Well, I'm old enough to remember this 300 w/the Boss head. 

Those boys have way too much free time on their hands.

Thats a pretty good story. Amazing what some of those guys could do.

BobE wrote:

TKOPerformance wrote:

Rudi wrote:

Those boys have way too much free time on their hands.

I'd say it was more like some outside the box thinking.  They needed a way to dominate a racing class that was based on weight per cubic inch.  The torque offered by a straight six made sense, but they needed a way to get it to breathe at higher RPM.  Assuming cylinder head restrictions were minimal to nonexistent this was a brilliant idea. Truthfully this is what racing is supposed to be all about.  Its why  can't get into things like NASCAR, because the rules are so tight that they've removed all innovation from it.  Instead you get guys throwing millions at development programs that basically just try to gain 5HP and fractions of a second from the existing parts.  Classes that bred stuff like this I6 are much more interesting. 
 

TKO – couldn’t agree more, the rules of racing sanctioning organizations have sanitized racing.  One thing hasn’t changed, as a friend said to me when I was racing in the mid-seventies “all it takes to go fast  is cubic money!”. 

 

A lot of truth to that sadly.  The interplay between the big money teams and the sanctioning bodies was discussed in Smokey Yunick's autobiography.  Basically the big money guys would get pissed that he came up with something they never thought of and would cry to the racing league brass who would come up with a rule on the spot to disqualify it.  They were fond of using the phrase "not in the spirit of the rules", meaning we can outlaw it because we don't like the way it looks.  Apparently its nothing new though.  Clowns like that were killing innovation since at least the late '40s.  The truly tragic part is that some of the innovations they killed would have saved lives. 

Now on the other hand the tech inspectors back then were also for lack of a better term: dumb.  The stories about how they figured out how to cheat without getting caught are epic.  My favorite was probably the basketball in the modified fuel tank (inflated the tank was stock capacity, deflated it carried a extra gallon plus of fuel that eliminated one put stop per race).  However, given the aforementioned money equals power scenario I'm inclined to agree with old Smoke that this was "defensive" cheating. 

BobE wrote:

TKO – for stories about cheating and the adoption of a “loose interpretation of the rules’ in racing, I recommend reading “Cheating; An inside look at the bad things good NASCAR Winston Cup Racers do in pursuit of speed”, by Tom Jensen, written in 2002.  It starts at the beginnings of NASCAR up until the book was written.  I found this book quite entertaining. 

Thanks!  I'll check it out!