1962 Daytona 3-Hour Continental – The Tradition Begins

By Louis Galanos | Photos as credited

January 2012 marks the Golden Anniversary (50th) of sports car endurance racing at the Daytona International Speedway (DIS) in Daytona Beach, Florida.

DIS was opened in 1959 by NASCAR founder, Bill France, Sr., after years of driving in and promoting stock car racing on the beaches of the Daytona area. From the beginning the new speedway was associated with stock car racing and to this day is well known for America’s premier stock car racing event known as the Daytona 500 or “The Great American Race.”

However, from the earliest days of planning Mr. France wanted his racing facility to be a multi-use racing venue capable of hosting stock car, sports car and motorcycle racing events. To that end he incorporated an infield road course into the construction plans.

When he combined the 2.5 mile high-banked NASCAR tri-oval with the infield road course it produced a unique 3.81 mile racing surface suitable for European-style endurance racing. This unique combination of surfaces had its critics. In August of 1959 Motor Trend’s publication Sportscar Graphic raised the question, “Daytona: Is it too fast?”

From its opening day in 1959 the Speedway has been host to many Sports Car Club of America Regional and National events as well as the then nationally known Paul Whiteman Trophy Races for sports cars. Those events utilized the tri-oval as well as the infield course and in a sense were testing sessions for what was to follow in 1962.

During this period in time Alec Ulmann’s Sebring 12-Hour Grand Prix of Endurance was well established at Sebring, Florida. It was touted in the automotive press as the premier sports car racing event in North America.

Mr. France could not help but notice this and probably envied the national and international prestige the Sebring race garnered each year. Finally in 1961 France was able to get the international governing body of racing (FIA) to sanction a three-hour event to be held at the Daytona track in January of 1962. This event would be a points race and part of the World Sportscar Championship (WSC).

The first event of the 1962 WSC season would draw some of the best cars and drivers in the world to the Daytona facility. Among those entering the race that year were Dan Gurney in a Lotus 19B, Formula One champ, Phil Hill, and co-driver Ricardo Rodriguez in a Ferrari Dino 246 SP, Jim Hall in a Chaparral 1, driving Ferrari 250 GTs would be Stirling Moss, Oliver Gendebien and NASCAR star Glen “Fireball” Roberts. Roberts commented to the media that he had resorted to hand gestures to communicate with his mechanics because he knew no Italian and they knew no English. In addition another NASCAR veteran, Marvin Panch, would be driving a Corvette, Roger Penske would be in a Cooper-Climax, and Jim Clark would drive a Lotus Elite.

Other well-known racing names included David Hobbs, Jo Bonnier, Pedro Rodriguez, Briggs Cunningham, Roger Ward, Indy 500 champion A. J. Foyt driving a Pontiac Tempest and Joe Weatherly driving a Lister-Corvette. Weatherly raised some eyebrows among the other drivers by wearing pink powder puffs on each wrist as goggle wipers. This was quite an impressive field of FIA, SCCA, NASCAR and USAC champion drivers for the Daytona inaugural.

One prominent American sports car driver who failed to make the start of the race was Augie Pabst. His ‘Birdcage’ Maserati blew an engine during practice for the event. When it happened he was on the high banks doing about 150 mph. The car flipped end over end and he was thrown free.

The 27-year-old driver and great-grandson of the founder of Pabst Brewing Company sustained fractured ribs, multiple cuts over the face and body, and some internal injuries. His condition was listed as fair at the time but he would recover and go on to drive another day.

For the beginning of the three-hour event the officials utilized a Le Mans style start where the drivers sprint across to their cars, climb in, start the car and try like mad to be the first away.

At Daytona the Le Mans start was done on the pit road in close proximity to turns one and two and it was decided, for safety sake, to have the drivers skip going into turns one and two and go straight onto the tri-oval lest there be a thirty car pileup with everyone trying to get into the first turn at the same time.

This gave the pack time to stretch out along the 2.5 mile tri-oval and only when they finished the first circuit would they start using the infield course. At the end of the first lap the Pontiac Tempest of A.J. Foyt was in the lead going into turn one.

The heavier Tempest was passed by Roger Penske in the more nimble Cooper-Climax on the infield course and he would eventually lose the lead to Phil Hill in the more powerful V6 Ferrari Dino. Foyt lead the first lap because he really pushed the Tempest in order to win a $10.00 bet he had with Roger Ward that he could lead the first lap. He may have done too good of a job winning that bet because he withdrew his car on the second lap with engine trouble.

In one of those “If I didn’t have bad luck I would have no luck at all” scenarios, Hill would strike a seagull with his car necessitating an unscheduled pit stop to clean what was left of the bird from the grill and radiator. Later he would have to pit again because he lost the fuel filler cap on the track and on lap 44 he would brake too late for turn one and miss the turn which cost him valuable time.

In a 24-hour race all these unfortunate incidents might not be a problem but in a three-hour race they were the kiss of death and Dan Gurney’s Lotus took over the lead. It then became a dogfight between the Hill/Rodriguez Ferrari and the Chaparral of Jim Hall to see who would come in second.

With just a couple of laps left in the race, Gurney had what he thought was a comfortable lead of almost two minutes over the rest of the field. Coming out of turn six he accelerated his Lotus onto the high banks expecting to do maybe one or two more laps before he got the checkered flag.

Somewhere between NASCAR turns three and four the 2500cc Climax engine blew and he lost power immediately. Normally when this happens to a driver at Daytona he would signal to the other cars behind him with a raised arm and then slowly drift down to the apron. Gurney was close enough to pit road where he could have coasted all the way to his pit.

Instead Gurney went higher on the banked track almost to the retaining wall and used his momentum to continue all the way to the start/finish line stopping just a few feet short of the starter and the start/finish line. He was just inches away from the retaining wall much to the delight of the hundreds of spectators in the grand stands.

Gurney exited his car and examined the engine which he saw was a hopeless mess. He talked to the starter who told him he was about to drop the checkered flag. Gurney reentered his car and looked at his watch. He noticed that the starter was also looking at his watch. Gurney’s strategy was to wait for the checkered flag to drop and then cross the finish line hopefully still in the lead. At that moment both the Ferrari Dino (Rodriguez now driving) and Jim Hall’s Chaparral were on the same lap and closing fast.

Well, the time ran out and the starter dropped the checkered flag. Gurney was in his broken-down Lotus and his car magically (?) moves across the finish line to claim the win. How he did it is still being questioned fifty years later and recent statements from Dan Gurney haven’t helped the matter.

In the book Daytona 24 Hours by J.J. O’Malley, Gurney indicated to the author that he did not cross the finish line on the car’s starter motor as many have believed for decades but, “I just turned left…(and)…coasted across.”

Several things seem to contradict Mr. Gurney’s account in the J.J. O’Malley book. First is a contemporary report in the magazine Sports Car Graphic, which at the time indicated that the post-race celebrations were interrupted when:

“…the voice from the loudspeaker announced that a protest had been lodged. There was a moment of stunned silence and then people began to wildly compare notes and remember regulations. The stewards had to meet for a decision and the car was immediately locked in the Prestolite Company’s garage. Neither Dan nor Jerry (Gurney’s mechanic Jerry Eisert) yet knew exactly what had happened to the car; later examination showed that a piston had disintegrated and the connecting rod and wristpin had beaten a fist-sized hole in the block. Unofficial word had it that starter O.W. Collins, Jr. had filed the protest on the basis that the car did not cross the line under its own power. This later proved to be false and the situation resolved itself when the stewards were shown that the car was still capable of moving itself on the starter motor.”

A series of five black-and-white period photos are included with this race profile. Some of them appeared in the publication Competition Press and Autoweek soon after the race. They clearly show Gurney stopping his Lotus on the 18-degree bank near the starter. One photo shows him out of the car. Other photos show him as the checkered flag drops and as he passes under the starter’s perch with his front tires pointed straight ahead. Only when he is beyond the starter does he turn left. Additionally all of this can also be viewed on YouTube with a period film called “Off to the Races 1962” which was produced by Delco batteries.

Finally is a statement that appeared in the Daytona Beach Morning Journal quoting Dan Gurney as saying the following, “I got out of the car, talked to the starter, and when he told me he was going to drop the flag I got back in the car and went across on the starter. I don’t know whether the engine actually fired or not. It very well could have since there was nothing wrong with the other three cylinders and the engine wasn’t locked up. It was a Prestolite battery that got the car across. As a matter of fact, we’ve used that Prestolite battery for the last three or four races, we didn’t just put it in for this race. And it sure did the job for us. Thanks, Mr. Prestolite.”

Dan Gurney completed 82 laps in the three-hour inaugural event averaging 104.101 mph (167.523 kph) in his 2.5 liter Arciero Brothers Lotus 19 Monte Carlo. The Hill/Rodriguez Ferrari Dino finished second just 46 seconds behind the Lotus. Jim Hall’s Chaparral 1 finished third but first in class. Stirling Moss placed fourth in his Ferrari 250 GT and first in his class. Both the second place Ferrari and third place Chaparral finished on the same lap as the Gurney Lotus. The national and international publicity surrounding the dramatic and controversial finish was welcomed by Bill France, Sr. and helped to establish Gurney as a household name among many sports car aficionados and made the Daytona Continental (now the Rolex 24 At Daytona) the place to be for exciting sports car endurance racing.

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For Further Reading

Daytona 24 Hours: The Definitive History of America’s Great Endurance Race,
by J.J. O’Malley, pages 19-25, David Bull Publishing

The Daytona Beach News Journal (morning, evening and Sunday) February 6-12, 1962

Godwin Kelly, The Daytona Beach News Journal Motorsports Editor, http://www.news-journalonline.com/columns/motorsports/ August 19, 2011

Countdown to the 50th Anniversary Rolex 24 at Daytona, September 2, 2011, www.racer.com