![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Slowly, the world that I knew crumbles away. Chuck Hulse, Ron Tauranac, Ralph Liguori, Don Edmunds, Jim Buick, Bob Lazier, and John Paul Jr. all died last year, between June and New Year's.
I'm particularly sorry to see the end of Ralph Ligouri. This was a man who was undoubtedly a skilled racing driver, but never competed in the 500, despite trying off and on for about 12 years or so. Some of it was probably his own fault - he got picked up by Granatelli/Novi at the Speedway in 1963 or '64. He took the car out on the track and blew it up on the warmup lap - he said it popped out of gear, Granatelli said he was revving the engine with the clutch in. At any rate, it exploded dramatically, blowing most of the block to fragments, blowing all of the bodywork off the front of the car, and leaving one mangled piston still attached to the crank. Stuff like that happened all the time.
Still, there was no doubting the man's talent. He went literally wheel to wheel with AJ Foyt at the State Fairgrounds in 1970 for most of the hundred laps. Foyt said later that that dirt-car race against Liguori was easily the hardest he had ever driven, and that he simply would not hve raced the man that closely were there any doubt about his driving skills.
I was at the Speedway in (I believe) 1985 or so, on the final day of qualifying, when Tom Carnegie announced that someone (and I no longer recall who) was trying to make a deal to buy someone else's last unqualified car, and fly Ralph Liguori down from Chicago to qualify it. The deal fell through for various reasons, and I don't think but about half the people in the stands even knew who Liguori was, but that was the time when I almost got to see Ralph Liguori.
I'm particularly sorry to see the end of Ralph Ligouri. This was a man who was undoubtedly a skilled racing driver, but never competed in the 500, despite trying off and on for about 12 years or so. Some of it was probably his own fault - he got picked up by Granatelli/Novi at the Speedway in 1963 or '64. He took the car out on the track and blew it up on the warmup lap - he said it popped out of gear, Granatelli said he was revving the engine with the clutch in. At any rate, it exploded dramatically, blowing most of the block to fragments, blowing all of the bodywork off the front of the car, and leaving one mangled piston still attached to the crank. Stuff like that happened all the time.
Still, there was no doubting the man's talent. He went literally wheel to wheel with AJ Foyt at the State Fairgrounds in 1970 for most of the hundred laps. Foyt said later that that dirt-car race against Liguori was easily the hardest he had ever driven, and that he simply would not hve raced the man that closely were there any doubt about his driving skills.
I was at the Speedway in (I believe) 1985 or so, on the final day of qualifying, when Tom Carnegie announced that someone (and I no longer recall who) was trying to make a deal to buy someone else's last unqualified car, and fly Ralph Liguori down from Chicago to qualify it. The deal fell through for various reasons, and I don't think but about half the people in the stands even knew who Liguori was, but that was the time when I almost got to see Ralph Liguori.
