Behind the Wheel of a Greenwood-Type Corvette, Pt. II: Road Atlanta IMSA GT, 1976

Two weeks after our frustrating Mid-Ohio adventure, we rolled into Georgia’s Road Atlanta for the September race with new Sterling mag wheels and renewed confidence, even though it was a difficult course that I had never driven before. As at Mid-Ohio, the plan was for me to relieve Rick Hay after the first hour, then hand the car back to him at the two-hour mark, which would allow us to finish with only two time-consuming driver/fuel pit stops if things went well.

But things didn’t go well. Rick came in exhausted after just 50 minutes, and 45 minutes into my stint, I started getting chills from dehydration. Our problem was the Georgia heat and humidity. With that big, 600-hp 454 V-8 set back a foot in the Corvette’s chassis, the heat coming through the thin firewall on a hot day was incredible. Many drivers there were using a hose to blow fresh air on their faces, and some sucked water or Gatorade through a tube from a plastic bottle. But we had neither of those advantages. Rick and I had never been seriously affected by heat in a race car before, so we foolishly thought we would not need that sort of relief.

Rick’s car was cornering better than it had at Mid-Ohio thanks to our new racing wheels, which were wider at the front (13 inches) and slightly narrower at the rear (15 inches) than the old steel wheels. That change gave us a better front-to-rear traction balance, doing away with most of the annoying front-end understeer that had caused us problems on the tighter Mid-Ohio course. But unfortunately, the car’s stock brakes were weak as ever, meaning we had to get on them much sooner than most others did to slow for turns.

I was struggling with the difficult left-right Turn 3 combination and was a bit intimidated by the 165-mph downhill curve toward the end of the back straight. It had destroyed its share of Corvettes through the years, and I couldn’t keep myself from easing off the throttle a tad before its crest and giving the brakes a quick test at the bottom to make sure they were still there, which was hurting my lap times by about two seconds compared to Rick’s.

When the heat started getting to me, I was about to hit the pits. But then our friend and rival Phil Currin came up behind me in his small-block Corvette. I was faster on the straights, but he was about two seconds a lap quicker than I was due to better handling and brakes—and a lot more Corvette and Road Atlanta experience. Forgetting my fatigue for the moment, I tried to hold him off and managed to do so for the next lap.

But I was obviously holding him up so would have to let him by. Arriving at that tricky left-right turn 3 maneuver with Phil hard on my tail, we came up behind a slower Porsche that seemed to be moving left to let us through. Then, just as I started to pass, the Porsche cut right across my bow toward the apex. I nailed the brakes to avoid broadsiding him just as Phil was passing me on the right. As his black Corvette roared by, all four wheels in the grass to avoid me as I was avoiding the Porsche, it scraped my right front fender with its left rear tire then T-boned the Porsche crossing our paths from the left.

As both cars careened off the track ahead of me, I found first gear and took off. That low-speed collision caused little damage to either Corvette and allowed me to gain some ground back on Currin before he got rolling in the right direction again. I did a couple more laps before he reappeared in my mirror but was getting light-headed from the heat and dehydration, and the cold chills were back, so I decided to head for the pits.

Rick was ready to go again, and off he went, only to return a few laps later with the car running out of gas. Apparently, a valve had jammed shut in our overhead fueling rig, so little fuel had gotten into the car during the previous stop. The crew got him back underway with a full tank to finish the last 70 minutes or so.

Once out of the car, I nearly collapsed from exhaustion. Someone handed me a huge cup of Coke, then one of lemonade, each of which I downed in about 10 seconds. Still thirsty, I started dipping cups of ice water out of the cooler. It took about 2 gallons of liquid to quench my thirst, probably because in one hour of hard driving and heavy sweating, my body had completely emptied itself of moisture. I had to sit for a half hour before my head was back to normal. Next time, I decided, I would have a fresh air vent and a drinking bottle in the car.

Challenging Track

Road Atlanta’s long start/finish straight leads to a fast uphill right-hander, which opens into a left jog at the hill’s crest, followed by that quick, right-hand Turn 3. Then a sweeping left and a fast, scary downhill plunge to the right. The track esses at the bottom of this hill, which makes hard braking for the slow, uphill left-hand Turn 5 a bit tricky. Once braked, downshifted and drifted through 5, the course unwinds over a couple of small rises where we see 120 mph or more. Then it’s brake hard and downshift for Turn 6, a medium-fast, slightly banked 90-degree right, followed by the tight-right Turn 7, the track’s slowest corner.

The track’s configuration was different back then; there was no chicane, for one thing. Accelerating out of 7 in second then third then fourth gears down Road Atlanta’s long back straight led to a series of ups and downs and then to a blind, steep, downhill right-hander that made the car’s suspension go light and lose some grip at about 90 mph. Today’s fast cars may encounter no such drama, but even a good-handling big-block Corvette was a scary handful through there five decades ago.

The next downhill, approached at up to 165 in Rick’s Corvette, was the scariest part of the course. The road disappeared from beneath you, and by the time you felt your tires touching pavement again, you’d moved from far right to far left without turning the steering wheel.

The downhill plunge continued with the track still curving slightly right before it jogged back left and started uphill again at Turn 10. At the top of that hill was the fast, blind, right-hand Turn 11, beneath a spectator bridge, before you streaked steeply downhill again toward the fast, right-hand final turn 12 leading back onto the start/finish straight. Many Road Atlanta races were won or lost through this extra-hairy series of hills and curves.

Back to the Race

With intermittent brake trouble and a sticking throttle during qualifying, Rick had placed us just 21^st in the 41-car field. But once those issues were fixed and the race began, he had worked his way up quickly through the pack. The car was running perfectly and handling well, but it would have been much more competitive with a set of racing brakes.

Brakes are of major importance on a road-racing course, because the better they are, the farther you can go at full throttle on each straight before having to get on them to slow for the next turn. Brake sooner than someone you’re racing with, and he will shoot right by you approaching a turn, even though you’ve out-accelerated him down the straight. Frustrating. But good racing brakes cost a lot of money, and at that time Rick couldn’t afford a set for his car.

Al Holbert’s Chevy Monza was leading the race, and we were running a couple of laps behind in 10^th. He was turning consistent 1:31s around the 2.5-mile course, compared to Rick’s 1:34s and my 1:36s. We were not too far off the pace. And best of all, the car was still running and handling well. If we could stay out for the rest of the race, we could probably pick up a few more positions before it was over.

Although we were fueled for the final 70 minutes, with about 20 minutes to go, our big yellow Corvette came roaring back into the pits. The left front tire was chunking, causing a high-speed vibration. Rick was also tired and needed relief again. I wedged my helmet back on, jumped into the car, and strapped in while the crew was attending to the bad tire. “Everything’s fine,” Rick yelled in my ear. “Just take it easy and finish!”

The wheel was so hot from all the heavy braking that it had welded itself to the hub. It took a lot of grunting and pounding from the crew to get it off. Sitting in the hot cockpit rehydrated, fired up, and ready to go, it seemed like hours before the new wheel and tire went on. Finally, down went the jack and off I went down the long pit lane back onto the track.

Unfortunately, we had only two of the 13-inch-wide Sterling mags, so our spare front tire was on one of the old 10-inch-wide steel wheels, which created a handling problem in right-hand corners . . . which most are on a clockwise road-racing course. But I was rested, confident, and much more familiar with the track by now. I felt good for those final few laps before the checkered flag and just before the end managed to regain a position we had lost during our last unscheduled stop.

Finishing 10th doesn’t sound like much, but it wasn’t bad in that tough IMSA GT field. It brought some decent prize money and we bettered 31 others that day. Iron Man Currin somehow managed another excellent solo drive to finish 6th. He was the highest-placing Corvette driver, and we were second “in class.” I apologized to Phil after the race for getting in his way trying to get around the Porsche. He said he was so tired at the time that he could barely remember it.

Death of a Racer

Rick Hay tragically died two years later. Racing can be dangerous, and those of us involved in it have to face the fact that once in a while somebody will get hurt, or killed.

But Rick didn’t die in a race car. He died in a hospital bed, having lost a race with leukemia. The fact that virtually no one outside his immediate family knew he had the disease is a tribute to the kind of man he was. It might’ve been easy for some, knowing their time was limited, to play on sympathy to get what they wanted. But Rick was as proud as he was determined: At Daytona in November 1976, two months after our Road Atlanta showing, I was standing by to relieve him, if necessary, but he drove the 250-mile distance after a long stop to fix a fuel system leak had put us out of contention.

When fellow Corvette driver and Boston businessman Dick Valentine went looking for someone to manage a serious, two-car Corvette effort, he went to Rick, largely on the recommendation of McLaren IMSA team manager (and Rick Hay customer) Roger Bailey. A partnership was formed, and Rick went to work on a pair of brand-new, highly advanced cars and sat out the next season to get them ready. Valentine put together six-figure sponsorship, and the team was set to debut at the 24 Hours of Daytona in February 1978. It was the big break Rick had been working toward ever since he had started racing go-karts at age nine.

Only when I bumped into his wife’s brother at an MIS IndyCar event did I learn that Rick had been in the hospital. “His leukemia is acting up again,” I was told. Three times his family and friends had been told that he wouldn’t make it through the night, and three times he bounced back. Just as he had in racing, he was simply refusing to give up.

Rick seemed more embarrassed than concerned. It hurt his pride to be laid up, and when someone came to see him, he would gather his strength and talk about his plans for the season and what he would do to the cars “as soon as I get out of here.” The doctors told him they could try chemotherapy as a last chance but that the powerful chemicals could devastate his body and might kill him before they killed the cancer. “Do it,” he said. In the end, it was the chemicals that did him in. Rick Hay was a racer. He wasn’t born rich and wasn’t (yet) famous, but he was convinced he could make it with hard work, skill, pride, and determination. When his time ran out, at the young age of 32, he may or may not have been on the brink of racing stardom. Those who knew and respected him will always believe he was.