Though I'm not a racer, my hero's packing it in. Jim Hall, whose career as racer, designer, and car owner spans five different decades, has told his people at Hall Racing to start looking for workafter the 1996 CART season. Always the innovator, Hall would come up with new ideas in his Chaparralcars through the 60's and early 70's as part of the old Can-Am series. One of the first innovations in competitive Group 7 cars was automatictransmission, brought on by an arm injury in the early 60s. He hired a hillclimb specialist named Penske as a relief driver until the arm mended. After his first major win at the 12 Hours of Sebring with co-driver HapSharpe (also his first partner in Chaparral Cars), Hall would tinker withnew ideas in aerodynamics with his cars. The first was the high-strut wing, brake-actuated, that was part of the2D and 2E, and may have been part of the 2G until the unfortunate practicefatality of rival Bruce McLaren, when the FIA barred the "movable spoiler"and high-strut wings in the early 70's. His next idea became the "sucker cars" in the death throes of the Can-Amseries, but the fans that begat the moniker for the 2I (one large) and 2J(two small) were used in Formula One for one race (1978 Swedish GP) and retired. By this time many IndyCar designers were using "wedge" shapes, originallyintroduced about 1973. Hall went back to his Midland, Texas shop and startedwork on a new design, incorporating what he learned from the 2I/2J and theLola-Ford he leased for the 1978 Indy 500, which he won as an owner, Al UnserSr. guiding the car to victory lane. Hall rolled out the 2K in 1979, again with Unser at the wheel, but dropped out at the halfway mark with mechanical woes, a constant problemwith his Group 7 cars. Hall made some minor adjustments to his car, and with Johnny Rutherford atthe helm, won his second Indy 500 as an owner, and could possibly be the lastindependently-built chassis to win the Memorial Day race. With the possible exception of Dan Gurney at AAR/Eagle, we may never seeanother American designer/constructor like him again. So long, Jim. We'll miss you.
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