Tempest Fugit

A steady drizzle washed the high-banked oval track at Daytona Beach as the cars lined up for the 250-mile American Challenge Cup. It looked like a big day for Chevrolet's famed Corvette, flashiest and most powerful U.S. sportscar. No fewer than seven Corvettes were in the 14-car field, six of them new 1963 Sting Rays, their powerful V-8 engines blatting angrily under shark-nosed hoods. In the cockpits sat some of racing's top drivers, among them Indianapolis Veteran A. J. Foyt. Down went the flag. Off screamed the Corvettes. And zoom--a ringer from G.M.'s family production line ran off with the race.

As the cars went into the second lap, a white Pontiac Tempest sedan hot-rodded past everyone into the lead. The Tempest is Pontiac's compact, normally has a four-cylinder engine, gentle springs, and all the aerodynamic qualities of a two-by-four. But some expert rebuilding and the addition of an optional, high-performance V-8 Pontiac engine was all that Driver Paul Goldsmith, 36, himself an Indianapolis driver, needed to leave the Sting Rays in his exhaust.

At one point Goldsmith buzzed around the rain-slick, 2.5-mile track at a risky 155 m.p.h. "I broke into a number of slides that made my hair stand up," he later admitted. But his 3,200-lb. Tempest with wide-track wheels was a great deal easier to control than the lighter (by 400 Ibs.) Sting Rays--or even a pair of Italian Ferrari GTOs. Two Sting Rays pulled into the pits flooded with 4 in. of water on their floor boards from leaky vents; the others were sliding all over the track. At race's end, Goldsmith and his Tempest were two laps--or five miles--ahead of the nearest rival, A. J. Foyt's Sting Ray. Goldsmith's winner's purse: $6,500, fair pay for averaging 145.161 m.p.h. in the wet.

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