Kopek on Shelby's trashing of Pete Brock

[Historybuff]

In some of the early pictures of DAytona construction there are drawings on the wall in back of Brock that show the ring airfoil, basically a strip of metal or fiberglass raised from the surface on little stilts and wrapping around the sides. Brock got the Daytona coupe body accepted by Shelby but from what I understand Shelby said they would add the ring airfoil if they had any aero problems in track testing. Ironically they didn't have rear end lift at Riverside but did when they got to Europe where Phil Remington whacked out a ducktail spoiler that restored some color to P. Hill's face (after he came in ashen faced when he felt the tail lift at 180 mph).
The ring airfoil was subsequently used by DeTomaso n the Group 5 car (originally partly supported by Shelby) , the 70P built by Ghia but I don't know if the movable center section was activated because the car either never ran or ran in some minor events. The car is now being touted as being for sale but one never knows with DeTomaso if there is just one or several.

Brock also used the ring airfoil in a mid engined Hino Contessa powered car called the Samurai. On that car it probably worked as planned. The car seems to have disappeared but may someday reappear as many of Brock's projects do.

Neither Shelby or Brock in anything I've read ever refers to the precedents to the Daytona, the ASton Martin 212, 214 and 215 coupes, at least two of which had concave Kamm effect tails like the Daytona or the Maserati tipo 151 coupe one of which had a Daytona like nose and a chopped off concave rear end like a Daytona, and which ran in '63. When I asked Brock about it he said he didn't know about it but I found a picture of Brock racing a Cooper and the car ahead of him is a Maserati 151 coupe! Not to say the 151 was aerodynamically stable--Lucky Casner was its chief US proponent, he rolled his into a tight little ball. And when Briggs Gunningham had Momo put a 427 side oiler into one, Marvin Paunch (panch?) flipped it and they had a hell of a time getting him out because like the later Ford GT the doors went somewhat into the roof and once the car turned turlte, you couldn't open the doors. Mike Schoen, in his book does mention the Aston influence and I only mention the Aston and Maserati to illustrate that Brock's coupe was derivative of the latest trend of the times, not the first fastback coupe with a concave rear body panel and faired in headlamps.So when Shelby gave Brock the green light to build the car, he knew there were semi successful cars of that general shape.