A Win For Cougar, A Wild Ride For Camaro

"Hello," he said. "This is a credit card call, please...area code 215...for Mr. Roger Penske.... Hi, Roger...."

The rest of the conversation from Donohue's end sounded like a Bob Newhart monologue. Luckily all of the damage was repairable, and by working through the night Saturday Mark's crew had the Camaro ready to race when the green flag dropped Sunday afternoon.

Titus, of course, was favored. He won the pole with a 1:16.0 qualifying time (75.789 mph), but sitting near him were the Cougars of Leslie and Revson, both only a fraction of a second slower.

The race divided itself into three distinct parts, thanks to periods of threatening rain, a very heavy rain and finally clearing skies. Of the major contenders only Leslie chose to begin the afternoon with rain tires. Titus, with a quicker car and the right tires, was able to dominate the first 15 laps, run on a fairly dry track.

Then the skies opened up and turned the track into a series of puddles. Every car had its problems and many of them spun out or got broadside somewhere on the track—usually in the Clubhouse turn, the same one Donohue had visited a day earlier. Every car, that is, except Leslie's. While Titus, Revson and the other big cars pitted for rain tires, Leslie drove boldly into the lead on the 16th lap and did not relinquish it until an hour and 45 minutes later when his engine blew and he retired.

"I had the race wrapped up," Leslie said. "The engine is one thing you shouldn't have to worry about on this course. I think I'll commit hara-kiri and bleed over everybody."

By then Titus also had been eliminated in a wild dice with Ken Duclos' Mustang. After spinning at the head of that same Clubhouse turn, Titus' Mustang spent the rest of the race in a ditch on the inside of the turn.

During the rain the lead went briefly to Bert Everett in a Porsche, but when Everett pitted a few laps later, Revson's Cougar went ahead—and won by a margin of one lap and 20 seconds.

There was considerable excitement during the last 50 laps of the 156-lap race when both the Revson and Everett pits calculated—erroneously—that Revson was still a lap in arrears after Everett's pit stop. Revson settled that by passing Everett (who ran the entire race on rain tires) on the 130th lap.

"I wasn't sure where I was," Revson told Everett afterward, "so I thought I ought to get by you for good measure." "You mean it was that easy?" Everett said. He wasn't too disappointed, though. He finished second overall, won the under-two-liter honors and further solidified Porsche's preeminent position among small cars racing today.