The Passing of an Icon:

The passing of an American Racing Icon:

Phil Hill, 1907/2008:

Phil Hill the first American Formula One Champion passed away today from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

I only saw Phil drive two times, both at the Nurburgring in 1961. The race that I remember most was the German Grand Prix at the “ring” in 1961. During this race one of the guys that I went to the track with and I had gone to an area along the so-called straight before the start/finish and when the German police were not looking we ducked under a wire separating us from the hedge that lined the track. We dove into the base of the hedge and stuck our heads out onto the track. At this point the cars were coming to our side of the track so that they could set up for a very fast left before the start/finish and the pits. The drivers were able to see us and they pulled a little to their left and did not come close to us. Stirling Moss had built up a fair lead and was not really being challenged by the Ferrari’s of Phil Hill and Wolfgang Von Tripps. Phil on the other hand was in a nip and tuck battle with his teammate Von Trips for the championship of Formula 1. My buddy was using an 8mm movie camera and I had a 35 mm film camera. He was up the track from me and I had to duck out of the hedge to place a new roll of film in my camera when along came Von Trips followed by Phil. Von Trips pulled slightly to the left but Phil was doing everything he could to catch the flying Von Trips did not give an inch. He held his line and just barely missed the camera. I cannot for the life of me remember his name but I did see his film and it was great. Your first saw a red dot in the distance pull toward the center of the road and then it passed and another red dot appeared and it just got bigger and bigger and did not budge an inch. He later told me that as he was watching through the view finder and as Phil’s car got closer he looked up and said “Oh Shit” and ducked his head and body back into the hedge but kept his hand in the movie camera. He thought he could take my hand not my head. It was a pretty good piece of 8mm movie making.

Phil placed third in that race less than one second behind Von Trips and after 2 hours and 18 minutes over the most difficult race track in the world only 22.5 seconds behind Stirling Moss the winner of the race.

I consider it a great moment in my life to have witnessed these great drivers at the greatest racetrack in the world.

Phil Hill had the distinction of winning his very first race and also his very last race the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch in 1967.

Phil leaves behind his wife Alma, a son and two daughters.

Phil you will be missed but not forgotten.

I will try again:

I am going to try again to post some photos of this site. Since Friday I have been trying to post pictures here on Google and everytime I have been unable to add pictures. Google says that they do not know the address that I am trying to use. For crips sake I am posting from their site and they don't have that address. Google sucks.

So much for my whinning, here hopefully are some pictures of the grid of the F2000 race during the NASCAR West race at Miller.

John's Porsche 996. photos

Sorry John, Google is not letting me post your pictures tonight. I'll try again in the morning.

John's Porsche 996 at Miller:

Last week at Miller One car that caught my eye was a silver and Green Porsche 996. Sometimes looking only through a viewfinder you sometimes miss some details. After the race I was wandering through the paddock garages and I came across this Porsche and its owner. We got to talking I mentioned that at the NASCAR race some of the photographers will pay the driver of a car a buck for every yellow cone that the driver runs over and they get a shot of. John then pointed out that he had taken out several yellow candle stick cones with his right front headlight. Then I saw that his headlight was indeed broken out and rthat he had sustained some damage to his fender. John proabably didn't need to drive so close to the cone as hhe and his car were the class of the field. At the green he was just plain gone. This is one pretty and fast race car.

Post two August 18, The Attitudes:

Miller Park Racing Assoc. Aug. 16, 2008

Today mostly photos I am posting a total of ten photos taken up at "The Attitudes" series of corners. I haven't had the time to do any corrections on these yet. HWP (hot wheels paul).

Photos at the Thriller at Miller June 30, 2007

Today I am posting two sets of pictures that I took last year at the Thriller at Miller vintage sports car race.

Thriller at Miller June 30, 2007

Thought for the day.

This has been a long week and it is not over yet. Tuesday night was my night in the barrel. I was the late driver, which means that I went to work at 3 p.m. and if everything goes right I get off at 3 a.m., thing of course did not go quite as planned. I ended up getting off work at 5:30 a.m. Fourteen and one half hours driving a crappy Astro van. The money wasn’t too bad though. I did on one of my runs pick up a man from China and he asked if he could hire the van to take him around town while he made business calls. Our company doesn’t do that, but in the end he hired me my car to take him around the valley today end my car. He paid me for 6 hours work and extra for gasoline. All in all it was a good day. Any day I can score some extra green is always a good day. Speaking of extra green. I received an email from the magazine today and not only are they going to publish one of my photos, they are even going to pay me and send me a copy of the issue.

This weekend is The Miller Park Racing at Miller. Duh… I am going to try and go out for Saturday and Sunday. September is just about the last month of racing at Miller. The first weekend is for Vintage Motorcycles, then the Hero’s of Speed, the Rolex Grand Am and the final race is a Porsche Club event. The end of the racing season is almost upon us. How sad!

Now for some pissing and moaning, maybe just a little sour grapes thrown in. Recently one of our drivers totaled his second van. Now this driver started just after I did so he has less seniority than me. The first total was last winter when he hit a moose up on I 80 on the way to Park City. The thing about that accident was that he had a van full of people paying him to drive them safely and he did nothing to try and avoid the Moose. He told me that he didn’t even try and use the brakes much less the steering wheel. Oh my gosh, there is a Moose in front of me I guess I’ll just ram it at full frigging speed. About two or three weeks ago during a heavy rain storm he came barreling out of a cloverleaf turn and hydroplaned lost control and drove the van up onto the Jersey barrier. The police investigating cited the company for having tires with only 3/32 tread. The tread may have been a little low but that is no excuse for him on his inspection sheet to say that the tires were ok. Isn’t that why they have us inspect each vehicle before we take it on the road? The company was apparently afraid of him suing them so they gave him his raise about four months early. What do I have to do to get a raise wreck a couple of vans? I know that at just about the same time that S---- wrecked his van I began to hydroplane during the rain and I was driving slowly.
Tomorrow I will try and be more positive and even post some photos of racecars.

Nascar at Miller:

Last weekend it was the NASCAR West Camping World Series at Miller. To tell you the truth this is only the second Nascar race that I have ever been too. I have watched a few Nascar races on the tube throughout the years and have been to a few short track races. I have also driven my old Bobsy Formula Vee on an oval and don't tell anybody but I thought it was great fun and a challenge. I did like the fact that smoothness is of the utmost importance on an oval. At one time before Miller came into being I had even considered getting a Legend car. Yes, I did consider going circle track racing, mostly because Utah did not have a road race track. Now thanks to Larry Miller we have a world class road race facility.

Anyway, last weekend was the second Nascar race at Miller. They used the 3 mile outer track. Also on the card was Miller Park Racing Association and Formula 2000. I was covering the F2000 races for Formula Car Magazine. I will say that the F2000 cars were much faster on lap time than the Stock Cars. The F2000 cars could lap at over 100 mph. and were close to ten seconds a lap faster. They had some really good races and Jeff Westphal won on both days. Jeff was clearly very fast, smooth and a racer. I think I heard that he is hoping to get into Indy Lights. Soon I will post some pictures of the F2000 cars and races and racers.

The big ground pounder's while not as fast as the F2000 put on a great show, with a lot of rubbing slipping and sliding, crashing and just plain racing. This may be a rung or two down from the main NASCAR cup race series but let me tell you if you ever get a chance to see them race, do it.

Today I just quickly picked out five photos of some of the cars on Fridays practice.