Page 4 - One Last Turn

car, Karl Kainhofer and Peter Reinhart on the Donohue racer.
“We worked all bloody hours. We’d start at eight o’clock and would still be there at eleven o’clock at night and Penske would roll up in his suit having been to some fancy dinner and say, ‘This place looks like a pig sty.’ He’d get out the
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broom and start sweeping the floor, and
we hadn’t even finished work yet.”
The team had mixed success in that 1967 Can-Am season, which consisted of six races. The Bailey-Follmer Lola took two third-place finishes and two sixth places, Donohue took two seconds and a third. They could not compete with
the McLarens — but then, no one could. Despite less than stellar results, Bailey enjoyed working with Follmer. And the Penske team liked him and liked his work. At the end of the season, he was asked to return. But then Bailey got a call from Chris Amon, who had managed to find time to race a Ferrari 330 P4 at the end of the Can-Am season.
Racing with Ferrari
Ferrari was going to run a car for Amon in the winter Tasman Series, and Ferrari needed an English-speaking mechanic to help run the team. Roger’s two and a half years as the first non-Italian race mechanic on the factory Ferrari Formula One and sports car teams began with saying goodbye to Roger Penske.
In the 1968-1969 season, wintertime in NorthAmerica,Chriswontheprestigious Tasman Series’ championship from the likes of top drivers Piers Courage, Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt, and Derek Bell. “After the Tasman season we went to Modena. It was not unusual for ‘Old Man’ Ferrari to take drivers to lunch, mostly when someone was coming from out of town who didn’t speak Italian.” “Old Man” was an affectionate term for the Ferrari Patriarch, Enzo Ferrari. Bailey continued, “I got back from wherever it was — Australia to Kyalami to Modena in March or April to have lunch. Ferrari had a dining room in the Cavallino. Forghieri, Michael Parkes, Gozzi, the “Old Man,” and Chris Amon
George Follmer in the Bailey-prepared Penske Lola T70 at Stardust Can-Am in 1967. (Photo courtesy Vintage Racing Motors)
Roger Bailey
ONE LAST TURN
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