Smokey Yunick, one of NASCAR's greatest mechanics, had a knack for speed. He ran the "Best Damn Garage In Town" in Daytona and built race cars that won 58 NASCAR races. DON HUNTER PHOTO

Henry "Smokey" Yunick is a Hall of Fame mechanic in more ways than one.
First was his ability to build a winning race car. He not only won the 1960 Indianapolis 500 with Jim Rathmann behind the wheel, but his cars also were victorious in four of the first eight races at Daytona with Fireball Roberts scoring three of those wins.

Yunick was the one building and powering the cars that Herb Thomas drove to NASCAR's Grand National (now Winston Cup) championship in 1951 and 1953. During the four-year period he worked with Thomas, the pair won 39 races and finished second in the two years Thomas didn't win the driving title.

And it was a Yunick-powered Chevelle that became the first to surpass the 180 mph mark at Daytona in 1967 when Curtis Turner won the pole for the Daytona 500 with a then record speed of 180.831 mph.
Yunick, who is as well known for his cowboy hat and boots as he is for his mechanical ability, is also a Hall of Famer when it comes to stating his opinion and bending the rules as far as humanly possible.

And even today, at age 77, Yunick is still firing with all eight cylinders when it comes to expressing his views.

For example, he doesn't think today's NASCAR Winston Cup Series should be called racing. He isn't sure what name should be applied to the product that millions of fans watch every weekend.

"Between 1947 and the year 2000, we had racing and then something that came after it - whatever name you want to put on it," states Yunick. "I am not criticizing it. This is by far several hundred times more successful than we were.

"But if I was a racer, then these guys competing today aren't. And if these guys are racers, then I never was.

"That doesn't mean I consider that we were better, nor do I consider them better than us. The fact is, this doesn't resemble what we had, what we started out with. It doesn't mean it is bad. It is now operating as entertainment and has nothing to do with the sport.

"When we started, my pleasure was, the reason I did it, was I'd like to step out on the line Sunday morning and pull my pants up and say, 'Let's have a race.' If I won, I was happy. And if I didn't, I was already thinking about what I was going to change next week to beat their ass.

"It was something we truly enjoyed. Money wasn't important."
Yunick admits with relish that he was a "wild man" in his youth.

"I just didn't care," he says matter-of-factly. "I did it one day at a time. I lived under a different set of rules than the normal person. I didn't think about tomorrow. Everything was today. I didn't figure there was going to be a tomorrow."

He pauses before adding with a smile and a hearty laugh, "It caused me to have a lot of problems, but it also caused me to have a lot of fun."

And it was this type of attitude and lifestyle that caused Yunick and Bill France Sr., NASCAR's founder and first president, to have more than one run-in during the sport's early years.

"I started in NASCAR from day one," says Yunick, who moved to Daytona Beach in 1946.

A year later, he opened a garage and called it "The Best Damn Garage in Town."

"I've got the name registered," says Yunick, who still spends time at his famous workplace.

Shortly after moving to Daytona Beach, Yunick hooked up with drivers Marshall Teague and Roberts.

"And three years later, I got a contract with the Hudson Motor Co. to build engines for Herb Thomas, and as they say, the rest is history," says Yunick.

Part of that history includes a continuous difference of opinion through the years with France.

"From day one, I had friction with the way he used the rules," says Yunick. "We would constantly have a lot of dialogue about it."

One of those discussions resulted in the infamous story about Yunick driving his race car from Daytona International Speedway to his garage without a drop of fuel in it. Yunick says France invented that version.
The true story, Yunick says, is that after Turner won the pole at Daytona in 1967, Ford and Chrysler raised so much hell that France was not going to allow him to win the pole for the '68 Daytona 500.

"I went over to France and said, 'I hear you are going to give me a rough time when I show up this year,'" said Yunick. "He said we wouldn't have problems at all if, 'you are going to be legal.' We went back and forth for a while, and then I told him I would stay away on pole day and arrive for the last day (of qualifying) and try for fast time.

"I had been real sick, had pneumonia, and almost killed myself finishing the car. When I got over there, they ran me through the damnedest inspection you ever saw in your life. After about eight hours, I got past inspection. We took the car to the gas pumps. There I got in an argument with Bill Gazaway (NASCAR's then assistant technical inspector). He had a list of 13 things I had to change before I could get fuel."

Yunick became quite upset and told a crew member to get him five gallons of gas because he was going home.

"Pure Oil wouldn't give it to him," recalls Yunick. "I got ticked off and went down there and, after some arguing, they relented. I don't know if they put in two, four or five gallons in the can.

"They had an inspector watching our gas tank. The gas cap was sealed. I reached for the seal on the gas cap to break it. The inspector grabbed my arm and said, 'If you break that seal, I'll make you pull that tank out of there again.' I said, 'Look, I'm going home. Inspection is over. The circus is done.' There were about 200 guys watching the show they were putting us through.

"No one knows how much gas was in the can. I drove the car to my garage. The next day, I picked up the morning paper and it said I drove out on an empty tank."

Yunick said he went back to France and told him the story in the paper was "a lie."
"He said that was what the inspector told him," noted Yunick. "So I got the inspector and dragged him over to France. Finally, he told France I jerked the seal off and poured gas into it. 'But,' he said, 'I don't know if there was any gas in the can.'

"I told France, 'You owe me to call the newspapers and tell them what this man just told you. I did dump a five-gallon can (in the car).' France said he would straighten it out, but he never did.

"Now that's the truth. I know the other version sounds better with me driving away with an empty tank or, in some stories, without a gas tank. But what I just told you is the truth."

He said another truism was, "I didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground about handling. I concentrated on horsepower, horsepower, horsepower.

"I won 58 races in NASCAR, but I would have won a lot more if it hadn't taken me until 1960 to realize there was more to racing than horsepower. We usually had the fastest car, but in those early days we were probably 10 years ahead of the tires.

"And I would wake up many a time after dreaming about the two booms - first the tire and then the car into the wall.

"It took me until '67 to do something about it," adds Yunick. "And I only lasted three more years before I got mad with France and quit. So about the time I learned something about a chassis, I wasn't there anymore."

Yunick's last full year of racing was 1970 with his final event being the 1971 Daytona 500.

In looking back on his Hall of Fame and controversial career, Yunick says, "All I ever looked for when I was racing was for them to accept me as a racer. I wasn't looking for headlines or riches, just that he was a racer. I think I raced as hard as a man could race. I like to think I was an innovator who made things happen.
"There are a lot of people in this world who do not like me. I don't care. We are all entitled to an opinion.

"When I look in the mirror and am not ashamed of what I've done, and I know I've given everything asked of me and a little more, I feel good about myself.

In my rule book, if I think it's wrong, it's wrong. If I think it's right, it's right."