Classic American People
One motorsport photographer has been behind the lens for more than 50 years – Steve Havelock meets Fred Lewis, one of American motorsport’s most prodigious photographers of the 20th century…
Fred is a true motorsport enthusiast who has been photographing top tier American racing for more than 50 years. I first got in touch with him back in 2014 when he supplied some great early Seventies photographs which he had taken for the feature I wrote for Classic American on Neil Merry’s Tony DeLorenzo ‘Budd’ replica Corvette racer. Since then, he has provided me with many more of his photos for various features which I have written. With the dreaded coronavirus sweeping America,
Fred had not been to any race meetings last year, so we thought it would be fun to take a trip down memory lane and for him to recount some of his tales.
He told me: “I was born in 1947 in Greensboro, North Carolina, just a few miles from where I live now. When I was nine we moved to Florida. My father was interested in big American cars and used to read Mechanix Illustrated and some other car magazines. So I read them too. My first motorsport event was when I was 10 or 11 and my dad took me, at my insistence, to an ‘outlaw’ (i.e. non-sanctioned) Saturday night drag race at nearby Branan. A guy driving a Cadillac-powered Willys was fatally injured when he lost control and hit a telegraph pole. My father said, ‘Let’s get out of here quick!’ We were hauling ass down this dirt road. We couldn’t see anything behind us because of the dust and then this car came flying past us and I’m sure it had the fatally injured or dead driver in it. That was the end of that.
“In 1959, I remember we stopped by Daytona Speedway just after it opened and there were two Ford Thunderbirds going around testing. We stood on the concrete, coming out of the last turn by the pit entrance watching these two T-birds going about 150mph. Nothing compared to what they do these days, but that was fast back then. ‘Tiger’ Tom Pistone and Eduardo ‘Chachi’ Dibos from South America (Peru) were the drivers.” In the actual race, the inaugural Daytona 500, Pistone finished eighth and Dibos 48th.
Fred continues: “My first real events were the twin 50-mile qualifying races for the 1964 Daytona Firecracker 400, with my father. There was a big crash and we saw Fred Lorenzen slam into Paul Goldsmith right in front of us. Lorenzen crawled out of the windshield opening with a bloody uniform.
“We also went to the 1965 Firecracker 400 which was won by A J Foyt and, with my second cousin, to the 1966 Daytona 500 which was won by Richard Petty. It was actually only 495 miles, shortened because of rain.
Fred also recalls going to a drag race at Thunderbolt Raceway, an abandoned Second World War airfield near Jacksonville, Florida. He says: “That was an NHRA-sanctioned track. There was a Match race between Billy ‘Big Deal’ Jacobs’s ‘Kid Goat’, a ’65 Dodge Dart with a transplanted Hemi in it, versus Huston Platt and his ‘Dixie Twister’ big-block Chevy. The Dart had a Hemi engine, so we all knew who was going to win that. But it was fun. Another jaunt was to Jacksonville Speedway, a local half-mile dirt track where we saw drivers like Jimmy Capps and LeeRoy Yarbrough. A real treat was when my father let me skip school on May 31, 1965, to watch Jim Clark dominate the Indy 500 on closed-circuit TV at a local entertainment venue − the first Indy 500 win for a rear-engined car. The impact of all this on me? I was hooked − if I wasn’t already.”
Fred explains: “In 1966, my father knew someone who got us invited to go see Junior Johnson’s race shop. It was a corrugated steel barn, slap bang in the middle of the Holly Farm Poultry plant in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Junior was there and he was quite friendly and then in walked Bobby Allison. Junior was a Ford man and Bobby was Chevrolet, so he probably wasn’t supposed to have been seen there. Anyway, they both signed a postcard of Junior’s controversial ‘Yellow Banana’ Ford Galaxie NASCAR with its bent-down nose and its bent-up tail. That was an outlaw car, but they let them get away with a lot of stuff back then.”
Going International
Although Fred was enthralled with what he’d seen of NASCAR and drag racing, his eyes were about to be opened wider. He says: “My second cousin was really into sports cars and we went to my first sports car race, the 1967 Daytona 24 Hours. That was just fabulous. I don’t think I could have gone to a race that would have impacted me more because of the quality of the cars and the quality of the drivers. It had the greatest line-up of cars and drivers of any race I’ve been to. There were the works Fords, Porsches and Ferraris and the Chaparrals, and it didn’t get better than that. It was the cream of the crop.
“Then we had all the world’s top drivers including Phil Hill, Mario Andretti, Mark Donohue, Dan Gurney, Lorenzo Bandini, Chris Amon, Denny Hulme, Jacky Ickx, Bruce McLaren, Mike Parkes and Pedro Rodriguez. About the only ones that weren’t there were Jim Clark and Graham Hill. It still gives me a chill just thinking about it. Ferraris, my favourite cars, took the top three spots. They crossed the finish line three abreast. I’ll always remember the serene look on Lorenzo Bandini’s face lap-after-lap as he drove out of the infield on to the west-banked speedway turn in the winning Ferrari 330P3/4 (which he shared with Chris Amon.) I’ve been a fan of sports car racing ever since. It’s such a shame I didn’t have a camera, but for the ’68 Daytona 24 I borrowed my father’s el cheapo East German 35mm camera. Unfortunately, I opened it up before rewinding the film so only two photos survived.”
Fred learned more about photography at college. He continues: “My dad bought me a used Nikkorex camera which was a piece of junk. I traded it in for a Nikomat which is a Japanese home market version of the Nikkormat. I’ve had bulletproof Nikons ever since. Back then it was all manual focus and settings. I went to the Daytona 24 every year up to 1992 except for 1971 and ’72 when I was in the Army and in ’74 when there was no race because of the oil crisis.” Did he just say Army? Fred recounts: “At college I was in the Reserve Officers Training Corps. I joined up in February 1970 right after the Daytona 500. I went to the 1970 Daytona 24 Hours and less than a month after that I was in the Army as a 2nd Lieutenant. I volunteered because there was a good chance I could have been drafted and sent over to Vietnam and you may not have been talking to me now.” In December 1969, the US Government introduced the Draft Lottery for men born between 1944 and 1950. Fred was in this group.
He continues: “I did my infantry training and then maintenance officer training at Fort Knox. I learned how to work on tanks and jeeps and stuff like that. While stationed there, that June I went to the Trans-Am race at Mid-Ohio where I photographed Parnelli Jones, Mark Donohue, Swede Savage, Sam Posey and others. I was broke and I had nowhere to stay. I had enough money for a beer and a sandwich and just enough gas to get back to Fort Knox. Next day I drew my pay and I was okay again.
“In September 1970, I was posted to Germany where I ‘worked’ as the assistant property disposal officer. I helped run the Army junkyard. We were away from the main post and didn’t get visited by the brass very often. We did things like race worn-out cars turned in by GIs around the piles of scrap metal. It was hilarious at the time. We sold parts and some still-roadworthy staff cars to GIs for about $200.
“I met my future wife when she was looking for an antenna for her VW. I went to several Grands Prix including the Monaco GP twice, where I met Jackie Stewart in the lobby of the Hotel de Paris, and he was very nice. I also went to the Austrian and Dutch GPs, two Formula 2 races at Hockenheim, sports cars at the Norisring and two hill climbs on the Czech border, where I had the best beer I’ve ever tasted in my life. All my trips were to go to races. I had a pretty good time over there, but if I knew then what I know now I would have had a lot better time. In retrospect, it was the best time I’ve had.”
After the Army
He continues: “I was in the Army for two years, two months and three days. After that, I worked in retail sales and residential property appraisal. Motor racing photography was only ever a hobby. It was my antidote to work.” Having seen Fred’s photos in several books and on motorsport internet sites, I was then surprised when he said: “I never had photographers’ trackside accreditation until 2010. All my photos were taken from the spectator areas. But back then, you could get so close to the track, the cars and the drivers anyway. I remember that in 1970 I walked halfway around Daytona’s NASCAR turns 1 and 2. I was on top of the banked turns looking down on the track. You can’t do that now.”
Over the following decades, Fred’s favourite and most visited events were the Daytona 24 Hours and the Sebring 12 Hours, and occasionally the scenic and challenging Virginia International Raceway. He also went to five US Grands Prix at Watkins Glen in the early Seventies. He says: “I didn’t really have the opportunity to go to Indycar races. There were none in the south-east back then. What I got to see was the ‘Golden Era’ from the late Sixties until the late Eighties. Lack of safety was the only downside of racing. Too many fatalities. I was at Watkins Glen in ’73 when Francois Cevert was killed. And again in ’74 when Helmuth Koinigg was decapitated. I was about 100 yards away when Pedro Rodriguez, one of my favourite drivers, effectively burned to death (1971 Norisring, Germany).
“Another of my favourite drivers was fearless Danny Ongais, or Danny ‘On the Gas’. He was possessed and it was go or blow for him. He had but one speed and he tore up a lot of fibreglass. But he was fun to watch. He had a bad accident in the ’81 Indy 500 and I met him eight months after at Daytona and told him how glad I was to see him. He was always friendly to me when I spoke to him. The driver I admire most is Phil Hill because he was such a gentleman and all-round great driver as well as being highly cultured. His knowledge of things automotive was immense. I only saw him race once, at the ’67 Daytona 24 in a Chaparral. There were many marbles on the track coming out of the infield and he smacked the wall there and broke the suspension. Prior to that he’d run off and left everybody for dead.”
And a favourite ‘off-the-track’ memory? Fred says: “Sebring used to be the place to see drunken spectacles. One year, there was a strip show on top of a Ryder rental truck. A gorgeous young lady had completely disrobed and you would not have believed the amount of wadded bills and coins flying through the air while some dirtbags with hats tried to catch it all. All the while the cops were taking her picture with telephoto lens-equipped cameras. Those were the days. Topless women weren’t that uncommon back then. Then IMSA cracked down on such displays and the cops started arresting the rowdies.”
Fred concludes: “I’ve sure seen a lot over the years. More than most. I’ve had a wonderful time and met many great drivers. I have thousands of photos and a big book of autographed photos to look back on. Hopefully I can be out and about again next year and long may it continue.”