Grudge Race

The leadfooted daredevils who race on Europe's Grand Prix circuit, at Indianapolis' famed "Brickyard," and on dusty stock-car tracks across the U.S. have only two things in common: a fondness for money and a disdain for one another. Last week they got a chance to exploit both emotions. All three classes of drivers competed in the Daytona Continental, a three-hour endurance race for sports and grand touring cars, run over Florida's

Daytona International Speedway, fastest track in the U.S.

Touted as a grudge race, the Daytona Continental lived up to its billing. Semi-Expatriate Phil Hill, the 1961 Grand Prix champion, angered his U.S. competitors by tooling around the tightly banked, 3.81-mile course in a 103.m.p.h. practice run and remarking, "It's nothing. A simple course." Belgium's Olivier Gendebien went even further: "To win here, you don't have to be the best driver--only crazier than the rest." Britain's Stirling Moss and the foreign contingent clucked at the pink powder puffs that Stock Car Driver Joe Weatherly wore on each wrist as goggle wipers. Said Stocker Glen ("Fireball") Roberts: "Hill and Moss? They've only got two hands and two feet, haven't they? I can dust 'em off."

Stocker Roberts, piloting a Ferrari Berlinetta identical to Moss's, did precious little dusting-off. He finished second in the Grand Touring (closed car) class, twelfth overall. "I was ahead of Moss going into the first turn," said Fireball sadly. "But I came in too hot and went wide. Moss passed me, and from then on it was adios. I never saw him again." Stocker Weatherly also had a run-in with Moss: a broken distributor rotor forced him to slow down, and Moss impatiently nudged him off the course. "I don't think he meant anything by it," said Weatherly. "I just got in his way." An easy winner in the G.T. division, Moss picked up $7,500, and Ferrari picked up nine points toward the 1962 manufacturers' world championship. Driving in the faster sports-car class, California's Dan Gurney, a three-year Grand Prix veteran, wound up the overall winner. He averaged 104 m.p.h. in a low-slung Lotus, managed to limp over the line on his starter motor when his engine quit 200 yds. from the finish.

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