This Month in Cobra History - February
We can't let a February article on Cobra History pass without featuring a major milestone in the SA trek to the World Manufacturers Championship...
... the racing debut of the Daytona Coupe at the Daytona Continental in 1964.
This was the new car design that was instrumental in bringing the trophy home in 1965. The beginnings of this design is an amazing story and a cornerstone of Cobra lore.
After racing in the 1963 season, it became stunningly apparent that the open roadster design was not going to cut it at the high speeds of the European circuits, including Lemans.
Pete Brock was the driving force behind this new design. he approached Shelby about a streamlined version of the Cobra for this competition. Brock remembered Shelby being quite offhanded about the project, but gave him the go-ahead without much discussion. Ken Miles and Phil Remington added their technical expertise during the development stages. Brock had a vision for the smooth fastback design; Remington helped with the chassis engineering. Ken Miles talked Brock into less windsheild rake than he wanted, knowing that, in a 12 or 24 hour race, it was more important for the driver to see better. With this change, Brock tried to get some of the smooth shape back by moving the high point of the roof backwards, giving the car a strange, unfamiliar humped, sinister look.
Aluminum work was done by California Metal Shaping and the car was completed at the Shelby facility. John Olson was the primary fabricator, working out many of the small, finishing details. He became the crew chief for this car,
CSX2287.
At one point, Shelby brought in Benny Howard, a noted aerospace engineer to give an objective, scientific opinion on the car. After crunching the numbers, Howard said it was all wrong and would never hit the desired speeds with the current horsepower. Brock told CS otherwise...to trust him that it would work.
It did.
Preliminary track tests by Brock showed the car ran cooler than the roadster because of the hood ducts, the brakes ran cooler and the car not only ran faster than anything they had, but was far more stable.
The Daytona Continental in February 1964 was the car's racing debut. The car almost passed tech inspection, failing because of rear tire exposure... so a quick "field-fix" was fabricated - riveting a flare panel on the lower edge of the rear fenders.
Dave MacDonald and Bob Holbert were to be the drivers for this race, shown here posing with CS before the race.
Quite a debut it was... After 8 hours, they were leading the field overall, setting a lap record of 2:08.2 at 106.98 mph.
Bad fortune hit them, however... and they nearly had a terrible tragedy.
When the car pitted for a fuel stop, they noticed a red-hot differential, with gear lube leaking severely. John Olsen dove on the pavement to see what was wrong and squirmed under the rear of the car.
There were two fuel fillers, one at the top of each rear fender. The fuel poured into the one on the left and air was vented out the right-hand one. When the tank filled, fuel spewed out the right filler and down the side of the car, puddling on the pavement. When the fuel trickled down the side and back, it hit the red-hot differential and the whole damn thing burst into flames.
A crew member quickly grabbed Olsen's ankle and jerked him from under the flaming car; three extinguishers quickly put the fire out. John was seriously burned, but not critically. Most of the car's hoses and rear mechanics were badly burned... CSX2287 was out of the race, even though the crew pleaded to try and fix it up to get back into competition.
The cause of the problem turned out to be the Bendix pump that was used to drive the diff cooler; the pump motor failed and the rear succumbed to the overheating.
A neat postscript was that the car was repaired back in California and returned to Florida the next month for the race at Sebring, where the same driver team won the GT category and took 4th overall.
(...more to follow later)