Car Guy Magazine Car Guy Magazine Issue 914 | Page 14

Monday morning I had my wish list
ready: close ratio gears, wider wheels and
fenders, front disc brakes, and an oil cooler.
When I handed the list to Shelby, he asked:
“What’s this?”
Excitedly, I reminded him.
“Oh. Yeah.”
He took the list, but didn’t seem too excited. His enthusiasm from the day before
had evaporated. The guys in the shop urged
me to keep after him or nothing would happen. After asking several times in ensuing
days, he finally remarked, “You’re a pain in the
ass, John. I’ll call Colin right now.”
The parts finally arrived from England,
but only gears and the oil cooler. Carroll
seemed to have totally lost interest in my car.
In early March of 1964, the Shelby team
was going to make an all-out assault at the
12 Hours of Sebring. We were entering three
FIA 289 Cobras, one Cobra coupe, and a 427
prototype that Ken Miles dreamed up. Fabricator Ted Sutton had installed a NASCAR
stock car engine in a 289 Cobra chassis for
Ken to drive.
A fellow lower-tier employee, Jeffrey
Schoolfield, and I wanted to go to Sebring,
but were not really part of the traveling team.
After we let it be known that we would
do almost anything to go, we were called to
the office where the controller told us: “Mr.
Shelby said I could give you boys $25 apiece
if you will drive your own cars to Sebring and
if you will serve as night watchmen at the
track.”
She suggested we pool our money and
take one car.
Neither Jeffrey nor I had a car we could
trust to make the 5,000-mile trip, so we asked
if we found a third person, could he also have
$25? She agreed, so we got John Shoup to
take the trip with us, using his Karmann Ghia,
which would probably make the trip on our
allotted $75. After a 54-hour trip from hell in
the cozy, slow coupe, the three of us arrived
just in time for tech inspection. I ran into Ken
Miles and Lew Spencer. Ken asked if I had an
FIA license.
“I only have an amateur log book, but I
didn’t bring it,” I told him.
“Can you get one?” Ken asked.
“I don’t see how. Why?”
“Because we only have nine drivers for

our five cars and we may need you for the
427.”
He took out a small piece of paper, wrote
something and handed it to me. “Take this to
race headquarters and see if they’ll give you
an FIA license.”
Ken had written simply: “John Morton is
qualified to have an FIA license. Ken Miles.”
To my shock, the officials gave me the
license; the second license I hadn’t earned.
Another man with horsepower.
The nine drivers on the team were Lew
Spencer with Bob Bondurant, Phil Hill with Jo
Schlesser, and Dan Gurney with Bob Johnson in the 289s; Dave MacDonald with Bob
Holbert in the Daytona Coupe, and Ken Miles
in the 427 with no listed co-driver.
In practice, Ken crashed into a tree, so
several of us, including Ken, worked well into
the night repairing the car. I wasn’t given any
practice due partly to the crash, but mostly
because at least one car was expected to
break in time to free up an extra driver. After
a couple of hours into the race with all five
cars still running, there was concern for Ken,
who had damaged ribs from the crash. I was
ferrying tires between the pits and Goodyear
when someone said, “Mr. Shelby wants to see
you.”
Carroll, who knew I hadn’t practiced,
asked me: “Do you know this track, John?”
By this time I knew that my chances were
riding on my answer to this question, so I told
him that I did in fact know the track. The truth
was I’d only seen the race a couple of times
as a spectator. Earlier in the week, when it
looked like I might drive, I bought a $15 driving suit and borrowed a helmet from a guy
in a preliminary motorcycle race. When I first
got in the race car, I was scared, but didn’t
do anything too stupid beyond a couple of
spins on corners I had never seen before.
I drove the rest of the day with several intermissions for mechanical problems. Finally,
at dusk, the engine blew. Dave MacDonald
and Bob Holbert won the GT class giving the
Pete Brock designed Daytona Coupe version of the Cobra its first win. After the race I
confessed to Carroll that I’d lied about knowing the track. He laughed. To this day, I don’t
know if he knew I was bluffing when he first
asked me the question.
After I traded the Super 7 for a Lotus 23,

Carroll was good enough to enter my car as
a Shelby American entry, transporting it to
some of the 1964 professional races. The first
race for the Lotus would be the Players 200
at Mosport in Canada. The team had a semi
and the truck driver, Wayne “Red” Pierce, and
I rode to Canada together. Besides the Lotus,
we had a Cobra for Ken Miles and a King Cobra (Cooper Ford) for Dave MacDonald.
The Mosport race was the first weekend in June, so Red and I were able to listen
to the Indianapolis 500 on the truck radio as
we traveled. MacDonald had qualified one of
Mickey Thompson’s unorthodox rear engine
cars. It was the same team that Billy Krause
had left Shelby to drive for the year before.
Krause didn’t qualify in ’63.
Some of Dave’s friends cautioned him
not to drive the Thompson car because it
wasn’t safe, that better opportunities would
come his way later. Dave felt he had made a
commitment. Even though he was uncomfortable with the car, he would drive it. We listened as they reported the second lap crash.
There was fire; lots of cars involved, and the
race was stopped. The radio said Dave was
in the crash. A couple of hours later, they announced that Dave MacDonald and Eddie
Sacks had died. It was hard to take. It still is.
At Mosport, Augie Pabst drove the King
Cobra we were carrying. He finished second
to Bruce McLaren.
The Cobra team dominated the USRRC
series in 1964. I was lucky to get to drive Cobras in two more