Beach tumble redux

I just had to grab this photo on Saturday at the annual Lost Speedways seminar series hosted by the Saratoga Automobile Museum in nearby New York. The gentleman with the microphone is Russ Truelove, now 89 years old, one of the last surviving people who actually raced on the old beach-road course before Daytona International Speedway was built.

We featured the restored 1956 Mercury Montclair that Russ drove on the beach in the NASCAR Grand National race that year in the August 2005 issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines. Look at the screen behind him. That’s Russ flipping the brand-new Mercury, thus becoming the third guy to take such a high flyer in that race – the other two were NASCAR legends Junior Johnson and Ralph Moody. Russ had an amazing career, driving as late as 1989. That was at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut, aboard an SCCA Spec Racer.