Pontiac Catalina Racer - Speed And Circumstance

HPP: What made the rear window blow off like that?
BJ: When I came off the number two turn, there was a slight change in the banking, which could have twisted the car enough to give it the shock it needed. Plus, the wind going over the car left a low pressure area at the back window. There were no spoilers back then, so it's just like an airplane wing. The vacuum behind the rear window, in this case, was strong enough to pull it out.

HPP: Do you agree with Junior's version of what happened during the final laps of the 1960 Daytona 500?
BJ: No. To hear Junior in his new book, "Well, we sucked the rear window out of your car..." Let me tell you something. He was so far behind, he didn't know which way I was going when the rear window came out. Junior has so much publicity going on now 40-some-years after the fact that they are making up a more colorful ending for that Daytona race. It's a race that we were winning, and when the rear window came out, we were damn fortunate to finish Second.

HPP: What were your experiences with the '60 Pontiac No. 5 car?
BJ: Cotton was delegated that car because he didn't have one after the wreck at Darlington. Ray Nichels, who was the head of Pontiac racing at that time, let us get a car that Paul Goldsmith had been running in USAC (car No. 99) and had been handily winning races. My dad and I drove up to Highland, Indiana, where Nichels Engineering was. We went on a tire test with Paul, then Ray brought the '60 Pontiac back to Highland and painted it white and put the number five on it. Dad and I towed it over to Cotton's place in Spartanburg and Cotton took the car. We went to Charlotte with it; the Charlotte race was going to be a good one for us. We were running well up front and then we lost a lap. NASCAR put the yellow flag out, but they didn't put a caution car out. They just kept the race running. Had they put a caution car out, I would have been able to make up my lap, starting at the tail end, of course. NASCAR didn't slow down the race because they knew if Pontiac had been able to make up that lap, I'd have won the race easily. Of course, Ford was hurting for a race win-they hadn't had one in a while-and Pontiac was knocking them dead. That lost me a race right there. It was a miscue from NASCAR regarding its caution car, I have to say. Maybe they did it by mistake. Whatever it was, it put me in a position where I only got Fourth. But that was the first race that I ran with the car.

HPP: Your biggest win in 1960 came driving that No. 5 car for Cotton at the Atlanta 500. What do you recall of the event?
BJ: The car was a rocket ship. We ran up front most of the time-in fact we won the race by a lap. But it rained the last part of the race, so we had a cushion on everybody. We didn't get a lap up by rain; we got the lap up by running fast. That was sensational.

HPP: How do you compare Smokey's Pontiac to Cotton's Pontiac? What were their similarities and differences? Which was better?
BJ: The one that I drove in Atlanta is the one I got out of Ray's shop and was sponsored by Cotton. That was a great car-it drove very well. I would have to put that car next to the best Pontiac I ever drove. The Pontiac of Smokey's was strong-engine-wise it had a lot of torque-and it was a hard-pounding engine, but I thought driveability was more in-line with the Pontiac that came out of Ray's garage and was sponsored by Cotton-the one that we won the Atlanta race in.

HPP: With all the successes with Pontiac, why did you race Fords in 1961?
BJ: In 1961, there weren't any deals out there for me, so we built our own Ford and it ran quick, but we couldn't keep it running. We had a deal with Ford and that was a big mistake because we never got engines that would run as well as the Pontiac engines that my dad and I built up. But financially, it was the way to go because we didn't have the funds to go into it ourselves, so we used sponsored Ford engines.