1961 Sebring 12 Hours – Race Profile Page Nine
Joining the Lovely/Nethercutt Ferrari in the pits was the Aston Martin DB4 GT of Sherman Decker and Bob Bucher. Bucher exited the car and showed his pit crew a huge bash on the left side of his car. As this was happening the Ferrari 250 GT of Fernand Tavano and George Arents went by the pits with a tremendous dent in the right side of the car. As Bucher described it the brakes on his Aston Martin failed to stop him in time and he hit the Ferrari. The Maserati Tipo 61 of John Fitch and Dick Thompson entered the pit road on lap four. The car was already experiencing transmission problems that would cause their early retirement.
In the GT category the Chevrolet Corvette C1 of Don Yenko and Ben Moore were leading with the Ferrari 250 GT SWB of Denise McCluggage and Allen Eager running second. McCluggage was driving her own entry and was on a shoe-string budget. She had managed to recruit an eager bunch of young men from the Binghamton Automobile Racing Club (BARC) of Binghamton, New York to assist her. McCluggage had some mechanical help from NART but was short handed for everything else so the young men volunteered to do lap charts and pit signals for her. Two of their members, Sherm Decker and Bob Bucher, were in the race driving the #8 black Aston Martin.
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