For You Old Photo Buffs

[ancrdave]

Henry McKenzie posted this shot from Palm Beach Fairgrounds Speedway today... This photo was probably taken by Lee Gregory in 1966...
Pole car is Dale Creech... outside is Gary Balough... his very first LM ride driving for Johnny Merindino... The car behind Balough may be Vince Pantuso... The fifth car on the outside is Jimmy Crowe... The brown/gold '58 Ford near the back is Billy "Grouch" Myers... No ABC bodies here!!!

[Jeff42442]

that is a cool picture i like to frame it and put it on the wall they raced those cars at sunshine speedway back in the 60s and 70s and called them tornadoes

[tom77hmstd]

No store bought chassis either.

[scottgarrity07]

Awesome quality of that pic. It looks like it was taken with a digital camera last week! Notice the skinny tire on the LF of Balough's car? Looks like no mandated tire purchases either!

[tccaz]

Hey look race cars with personality, greatest racing or racin EVER. Boy do I miss it.

[scottgarrity07]

Wait, they are all A-B-C bodies! (American Boneyard Chevy)

[novabmx]

Very Cool

[elmer]

Down in Naples at the old Collier County Speedway that class was called Hobby Stocks. Man I remember as a kid going there. We used to pull the car to the track with a chain behind our family car. Man have times changed.

[dave41]

that is a cool picture i like to frame it and put it on the wall they raced those cars at sunshine speedway back in the 60s and 70s and called them tornadoes

tornadoes only had a slick on right front. these look like lates at palm beach.

[Phil Jacques]

Got Stagger?

[Frasson118]

Vince Pantuso went on to be a Reading Fairgrounds regular in later years in a Modified. I didn't know he ran down here earlier. Lots of famous Northern racers got their starts down here.

In fact, Balough and Pantuso were both Reading regulars at the same time.... probably 10 years or so after this pic.

[Jimmy McKinley]

You guys talkin' about "Tornadoes" and "Hobby Stocks"...

The cars pictured are the beginning of the "Late Models" in the mid-1960s. The Tornadoes and Hobby Stocks would come about after the Late Models transitioned into Chevelles and such in the late '60s - early '70s.

Love all the cars with no hoods on 'em - some even with no grille. Nowadays, you have to have a car "neat in appearance" before it hits the race track...

[Frasson118]

You obviously haven't been to Speedworld in many years. It's the home of primer paint jobs, and duct tape numbers.

A couple years ago, I took a couple of vacationing cousins to OSW one Friday (they had commitments on Saturday), and they were not impressed with the general appearance of the cars.... in most cases refered to as 'Junkers'.

These aren't rookies at the racing scene.... they've been quite a few places, but the drab appearance of almost everything there, wasn't impressive.

There SHOULD BE some kind of 'attractiveness' rules in place....

If it LOOKS like junk, people will perceive that it IS junk.

[Jim Fenton]

tornadoes only had a slick on right front. these look like lates at palm beach.

Au Contraire – The Tornado class did start out in the late 60’s with allowing only one slick on the RF however towards the end of the class in the early to mid-70’s we were allowed slicks on all four corners with the LF restricted to 8-inches as evidenced in the photo below taken of the aftermath after the fireworks on the back chute at a 4th of July 50-Lap Tornado Championship, Sunshine Speedway in 1973 where 3 or 4 of us were trying to occupy the same piece of real estate.

Shown here is Frank Barfuss’s #73 Keene Park Amoco / Tile Crete Tornado perched on top of the RR quarter panel of my #24 Tornado car while the #07 Tornado driven by Joe Blackwelder is planted deeply into my radiator up front. Left to right; your’s truly (barely in the frame on the left looking down at the front-end damage), then driver of the #63 Tornado Terry Allen (with visor looking back over my roof towards camera), my good friend Joe Blackwelder appearing just over the RR corner of my roof in white T-shirt, Jim Barnes, Owner of Keene Park Amoco (with ratchet in right hand) and Frank Barfuss with helmet.

We went on to win the Points Championship this year at Sunshine with this car.