories as a crew chief, mechanic or engine builder, died Wednesday morning at the age of 77 at his Daytona Beach home after a yearlong battle with leukemia.

Often recognized by his white cowboy hat and a ‘go to hell’ attitude toward NASCAR, Yunick - among the first group of 20 men inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1990 - was a racer’s racer. He was a person who would stand up and fight until the bitter end to get his point across… and he often did just that with his countless innovations.

An example of Yunick’s creativity came in preparations for the 1968 Daytona 500 when he was fielding a Chevrolet for driver Gordon Johncock. After a difficult time getting through technical inspection, NASCAR made a list of nine things for Yunick to do in order for his gas tank to meet the requirements.

Yunick told NASCAR he’d make the changes, and did that just before he left the gas tank lying on the ground in front of them. He then drove his car away from the inspection area, much to the chagrin of officials.

“Smokey was the kind of guy who didn’t avoid controversy,” said legendary driver/car owner Junior Johnson. “He always stood up for what he believed in, just like he did down at Daytona in 1968. He and all the NASCAR officials were all standing around arguing about it. They finally made Smokey so mad that he just got in his car and drove away. But the thing about it was, he drove off with the gas tank still lying on the ground. You talk about making NASCAR mad…

“He was a true pioneer of this sport and he always did a great job of representing everybody. There wasn’t a better talent in our sport than Smokey. When Smokey showed up with his car, you knew he was the guy you were going to have to outrun. There was no question if you wanted to win, you were going to have to beat Smokey.

“Very few people have ever had the charisma and smarts of Smokey as far as the cars and the motors went. He knew all the aspects of racing, there was never any question about that.”

Yunick could never be called a cheater, but he bent the rulebook plenty in his time.

“Smokey was perhaps the most creative racing mechanic of the 20th Century,” Lowe’s Motor Speedway President H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler said. “To say he was a genius is not enough. His unique exploits in both Indy and NASCAR are legendary, but his uncanny brain worked best when challenged by the search for extra horsepower. From his renowned ‘secret’ room at his Daytona shop where he let no man enter, horsepower of impossible levels came forth and scored many victories for legendary drivers.”

Perhaps most well known as the owner and operator of “The Best Damn Garage in Town,” some of the greatest race cars of all time came out of Yunick’s Daytona shop.

It was there he built cars for some of the greatest drivers ever, such as Fireball Roberts, Herb Thomas, Curtis Turner, Cotton Owens, Buck Baker, A.J. Foyt, Bobby Allison, Mario Andretti and Bobby Unser.

As an owner, his teams made 61 Grand National starts and produced eight victories. Yunick scored 49 victories while working as a crew chief with Herb Thomas, and was a championship crew chief with Thomas in 1951 and 1953.

He won both the Daytona 500 as a car owner and the Indianapolis 500 as a mechanic. Yunick’s cars won four of the first eight Grand National races at Daytona International Speedway, including the 1961 Daytona 500, with Panch, and the 1962 Daytona 500, with Roberts.

His lone Indianapolis 500 victory came in 1960, when he prepared a car for Jim Rathmann.

Yunick stopped fielding a Grand National entry in 1970 after he was involved with an argument with NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., who passed away in 1992. The two hardly spoke to each other over a period of 20 years.

He had been battling several problems with his health the past few years. Funeral service information is expected to be announced by the family later Wednesday.

Yunick grew up on a farm in Neshaminy, Pa., and flew B-17 bombers for the Air Force in World War II. After the service, he decided to move to Daytona and open an automobile repair shop on Beach Street.

His "Best Damn Garage in Town" was closed to the public in the mid-1980s, but he continued racing research and development projects the next several years.

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