History of the Maserati Marque


THE BILL KRAUSE INTERVIEW by Willem Oosthoek
(reprinted from the Spring, 1999 iL TRIDENTE)

O ctober 12, 1958 saw the first professional sportscar race on the West Coast, as part of a four race inaugural USAC Road Racing Championship program. Sponsored by the Los Angeles Times and to be run on the one-year old track at Riverside, this event drew an impressive field of SCCA, USAC, and Grand Prix racers, all lured by a $15,000 purse. Among the Grand Prix pilots was the 1957 French Maserati team member Jean Behra, who entered the first ever Porsche RSK in the U.S. and drove it to a remarkable 4th place finish, first in under-2-liter. When asked afterwards by the press whom he considered the best racer of the field Behra did not mention winner Chuck Daigh (Scarab) or 2nd place finisher Dan Gurney (4.9L Arciero Ferrari). Nor did he mention any of his Grand Prix colleagues: Phil Hill, Roy Salvadori, Masten Gregory, or Carroll Shelby. But Jean was full of admiration for a relative unknown: 25-year old Billy Krause of Compton, California.
    Krause had finished 3rd in a 1956 Jaguar D-type and was actually gaining on the leaders at the end of the race. Had the event lasted longer than 203 miles Bill might well have won in his relatively obsolete car as both Daigh and Gurney were suffering from fading brakes. After these widely published compliments Bill Krause would not be unknown for much longer. Various California-based car owners would be eager to offer him rides in cars like the 450S and Tipo 61 Maseratis. Krause’s Birdcage victory in the same Times Grand Prix two years later, amongst the most competitive sportscar field ever assembled until then, would turn out to be the high point of his racing career. Not that anybody expected it at the time. Surely this talent would pursue an international racing career with one of the factory teams as a logical next step. But, although Krause would be closely involved in the early race development of Carroll Shelby’s Cobras and Mickey Thompson’s semi-factory Sting Rays, it was not to be. A number of unfortunate circumstances, as well as pure bad luck, ended Bill’s ongoing career by mid-1963. This was ironic as Bill Krause was one of California’s best, having driven his sportscars in the best dirt track tradition, the field where he gained his first race experience. He was always spectacular to watch and very much a crowd pleaser. Krause raced sporadically for some more years but by early 1966 his racing activities were over.
    I had the privilege of interviewing Bill in Palos Verdes Estates, CA in June, 1998 where we had a great time going over his racing career and Maserati experiences.


Pomona, Feb. 1,1959: first ride and 2nd place finish in 450S #4502,
still painted in Tony Parravano’s colors. (photo: Bob Tronolone)

WO: How did you get started in racing?
BK: My dad, Arnold Krause, and his brother, Bert, had been involved in midget racing for a long time. My dad ran a machine shop and was a car owner for drivers like Andy Linden and Walt Faulkner. Before the war he built a four-wheel drive midget that was so fast it was outlawed by the AAA. When I was young my heros were guys like Duke Nalon and Rex Mays. I started out in midgets and in fact I built my own car.

WO: What led to your move to sportscar racing?
BK: It was pretty much a family decision. My mother thought open wheel racing was too dangerous and wanted me out. I had had a couple of accidents and decided that sportscar racing would be less risky. With the emergence of that type of racing in California, my dad ordered a 3.4 liter Jaguar D-type from the factory in early 1956.

WO: Not too many 23-year olds had the opportunity to race their own D-type in those days.
BK: It wasn’t too expensive—less than $10,000. My future brother-in-law, Von Dutch, did the paint job on the car. I practiced it at Willow Springs for a couple of days and entered and won my first sportscar race at Bakersfield in the Saturday feature.

WO: But it wasn’t until the first Times Grand Prix in October, 1958 and those favorable comments by Jean Behra that you became a household name.
BK: I was very flattered by that remark but I don’t think enough people read it to make me a household name. We had lightened and bored the D-type to 3.8 liter and it was painted red and white now. If the race had lasted longer we would have won as the first two cars had brake problems. We were gaining on them in the end.
 
WO: You also had your share of mechanical problems with that D-type, especially after installing a Corvette engine.
BK: When that car was right it was fast. But we had all kinds of problems: rocker arms, sealing the head. One time I was leading at Riverside and the lower shaft in the Halibrand rearend broke. Nobody ever broke a lower shaft but mine did! I raced that car all over the country: Daytona, Elkhart Lake, Pikes Peak, Hawaii, and so on.

WO: You also rolled it in practice at Riverside one time.
BK: Oh yes, in turn 2! I rolled up the bank upside down and was trapped under the car. They had to roll it up the hill so that I would not crush my arm. Actually I thought that was it as I could hear the fuel pumps running and fuel was coming out of the carburetors. I managed to turn off the pumps in the dark but gas was all over me. If it had ignited that would have been it. Eventually I sold that car for $5,000 to a guy in Beverly Hills who drove it in the street with a stock Chevy engine.

WO: During 1959 you also ran that Chevy-engined Porter Mercedes, like in that USAC race at Vacaville.
BK: You know what happened at Vacaville? The drive shaft broke. It dropped down and hit the pavement. I had just passed Richie Ginther’s Testa Rossa for 2nd place and the thing started to jump up and down. I thought it was going into the ground. The car was kind of fun. It was a little clumsy though and it just did not handle very well. Right in the middle of the corner after the banking it straightened itself out. It did that every lap and it drove me nuts. It understeered all by itself. The crew did a funny thing—the opposite of what I thought they should have done. They lowered the backend by an inch and a half and that solved the problem. I won the only race that car ever won—at Riverside in December,1959 over Bob Drake in the Lubin Birdcage.

WO: The same year saw you at the wheel of the 450S Maserati. Four races in chassis 4502, the ex-Tony Parravano car, plus that relief race in chassis 4509, the Ebb Rose car.
BK: I only did a short relief stint in the Rose car, for Lloyd Ruby at Daytona in April, 1959. That car was dumping oil in the cockpit while going through the banking. Oil also got on the left rear tire which put me in the sand at one time. I was called in and Shelby took over and retired the car. The other 4.5L that I raced was the actual prototype model.

WO: Ordered by Tony Parravano in 1956 and sold by the IRS to cover Tony’s tax liabilities.
BK: Dr. Rey Martinez and Jack Brumby bought it in January, 1959. You talk about a big car. Huge! It was a truck. That car steered so hard that I had to work out all the time with those springs that you stress. At Pomona it broke the steering brackets right off the frame. There was something wrong with the steering of that prototype. You had to steer with the throttle, as you just could not turn the wheel.

Pomona, March 7, 1959: Krause winning the Saturday sprint race in the freshly painted
and still unmarked 450S (photo: Bob Tronolone

WO: Wasn’t that hard on a short track like Pomona ?
BK: Well, I finished 2nd in my first 4.5L race there. Brumby was supposed to drive it himself but the car scared him. I practiced by running up and down the parking lot a couple of times. The brakes did not bother me. It had lots of horsepower and torque, ideal for a track like Riverside. But my next race in the 4.5L was again at Pomona for the Examiner Grand Prix. I was leading that race and not too many people know what actually happened. The center bolt in the rear spring broke during the race. A spring leaf came out and cut the right rear tire. It blew and the car did a 360. I just missed a large telephone pole. It really scared me as I thought the car was going into the crowd. The only protection there was snow fencing! In the end it just slid by the fence, pointing the right way again.

WO: Did you know at that moment that you had lost a tire?
BK: It all happened so fast I did not realize what had happened. I just stuck it in gear and got back on the throttle. While I was on the back straight rubber started flying off. Bang, bang! By then I realized I had lost my right rear tire. Since there was minimal pit communication I didn’t know if I had 2, 3, or 5 laps to go so I came in to have the wheel changed. The crew just said to go on as there was only one lap to go! So I finished in 4th place on three tires.

WO: The car looks pretty banged up in pictures of that race.
BK: I bent every corner of that car during the race. The track wasn’t really suited for that type of car. Once you were committed to a corner you could not start changing your mind in the 4.5L.

Santa Barbara, Sept. 6, 1959: Bill pushes a battle-scarred 450S to the
starting grid; behind him the Ferrari 500 TR of Chuck Cornett.

Last ride in the Brumby/Martinez Maserati (photos: Bob Tronolone).

WO: What color did it have?
BK: The color was very pretty, a kind of silvery blue. I think it was red in the beginning.

WO: The next race was the Kiwanis Grand Prix at Riverside, a better venue for the 450S.
BK: At Riverside I bumped Jim Jefford’s Scarab in the rear corner. Not very hard, just a little bump. But apparently it knocked his fuel pump out. Of course I didn’t do it on purpose because I could have knocked myself out.

WO: According to the race reports you dropped out while in 2nd place due to heat exhaustion.
BK: It was actually fume poisoning! The crew had put an extra air scoop on the body because of the hot race conditions. But the result was that all the oil and gas fumes from the engine compartment went straight into the cockpit. And it put me to sleep! I was dozing off going down the straight.

WO: After you came in Pete Woods took the 4.5L out for a couple of laps.
BK: Somebody did but the problem persisted. In fact after that we didn’t run the 4.5L that long because Jack Brumby went to work for Maserati Representatives of Beverly Hills.

WO: In what capacity?
BK: Service manager. It was a brand new operation owned by a young guy by the name of George Humiston and his mother. George was a real nice kid. His mother had divorced his dad who owned a steel company in Compton, so there was lots of money. She started hanging around with this Italian guy who called himself Count Giacomo Soderini whom she eventually married. A real good looking guy, always sharply dressed. He had connections with Maserati. Since George liked race cars Soderini talked him and his mother into setting up a Maserati distributorship and retail dealership in Beverly Hills.

WO: I suppose that’s where the buying power was for Italian exotics.
BK: But as it turned out later Soderini may have been getting kickbacks for every Maserati that George bought. As George was ordering all these cars they were piling up in warehouses everywhere as they didn’t sell that fast. Meanwhile Brumby had also talked Humiston into ordering a new Birdcage with the October Times Grand Prix at Riverside in mind. It wasn’t coming; kept being delayed and so on. So George’s mother flew to Italy to see Orsi and talked him into finishing the car. It was assembled in 4 days using spare parts. They flew it out on a TWA 707 and we picked it up here at the airport. Chassis #2469, brand new, with the gears for Riverside put in already. When we got that Maserati off the airplane it had spaghetti wrappers and an old wine bottle in it! Junk all over! We took it off and cleaned it up. Initially we just made some minor changes, like the tires and spark plugs, to stuff we used here. Then we went out to do some testing at Riverside. I lowered the windshield as it was right at my eye level and it would’ve driven me nuts. So I cut a piece of plexiglass off, turned it around, put it down below, and screwed it back on again so that it deflected the air. And that worked great for me. I also put a bigger, sprint car type, Bell steering wheel on the car to slow the steering down at Riverside. Especially the Esses at Riverside were real precise and a bigger wheel allowed me to move my hands further. Later, when we went up to Laguna Seca, I put a smaller Bell wheel on as that track is tighter and slower. I never used the original wooden wheel.

Riverside, Oct. 14, 1960: The brand-new Humiston Tp. 61 arriving at the track.
The tow vehicle was a Ford pickup truck. (photo: Jim La Tourrette)

WO: Interesting customizations.
BK: Otherwise that Birdcage just was very, very good. Also we just started to do tire compounds and Goodyear had the Blue Streak with two compounds. We tried both types. The hard tires worked pretty good. We tried the soft ones on the morning of qualifying and halfway in turn 9 we were really smoking through there. Turn 9 is that fast 180 degree turn at the end of the straightaway. Having raced midgets and sprint cars I decided to put a side harness in the car for extra control.

WO: That harness never showed in any of the photographs.
BK: No, you can’t see it. But it held me up so I didn’t have to lean on the steering wheel. I was running as hard as I could through turn 9. Since the car didn’t have much in the way of seat support that strap held me really well. I could be very precise with the steering and throttle through that corner.

WO: Which tires did you end up using?
BK: When we were practicing through turn 9 with the soft tires I felt they were heating up about halfway through the corner. I thought they were too soft for the rear but good up front. So for qualifying I changed to hard ones in the back. I remember it changed the handling characteristics of the car but we ended up with fastest time until Gurney and Moss beat me with the Lotus 19s.

WO: How do you remember the race?
BK: During the first 5 laps I passed Moss 2 or 3 times until he finally broke his transmission. Gurney was still ahead of me but I had looked at those Lotuses prior to the race when they had the bodies off. I saw those little tiny brakes and remember thinking that they would fade early if I could keep enough pressure on them. They looked really small but of course those cars were very light as well. They were real fragile in a lot of ways.

Riverside, Oct. 16, 1960: Only Krause’s Birdcage could stay with the  Lotus 19s of Gurney and Moss.
Behind them: Jeffords (Streamliner), Pabst (Scarab), Salvadori (Cooper Monaco), Thompson (Sting Ray),
and Jim Hall (450S), following at a distance. (photo: Bob Tronolone)

WO: Gurney had a lot of problems before he started winning with that Lotus 19.
BK: He did. Gurney was a tinkeritus anyway, always making changes at the last second. He was even worse than me! But Dan was as good as anybody. He was much smoother than I was and damn fast.

Now in the lead, Bill laps Tony Settember who was driving Krause’s own D-type. (photo: Bill Motta)

WO: Is it true that after winning at Riverside you ran out of fuel on your cool-off lap?
BK: No, it isn’t. I thought we did. What really happened is that about 5 laps from the end the car started quitting every time I went through turn 6 and 7. So we thought it was empty. But when we got home there were still 5 gallons of gas in the car. We would start it but it would not run. It turned out that the starter solenoid had started vibrating apart and it would fall and short the car out. If I had stopped it would never have started again. Just one of those little things.

A close look at Bill’s modifications to chassis #2469: Riverside, Oct. 16, 1960: the large sprint
car steering wheel and the cut windshield. (Bob Tronolone)

Riverside, Oct. 16, 1960: USAC Director Henry Banks interviews Krause after his win. Note the
affect of 200 miles of racing on Bill’s gloves!  (photo: Jim La Tourrette)

WO: Then Laguna Seca one week later.
BK: At Laguna we ran two 100-mile heats. In the first 100 miles I was running first and second with Moss, back and forth, throwing dirt all over third place Jack Brabham. But I didn’t even know he was there!

WO: Brabham did not appreciate that, did he?
BK: No, he was mad at me. But if you look at the back of the Birdcage and notice how high it is, well, Brabham was tucked up behind me with a Cooper Monaco. From time to time I would see him briefly in my mirror but I was driving so hard that day that I didn’t have much time to spend on my mirror. In order to keep up with that Lotus 19 I was running off the road on both sides. So I would hit the dirt over here, over there. It did not bother me but I guess it was throwing stuff up at Brabham. I don’t think that is what caused his flat tire but he blamed it on me.

WO: You dropped out in that first heat.
BK: What caused my retirement was a screw that fell out of the distributor rotor. Nothing broke, it just unscrewed. So we had to start last in the second heat. That race was the hardest I drove all my life. I finished 3rd after Moss and Pabst. After I finished I noticed that my hands had eaten through the gloves and through their skin. They were bleeding and stuck to the steering wheel. I could not let go of the wheel!

WO: After only a limited number of races in that chassis 2469 Birdcage—Riverside and Laguna in October, 1960, and two additional wins on January 7th and 8th, 1961 at Pomona in the Saturday and Sunday Cal Club races—the car was sold to Chuck Sargent.
BK: It was too bad. The Birdcage suited my driving style because of its balance. It had almost a 50/50 weight distribution. You could powerslide it through the corners and maintain tremendous exit speed. Soderini kept promising he would replace it with the latest Maserati from the factory, but he did not deliver.

WO: For most of 1961 you ran a variety of cars from “Old Yaller” to Frank Arciero’s Lotus 19.
BK: Max Balchowsky who built “Old Yaller,” was a good friend of mine. It was an easy car to drive, probably the easiest I ever drove. It was a good stopper with lots of torque. I led at Laguna in June but the car broke. As for the Lotus 19, I would love to get my hands on a photo of me in that car. Frank Arciero does not remember that I raced it a couple of times when Gurney was in Europe racing Porsches. I liked that rear-engined car. At Indianapolis Raceway Park in 1961 I broke the track record on Friday, the first day of qualifying.You had to drive that Lotus differently, drive it smooth into the corners, not standing on the brakes, and put the power on early.

WO: Then Maserati Reps was taken over in the Spring of 1961 by Harry Finer, reputedly a Beverly Hills based tailor.
BK: Harry was a guy from New York, or at least from back East. He was quite the character!

WO: Finer offered you a ride in another Birdcage, chassis 2452, the original Joe Lubin/Bob Drake car.
BK: Yes, with that car we almost led every race we entered in 1962, either dropping out or winning. We went up to the Rose Festival race at Portland, Oregon. Jerry Grant was from up North and he raced a Testa Rossa there while I had never even run at Portland. During practice we broke the Maserati’s differential. It came apart with the bearing stuff all over the racetrack. Since we kept the car in a local machine shop I said:”Just get me some bronze and I’ll make some bushings. They will last the 200 miles”. So I machined the bushings myself. Then the Maserati mechanic had to take the transmission out of the car. When the halfshaft came apart it had knocked a hole in the case. We got a fiberglass repair kit, sanded the case, and put fiberglass all over it to hold the oil in. We put everything back together, went back out and broke the track record, qualifying fastest. It made Jerry Grant mad as hell! On race day I was leading when I got into some gravel in the first turn. Something hit the fuel line underneath the car, pushed it back a little bit and pinched the line. It killed the engine. I came in and we found it right away. But we lost a lap and a half and I was mad at myself. I think I broke the lap record 6 times in the next 10 laps, only to have the throttle linkage come off completely.

WO: Jerry Grant must have been grateful!
BK: One of my last races in that Birdcage was at Kent, Washington. I towed the car myself with my wife and a friend. On our way North we stopped at Reno where Bill Harrah had decided to put on a road race. During practice the Maser had only 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gear. Now at Maserati Reps they had put in a new transmission before the trip. I tried to go to 4th but it would not do it. It turned out that the new transmission’s rod that comes back to the shifter was out of phase, in a different rotation position. I just sawed it in half, went down to a welding shop, we put a bolt in it, twisted it, welded it up, and won the Reno race!

WO: In spite of starting from the last row due to lack of practice.
BK: Then before going up to Kent I decided to stop at a guy by the name of Bill Rudd.

WO: He used to be Joe Lubin’s mechanic on the same Birdcage.
BK: Right. Rudd was working for Bill Harrah now. I thought I was being a smart guy and told him I knew the Maser had been faster when he used to prepare it than it was now. So Rudd started working on the engine, put on different velocity stacks, changed the jets and so on. We continued to Kent, went out to qualify, and burned a piston. We managed to locate a new piston in Beverly Hills and Max Kelley, our mechanic, flew it in on Saturday night. We had taken the engine apart already. Kelley put in the new piston and the next day I started on the last row, next to Gurney’s Lotus 19. While Gurney and I were working our way to the front, I clipped a tire marker on the inside of one of the Esses. It bent the fender in against my tire and it slowed the car down 500 rpm down the straightaway. The Birdcage started leaking oil, the sun was going down, the windshield was covered with oil and so were my goggles. I could hardly see but we finished 5th overall. As soon as I stopped, the oil on the exhaust caught on fire! It was a mess. It was a pretty old car by then. But those Birdcages were tough. The only problem was that they would vibrate things apart, like the little welds in the corners which would break.

Laguna Seca, 1960: Bill Krause in #2469 with the sprint-style steering wheel in place.  (photo: Bob Tronolone)

WO: Which car came next?
BK: During  1961 I could see that the Lotuses were going to kill us so I told Maserati Reps that we needed a new car. Now Maserati had built that goofy thing with the V12 in the back.

WO: The Tipo 63.
BK: Yes. They sent one over here for us to try during the 1962 Times and Pacific Grand Prix. It was a disaster. We could not even get the spark plugs out as they were seized in the head! It was just never right. I had given up the old Birdcage to Ken Miles and I tried that V12 at Laguna Seca. But there was no way I could qualify that car.

WO: You also practiced that Maserati-engined Elva Mk 6 for the Times Grand Prix...
BK: I guess they had an extra Birdcage engine that they put in that car. It never ran properly either. It probably saved my life that the Elva did not run as it was an extremely fragile car. The Birdcage was like having a Chevy in comparison.

WO: That Elva/Maserati was later sold to Dan Blocker of Bonanza fame. He could not get it to run either.
BK: I actually did race an Elva at Riverside in 1963, a Mk 7 owned by Art Snyder. Jimmy Clark had a Lotus 23 and I passed him and was leading the under-2-liter class. But that car started to vibrate and shake. Even with that little 1.6 liter Ford engine it was very fragile. Clark and I finished 1-2 in the under-2-liter and 5th and 6th overall.

WO: In spite of not qualifying for the October, 1962 Times Grand Prix, that month saw two important events: the establishment of your Honda motorcycle agency and your first Cobra ride.
BK: Until that moment I had run my dad’s machine shop which specialized in the manufacture of parts for aircraft. I wanted something different to do so I started my Honda agency, initially just motorcycles. I was also the first driver hired by Shelby for his Cobra team. Our first race was the preliminary race to the 1962 Times Grand Prix, a 3-hour race for production cars. A left rear wheel came off the Cobra, sheared right off. Then we went to Nassau and we were running 2nd in the Tourist Trophy. I had passed all the GTO Ferraris except Penske, who was leading. And I was catching him as well when the steering broke.

WO: How was the Cobra at that point?
BK: The car wasn’t that good in the beginning. It needed a lot of development. In the meantime Mickey Thompson kept calling me from Detroit. He was doing a deal with Chevrolet with this Corvette Sting Ray program. He said” We got those brand new, super light Corvettes coming. We are going to run Daytona, Sebring, Le Mans. We are going to do Indianapolis. Don’t sign with Shelby.” Keep in mind that at that time Shelby was totally underfinanced.

WO: Ford had not made up its mind yet.
BK: That’s right. I feel I did a bigger part in helping that Cobra program off the ground than Carroll would ever admit. I think that if I had not driven that car as hard as I did in the very beginning I am not sure Ford would have put up the money. But the main reason that I switched to Chevrolet was Mickey Thompson’s Indy program which turned out to be a bad deal in the end. And of course after Daytona Chevrolet canceled the whole program on us because of Ralph Nader. This left me without a ride in the 1963 road races, including Sebring and Le Mans. Having left Shelby previously there were not many options left after GM pulled out.

WO: How do you remember the Daytona Speedweek in February 1963?
BK: There were two races for us: the 250-mile American Challenge Cup to be run on the high banked tri-oval, and the Continental 3 hours, which also included the infield road course. For the Challenge Cup Mickey Thompson had hired NASCAR racers Rex White and Junior Johnson to drive his two high bank Sting Rays. Those cars were equipped with the first 427 c.i. “porcupine” engines, giving lots of horsepower. They were set up like stock cars with roll cages and all. I was scheduled to drive one of Mickey’s road race Sting Rays. The high bank cars turned out to have too much weight in the nose. Coming off the bank they would go sideways a little and at the end of the straightaway, as you entered the corner, they would turn right, all by themselves. It would make your heart really pound! They would run 180 mph even then. Junior Johnson said he would not drive it so on race day Mickey told me: “You are driving it!” I had not done any practice laps in those cars. Plus Junior was some 250 pounds and I couldn’t reach anything!

Daytona, Feb. 17, 1963: Driver’s meeting before the 3 hour Continental.
L to R, front to back—Front row: (by himself) Don Yenko.
2nd row: Dick Thompson (w/watch), Roger Penske, & Bill Krause.
3rd row: Jo Bonnier (beard) and Bob Johnson.
Back row: ??, Paul Goldsmith (w/black shirt) , and A.J. Foyt.
(photo: Flip Schulke)

WO: You must have been there when Al Momo’s 7 liter Ford-engined Tipo 151 Maser destroyed itself during practice.
BK: I think that happened earlier in the week. Anyway, they had to stuff all these blankets behind me to make the car fit. I did some 10 practice laps on race day and we did some adjustments to the rear wheel toe-in. I lead the first lap or two. Then it started to rain and I couldn’t hang on. No rain tires, just slicks! Paul Goldsmith in his Pontiac Tempest got by right up against the fence which was the driest area. I just did not have the courage to follow him, especially after the Sting Ray went sideways on the straightaway at 160 mph. Then, while in a little duel with A.J.Foyt’s Sting Ray and coming out of turn 2, the thing went completely sideways, halfway down the straight. I actually lost track where the steering wheel was pointing. I was fighting—not knowing whether I would end up in the fence or the lake. I let go of the wheel for a second, grabbed it again, and I was going straight! Got back on the throttle and finished 3rd behind Goldsmith and Foyt. Another problem was that the windows would fog up. Finally I could not see at all. I was following a Ferrari with an orange dot on its body and the dot was all I could see. So I came in planning to quit but Thompson got the plastic windows down somehow, put fuel in it, and said go. That cured the fogging but there was also water sloshing around inside the car. With the hot exhaust I got steam all inside the cockpit. It was a riot. Rex White also stopped his car halfway in the race, refusing to go on. And Mickey jumped in! He was crazy. Those cars never ran again.

WO: Mickey Thompson was rather a controversial figure, wasn’t he?
BK: He was a mad man. He was smart and I never saw a harder working guy in my life. But he never slept! He drove me crazy. We would share the same motel room and he would come in at 4am and get up at 5:30 or 6am. Since I had 4th overall qualifying time, the fastest Sting Ray, he bet Foyt $1000 that I would lead the first lap of the next race—the 3 hour Continental. But I didn’t! Foyt passed me in turn 2. I couldn’t believe it. My car was full of fuel and bottoming out as though it was about to break in half: bang, bang, bang. And here comes Foyt: BANG, BANG, BANG. I went on the inside of Goldsmith, he went on the outside. Coming out of the last turn we were side by side, door to door, but he beat me.

WO: I guess Mickey was not pleased.
BK: But that wasn’t all! The first lap was on the high bank. All of us almost forgot to make that first turn into the infield. We were going flat out. I got the car turned sideways before I got to the corner, to shrub the speed off. I made the corner. Foyt didn’t. Goldsmith didn’t. I came out way ahead and led for a while. The Cobra of Skip Hudson was the first car to pass me. Then halfway through the race the engine exploded with pieces everywhere. I pulled over in the grass. Mickey was there with my Honda motorcycle as soon as I got out of the car. He picked me up, took me back to the rental car, and told me to get back to the motel and pack. When we flew out the race was still going on. I never saw the press.

WO: No negative publicity allowed.
BK: But that Corvette was OK. I thought that the Coupe, the road race version, was a really easy car to drive. Except for the limited slip differential, I could do anything with that car, it was so forgiving.

WO: After Daytona 1963 Chevrolet closed the door but you still had Mickey’s Indianapolis program.
BK: The Indy cars constructed by Mickey had those little controversial 12 inch wheels and we tested them at a Firestone test track in Texas, a 7-mile oval in the middle of the desert. But that track did not offer enough high friction so we couldn’t find out much about the adhesion and handling characteristics of those tires. Firestone was nervous about their use and made real hard rubber compounds for them. It showed! When they let go during practice at Indy there was no warning. When I spun the car I had no clue. It was just gone, lost traction. Usually you have a little warning. It was zero. I was straight and I was sideways. I spun in turn 1 and ended up in turn 2, never touching the brakes. And I would not have hit anything if Roger McCluskey’s roadster hadn’t run into me.

WO: Nobody could qualify those cars. Graham Hill couldn’t. Masten Gregory couldn’t.
BK: Well actually Duane Carter did. But there was too much confusion in the team. Mickey had 6 cars entered. Three days in a row, when I was doing 200 mph on the back straightaway, the hot oil would come out and the wind would blow it in my face and goggles. I lost confidence. I didn’t feel comfortable. I probably could have qualified the car but I couldn’t have driven it with 32 other guys because I couldn’t tell where it was going. So I decided to pack up and go home to California. At that point I decided I should stick with making a living and pursue my business interests. I had lost my motivation. Indy changed my attitude. I did race after that but it was never the same.

WO: Your remaining race activities were mostly confined to Riverside and Laguna Seca like in 1964 with a Lotus 23 and a Lotus 30 in the pro races there.
BK: Nobody liked that Lotus 30 but I liked it. It was hairy, but you could dirt track it like the Birdcage. Very fragile though. At Laguna the hub sheared right off while I was in 4th place. I never got used to the Lotus 23 that I raced at Riverside.

WO: I couldn’t find any racing activity for you in 1965.
BK: I may not have raced that year.

WO: Then in 1966 the Chevy-engined Pacesetter Lola T70 at the USRRC races at Stardust and Riverside.
BK: I was walking through the pits in Phoenix, Arizona during an Indy car race. The guys who worked on that Lola were in the grandstand and saw me walk along. Roy Campbell was one of the mechanics who suggested hiring me and I agreed to try the car.

WO: Those were the last 2 races of your career.
BK: Yes, by then the cars had wings on them and stuff. I did not really like that Lola because it was the opposite of cars like the Birdcage and the Lotus 30. With those large rear tires it had so much rear traction that it wanted to go straight all the time. I could not throw it around corners. You always had to back off and you could not just powerslide it unless it was a real high speed corner. For me it wasn’t fun to drive. It was just a dragster. Bob Bondurant raced it too but he was a smoother driver than I was. I liked to run right on the edge, with the car slipping just a little bit.

WO: How do you look back on your racing days?
BK: I hope I can be remembered as a strong and somewhat colorful driver who enjoyed matching skills with competitors from all types of auto racing, American as well as those from other parts of the world. I always thought I could find a way to win any race I entered and this desire, plus some over enthusiasm, sometimes led to contact with other competitors. This was never done intentionally as it usually caused damage to both cars.

WO: Your best race?
BK: The ones you win, although those are not necessarily the ones in which you work hardest. Of all my races I think I worked hardest in the 1960 Pacific Grand Prix at Laguna, much more so than at Riverside one week earlier. Also at Nassau in 1962 with the Cobra, a tough track where I had to work much harder in an underdeveloped car than those Ferrari GTO guys I was leading. Daytona 1963 also comes to mind, 250 miles in the rain in that steamed up Sting Ray.

WO: Your favorite track?
BK: No special favorites. Every track had its own characteristics. I raced so much at Riverside that it was pretty much home base. At first I didn’t like it but I developed my own style like through the Esses. It was challenging. And if you could drive well at Riverside you could drive well anywhere.

WO: Your favorite car?
BK: The Birdcage. That car suited my driving style. The Arciero Lotus 19 was easier to drive but not as much fun. I think it may be a rare occasion when a race car and a race driver come together and are so well matched. The Birdcage was so well balanced that I could drive it much like the open wheel cars that I ran on dirt tracks. This allowed me to make late 4 wheel drift entry into medium speed corners while skipping gears in preparation for straight quick exits. This technique was not used by many road racers and it seemed to distract them. They would lose some momentum.

WO: The best driver of your era?
BK: Gurney. He was smooth and probably the best all-rounder. Parnelli Jones was good too, smoother than Foyt.

WO: Did you ever consider Formula One?
BK: I have a letter here dated January 16,1963 from Hugh Powell, owner and managing director of Tony Settember’s Scirocco team. He offered me a Formula One ride for 1963. I did not do it.

WO: Any regrets?
BK: Probably that I did not have more patience with Mickey Thompson at Indianapolis. With more time for development we could have had a decent showing. On the other hand Dave McDonald, a good friend of mine, died in a similar car at Indy one year later. That could have been me.

    Today Bill Krause is retired from his various businesses. He sold the Honda motorcycle agency in 1979. The car agencies (Honda, Saab, and Subaru) went the same way in 1989. But Bill is still putting his mechanical skills to work. He is part owner, with friend Jim McGee, of the Penske Indy car in which John Paul Jr. won the 1983 Michigan 500. Bill just completed a comprehensive restoration of the car. He met McGee in the early seventies and it is a little known fact that Krause worked with him on the cars of Gordon Johncock, Mario Andretti, Chip Ganassi, Bobby Unser, and Emerson Fittipaldi, mostly under the Patrick Racing colors. It helped satisfy Bill’s ongoing need to be involved with the racing scene.

Palos Verdes Estates, CA, June, 1998: Bill today still cherishing the
silver he won at the 1960 Times G.P.; his greatest victory. (photo: WNO)

(Note: Reprints of our Spring 1999 issue are available. See complete list prices on iL TRIDENTE page.)
 
 

TOP