1970  Daytona 24 Hours:   Feb 1, 1970  cont.

The oil-stained Ferraris await tech inspection after the race

Disaster strikes while Tony and David are in the lead!    Man on the left holds a light above his head as mechanics work on #23's damaged radiator

    As the race sorted itself out, Parkes fell asleep approaching the banking and made contact with the wall, destroying the front radiator.  His pit stop put us clearly in the lead after many lead changes during the race.

    I was thinking this was too easy, when suddenly the race became an unbelievable change of events.  The Daytona track base is made up of mostly coral.  As the race continued, the track surface deteriorated, revealing coral under the surface.  Bits of the coral kicked up and began to eat away at our radiator, which was mounted very low in the nose.  The track conditions eventually rendered our own radiator useless and we were overheating!

On Daytona's high bank:  Battered by 24 hours of racing, the rugged 312P finishes 5th

    I pulled into the pits unannounced; all I could say was Aqua! Aqua! Aqua!  Carrol Smith came up to my cockpit door and said we have a problem.  The only spare was installed on Parkes car.

    We were out of luck, never the less I was told to continue on while watching oil temperature.  We were still in the lead, but had five and one half hours left to go.  David Piper and I continued to nurse the 312P lap after lap.

    Apparently the year before, Chris Amon had holed a radiator while running over some debris at Sebring in his 312P, and the venerable engine kept on running for a few hours to allow him a second place finish.  Déjà vu we were in the same situation, with no Aqua in the system.

    We were able to hold on to 2nd place while the Parkes/Posey chassis took over the lead.  The amazing strength of Ferrari engineering let us finish 4th and 5th overall and 1st and 2nd in class behind  larger displacement cars.  I had the distinct honor to race both chassis: #0870 at Daytona & Sebring and #0872 Le Mans, without a doubt, one of the most underrated Ferrari's ever, the 312P!

    Encouraged with the one-two finish in class, NART's Luigi Chinetti arranged for his son "CoCo" to drive with Tony at the Sebring 24 hours race scheduled several weeks later.

This is S/N 0870. Tony drove it at the Daytona 24 Hours and Sebring 12 Hours in 1970.  Today it is owned by French collector Pierre Bardinon.


The type is considered to be one of the most beautiful Ferraris of all time and knowledgeable dealers value them in the nine million dollar range.  Neither of the two examples have changed hands in several decades.

SN 0870

SN 0870

S/N 0870 from the rear...

showing its louvered rear window.

Tony Adamowicz, Gary Wheeler, Tony a2z, Tony Adamowics, a2zRacer, Gary Wheeler, Tony Adamowicz

    HOME

   DIRECTORY

   LINKS

   BACK

   NEXT  PAGE

PAGE:   

1      2      3       4      5      6      7      8      9      10    11    12    13    14    15    16    17    18    19    20    21    22    23    24    25

26    27    28    29    30    31    32    33    34    35   36    37    38    39    40    41    42    43    44    45    46    47    48    49    50

51    52    53    54    55    56    57    58    59    60   61    62    63    64    65    66    67    68    69    70    71    72    73    74    75

76    77    78    79    80    81    82    83    84    85   86    87    88    89    90    91    92    93    94    95    96    97    98    99    100

101  102  103  104  105  106  107  108  109

1970 Daytona Driver's Meeting - In front row is Vic Elford, Jack Brabham, Mario Andretti - can you find other stars?

Mike Parkes and Sam Posey walk from their #24 Ferrari past Tony's #23

The #23 Ferrari follows two French Matras into the infield

  The 312P had the last upright V-12 made by Ferrari.  The detuned 3-liter formula-One engine gave the car a top speed of 200 mph.

Chinetti's NART team (North American

Racing Team)  was Ferrari's racing

arm in the United States.

    Here's a photo of the 312P engine and

transmission as it appeared when the car

was raced as an open Spyder model in 1969.