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Road Race of Champions (FB class)

Road Atlanta, 29 Nov 1970

All cars are 1.6-litre FB unless noted.

Notes on the cars:

1. Brabham BT29 (Evan Noyes): Evan L. Noyes Jr . (Cedarville, MI) entered a yellow Brabham BT29 for Sebring 28 Dec 1969 but did not arrive, implying his car was not quite ready on time. He ran through the 1970 Pro season as a member of the Fred Opert Racing team driving a canary yellow BT29 and also raced in CenDiv events, finishing second to Michael Hall. He also finished second at the Run-Offs. This is not the same car that Noyes then took to the Tasman series in January 1971 as his US car was on Fred Opert's stock list on 1 May 1971 with a comment that it had not raced since the Run-Offs.
2. Chevron B15B [FB-69-4?] (Jim Grob): Jim Grob (Ft Lauderdale, FL but later Pompano Beach, CA) raced a Chevron B15B in Pro racing in 1969 and also scored 24 points in Northeast Division FB, representing Northern New Jersey Region. The car was red and white, implying it was chassis 15B.69.4. He retained the car for 1970 and again for 1971, then mainly focusing his efforts on SCCA Divisional racing, finishing second to Hugh Kleinpeter's sister car in 1970 and then winning the Division in 1971. He changed to a B20 for 1972.
3. Chevron B15B [FB-69-5?] (Hugh Kleinpeter): Just as many other SCCA FB drivers were acquiring Brabham BT29s, Hugh Kleinpeter invested in a Chevron B15B to replace the Beach T11 with which he'd won the SEDiv FB title. He retained his title in 1969 and retained the Chevron for 1970, winning his third successive title. Kleinpeter did not continue in FB in 1971, preferring a Chevron B21 for BSR racing. The chassis number of Kleinpeter's B15B is not known but the fact that it was yellow suggests it was chassis 15B.69.5. It is probably the car driven in SCCA racing by Steve Mandy (Biloxi, Miss) at the 1971 Run-Offs and again in 1972.
4. Brabham BT29 [2] (Ken Duclos): Fred Ashplant (Franklin Lakes, NJ) ordered a Brabham BT29 for 1969 but the car was not delivered until August and Ashplant had moved on to other projects. The car was not used during 1969 and was still in its crate when sold to Ken Duclos (Boxboro, MA) for use in NEDiv Formula B. Duclos won the title with a massive 48 pts from the similar BT29 of Bob Welch. After a quiet season with the black BT29 in 1971 he reclaimed his title in 1972, beating the newer March of Michael Rand. He bought a new Brabham BT40 for 1973 and won the divisional title again that season. The BT29 went in part exchange to Fred Opert and from him to Peter Gates (Wilmington, DE) who ran it in NEDiv FB for three more seasons. After him it went to Ken Valan then to John Galson and was then sold to the MidWest where it was expected to be converted into a sports racer.
5. Brabham BT29 [8] (R. C. (Bob) Welch): R. C. 'Bob' Welch (Alexandria, VA) ordered one of the earliest Brabham BT29s but his car didn't arrive late August 1969, giving him time for a short test before the Lime Rock Pro race where he finished seventh. He then set about qualifying for the Run-Offs with just four weeks of the season left and on successive weekends won Nationals at Marlboro, VIR, IRP, and Pocono. Welch retained the car for 1970 when he scored 42 points in NEDiv but was again beaten to the title, this time by Ken Duclos in yet another BT29. The car was sold for 1971 and is believed to be the BT29 in which David Pearl (Atlanta, GA) was killed at Daytona that August. The ex-Welch car is known to have been involved in a major accident and its remains were used by Carl Whitney (Forge Village, MA) in 1972 when he constructed a BT29 out of two wrecked cars. By 2005, this car was with John Stowe.
6. Brabham BT29 [33] (Mike Hall): This Brabham BT29, believed to be chassis BT29-33, was bought new by Michael F. Hall (Chicago, IL) and used in SCCA racing where Hall won the 1970 CenDiv FB title. He also raced it in the Pro series in the latter half of the season. Hall retained the red-and-yellow BT29 for the first half of 1971 but replaced it with a new BT35 in August and sold the BT29 to Phil Geraldi (Valley Stream, NY), who had previously raced a LeGrand in NEDiv FB. Geraldi raced it for the rest of 1971 and in 1972 then sold it to Charles J. Derbes III (Metairie, LA) in the spring of 1973. Derbes won the SWDiv Formula B title in this car in 1974 and attended the Run-Offs, finishing 12th. He was second in the Division in 1975 and tied with Warren Pauge for the 1976 title. Chaz Derbes has retained the BT29 ever since, still owning it in 2012.
7. Brabham BT29 (Larry Harley): Larry Harley (Dallas, TX) bought a Brabham BT29 for the 1970 season, using it in the Southwest Division FB title race - where he finished just a single point behind winner Roy Maze - and in a couple of Pro events. After finishing ninth in the Run-Offs, the car passed to Steve Louden (also Dallas) who raced it in 1971 and 1972, winning the SWDiv title in 1971 and tying in 1972.
8. Brabham BT15 [BT9 F3-6-64] (Chuck Grauel): The early history of F3-6-64 has yet to be decyphered. Although some sources suggest it was raced by Patrick Dal Bo in 1964, this attribution is looking increasingly unlikely. It was advertised in November 1966 by a Joseph Smith (Clitheroe, Lancashire) and was then sold to the US, where dealer Pierre Phillips imported it into Portland, OR, He sold it to Win Casey, also of Portland, who raced it in ICSCC and SCCA FC in 1967 with a MAE engine. Then to another Portland driver, Neil Hansen, for NorPac FC in 1968 when it was described as a BT14. It was later owned by Chuck Grauel (Kansas City, KS) around 1970 then via midget racer Frank Dickerson (Wichita, KS), John Stokes and others to Jerry Strickfaden (Los Alamos, NM) 1987, during which time it was regarded as a BT15. Researched by Jerry Strickfaden and identified as a BT9. To Wayne Mitchell 1988. To Robs Lamplough 2011.
9. Brabham BT29 (James Gutfreund): Jim Gutfreund (Des Moines, Iowa) bought a new Brabham BT29 for 1970 and ran it in Midwest Div Formula B, winning two races and leading the division until his BRM-built Ford twin-cam blew. He sold the car to Archie Snider for 1971 and Snider continued with the BRM engine until joining forces with Jon Milledge who crewed the car for Snider in Regionals while racing it in Nationals and in Pro events. They continued with the car through 1972 and into 1973, before Snider replaced it with a GRD. It then went to Larry Wright to replace his earlier BT29 that he'd wrecked in June 1973. Wright kept the car until 1974 after which he retired and sold the car to "an unknown guy who lived in the Sierra Madre area of So Cal, near Pasadena".
10. Chevron B15B [FB-69-7?] (Doug Brenner): A new Chevron B15B was prepared for Reine Wisell to race - and win - at Sebring 28 Dec 1969, probably chassis 15B.69.7. Doug Brenner bought this car for 1970 and raced in the Pro series and then sold it to Byron Hatten (Altadena, CA) for 1971. Hatten continued to race it into 1972 but crashed heavily at Riverside in Feb 1972, the first event of the season, badly damaging the Chevron. Brenner recalls that the car was later rebuilt as a Formula C before being converted back to FB in the mid-1990s.
11. Brabham BT29 (Roy Maze): Roy Maze (Alvin, TX), owner of local car dealer Royal Dodge Inc, won the 1970 Southwest Division SCCA Formula B title in a Brabham BT29, amassing 33 pts over the season. He scored a second place early in the season but won at Texas International Speedway in July, just a week after crashing out of his only Pro appearance at Dallas International Motor Speedway, and went on to win two of the remaining three Nationals. He was entered for the Run-Offs but did not appear.

Sources

The identification of individual cars in these results is based on the material presented elsewhere in this site and may in some cases contradict the organisers' orginal results.

All comments, clarifications, corrections and additions are most welcome. Please email Allen if you can add anything.