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SHORT TRACK MODELS by MR NASCAR Darrell Waltrip's GATORADE Camaro "Superspeedway Modified" - 1978 Daytona Winner!

decals by BULLRING GRAPHIX!

Back in the day, when DW was a brash newcomer nicknamed "Jaws", he was pretty much my favourite driver, next to Cale Yarborough. He was a fearsome, aggressive racer. not afraid to get his nose in there, on or off the track. Unfortunately, to me, after his '89 Daytona victory, he started to sink into self-satirization, and now presents himself more as a clown prince in his career of calling races... folks, that is NOT the DW from the era when he ran the car featured here...

One of DW's most famous cars was the one he called Bertha, a big ol' GATORADE-sponsored Monte Carlo from the '70's. We might think of this one as Bertha's little sister. This is the Camaro that DW had built for the modifed race at Daytona in 1978, and it has a place of honour in his "Stash" near Mooresville.

In his words from the SCR article on DW's collection at www.stockcarracing.com:

"We built that Camaro specifically for the Modified race at Daytona in 1978. They had been running the cars on the road course, but that year they were going to run the race on the big track. At the time, they were racing Pintos and such, and we figured nobody was going to have a really slick Daytona car. We checked the rule book and saw that a Camaro was legal, so we decided to build one.

So we began building this really nice Camaro according to the Modified rules. But pretty far into the construction we set the motor in it and found out that it sat higher than the tires. We were stuck on that one until Robert Gee, who was absolutely a genius when it came to building cars, called at 2 a.m. to tell me he had figured out the problem. He was following a Volkswagen down the road and noticing its fenders. He thought that might work, so he got a set of Volkswagen fenders from a junkyard and reworked them to make them fit that Camaro.

We won the race at Daytona because that car had such an aerodynamic advantage. But then when we came back with the same car in 1979, everybody had one just like it."

And you thought Toyota was leading the foreign car invasion of stock car racing.... It turns out that at least parts of a Volkswagen were there in 1978....Another interesting fact is that apparantly a lot of salvageable parts from the Terminal Transport Mercury (DW's first NASCAR racer) made its way onto this car, after he wrecked it in the 1975 Daytone Busch race.

The chassis build was a particularly trying process. After discussing with a few folks at the Atlanta show in November, and posting questions on Fred's Forum, I started with an AMT NASCAR kit from the early '90's. I owe particular thanks to Tom Faletti, who provided advice and encouragement. He went thru a lot of the same issues I did on his Anderson Camaro build, and though I did not end up with as clean a chassis build as he did (that's why there are no chassis shots...) at least it fit under the body... A LOT of modification/butchering happened - I had to cut down the firewall to fit the lower Camaro body, narrow the chassis pan, and reshape the upper rollcage to get it all to work. I ended up fabricating new front chassis bars in order for it to fit under the lower Camaro snout. In retrospect, I would likely have had a cleaner build if I'd built my own chassis on the AMT floor pan... Even had to shorten the wheelbase a bit at the rear to get it to align with the wheelwell openings. (I doubt Robert Gee had as much trouble with the original 1:1 build...)

Once it had all dried, I applied severa LIGHT coats of Tamiya TS13 clear from the heated rattle can, polished it all up, and had a pretty decent model of a car that likely is not as well-known as it should be...

(PS - since these shots were taken, I've added hoodpin decals to make it more complete...)