70 Chaparral 2J - Motorsports Almanac

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They managed neither a pole position (fastest qualifier) nor any wins. Their best finishes were a pair of seconds. Hall had planned on running his new, 2H in 1968, but development bugs kept it from debuting until 1969. He would be forced to race the 2G in 1968. The result was one pole but no wins. Las Vegas, the sixth and final race of the season, was also the last race as a driver for Jim Hall. Late in the race, his Chaparral collided with a backmarker, was launched into the air, and landed upside down. Hall was rescued from the ensuing fire, but his severely broken legs lead to his retirement from driving. Although introduced by Jim Hall in 1966, not many cars besides the Chaparrals used high wings for extra downforce. Several cars carried them in 1969, but Hall himself introduced another radical car, the previously mentioned Chaparral 2H. Dubbed "The Great White Whale", because it looked like one, it would not be one of Hall's better efforts. It was originally designed as a narrow coupe with windows in the doors because the driver sat so low in the body. Driver John Surtees felt that visibility was poor and had Hall take the car's canopy off and raise the driver's seat. The vestigial passenger seat remained under the bodywork. There was a low wing at the back of the body. This Chaparral didn't cut it. The team bought a McLaren M12 to use while they continued to sort the 2H out. At one point in the season, the 2H wore a huge wing in the center of the car with the struts mounted to the sides of the car. Quite possibly, the most bizarre looking racer ever built. Although Hall and Surtees never got along well, Hall took full responsibility for the failure. He felt that had he not broken his legs, which kept him from test driving, he could have sorted the car out. At any rate, the team's direction changed for 1970. The FIA, auto racing's world ruling body, outlawed tall wings (from now on they would have to be near the bodywork) after 1969 because of some spectacular accidents that had occurred to F1 racers. Also, "movable" aerodynamic devices such as Chaparral's flipper wings were outlawed. Jim Hall's answer to this, the Chaparral 2J, did not debut until the third race of the 1970 Can-Am season in July at Watkins Glen, New York. The 2J was as radical as the 2E and 2H had been. Maybe more so. The car looked like a white brick. A very fast white brick. The car carried two motors. A 465 cubic inch Chevy V8 powered the rear wheels and a 274 cc Rockwell snowmobile engine powered a pair of "sucker" fans in the rear bodywork. The fans sucked air out from under the car, creating a vacuum that held the 2J on the track. Sliding Lexan skirts were placed around the bottom edge of the body to seal the "plenum" area under the car. Enough suction could be generated to hold the car upside down on the ceiling of a room! Where a wing generates downforce (good) it also generates drag (bad). The suction device generated downforce with no drag loss. Reigning F1 World Driving Champion Jackie Stewart qualified the 2J third at Watkins Glen and drove the race's fastest lap, but his race was cut short by brake problems. The Chaparral team missed the next three races but returned to competition in September at Road Atlanta. They also brought a new driver with them, Vic Elford. Elford drove the 2J in three of the remaining four races. (The team would miss one more race.) Elford was fastest qualifier in all three of those races but he only finished one (sixth at Road Atlanta). Something always broke. But the competition felt that, with a year of experience under their belt, the Chaparral team would bury them in 1971. Competitors were always lobbying the SCCA to ban the 2J. At the end of the season it was. The sliding Lexan skirts were said to have violated the "moveable aerodynamic device" ban. With that, Jim Hall closed up shop. An era in international autoracing had come to a close. Hall did return to autoracing in 1980 with the Chaparral 2K Indycar. Johnny Rutherford won the Indy 500 that year in the car. Hall owned a CART Indycar team into the 1990s, but bought his team's chassis from other companies. HALL’S CHAPARRALS In 1961, race car builders Tom Barnes and Dick Troutman approached Texas-born race driver Jim Hall about a sports racer they had designed. Although initially called the "Riverside," that was the beginning of the Chaparral legacy. The Chaparral 1 was a Chevy-powered, front-engined car that had a common heritage with the Scarab rear-engined racer that was previously designed by Barnes and Troutman. Its first race was at a Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) race at Laguna Seca, California in June 1961. Jim Hall brought his new Chaparral 1 to a 2nd place finish. Hall raced the Chaparral three more times in 1961, with a 3rd place at the October Riverside L.A. Time Grand Prix and DNFs at another Laguna Seca race and at the Nassau Speed Week main event. Jim Hall drove the Chaparral 1 to victories at the Road America Sprints in June 1962 and the Road America 500 in September 1962. The next incarnation of the Chaparral was originally intended to be a coupe-bodied sports racer patterned after Chevrolet's Corvair Monza GT concept car of 1962. The eventual open cockpit Chaparral 2A, however, maintained the pointed nose and other design elements of the Monza GT. The Chaparral's first race, at the 1963 Riverside L.A. Times Grand Prix, ended in a DNF for Jim Hall. but this was to be the beginning of one of the most successful, if short-lived, runs in American unlimited sports car history. Running in the U.S. Road Racing Championship and a series of Pacific fall races (which included races at Riverside and Laguna Seca), Jim Hall and Hap Sharp took their Chaparral 2s to an incredible 7 1sts and 7 2nds in 16 races in 1964, and 16 1sts and 9 2nds in 21 races in 1965! Among the 1965 victories was the 12 Hours of Sebring, a race that saw Jim Hall's open cockpit racer beat Carroll Shelby's coupe-bodied Cobras and GT-40s, although the skies open to flood the race track during the early evening hours. Jim Hall was known for innovation, and that innovation started to show itself in the Chaparral 2C, an upgraded version of the Chaparral 2A that included a hydraulic rear spoiler that the driver could raise in the turns and lower for less drag in the straightaways. The next evolution of Hall's racer, the Chaparral 2E made it's debut at the Can-Am race at Bridgehampton, New York in September 1966. This unique racer had a huge, highmounted wing that, like the 2C's spoiler, was hydraulically operated to shift its angle depending on the track conditions. The Chaparral 2E and a later development versionn called the 2G had short racing careers, competing in 17 Can-Am races during 1966 through 1969. Although the car was unbeatable, it had reliability problems that resulted in many DNFs. The Chaparral 2Es and 2Gs actually only scored 2 Can-Am victories and 6 2nd place finishes. Jim Hall's driving career came to an unfortunate and almost fatal end in November 1967, when his Chaparral 2G struck the back of Lothar Motschenbacher's McLaren and was catapulted into the air. The car landed on its tail and flipped over on its back, resulting in Hall suffering two badly broken legs and a dislocated jaw. Despite the end of his driving career, Jim Hall
continued to create innovative open-cockpit sports cars. The 1969 Chaparral 2H was originally designed to be a streamlined coupe, with the driver in a prone position looking through a plexiglass nose. However, John Surtees, the driver hired by Jim Hall to drive the car, convinced the team to open the cockpit for a more conventional appearance and driver position. Although the innovative design may have eventually proved successful, differences of opinion between Surtees and Hall resulted in the Chaparral 2H never living up to the team's expectations. The car's best finish was a 4th at a race in Edmonton, Canada. To appease his driver, Hall even purchased a McLaren M12 for use in the 1969 Can-Am series, but that car's best finish was a 3rd place finish at the Mosport Can-Am race. The last U.S. road racing Chaparral was the 2J, a boxy design that hid an innovation so potentially successful that it resulted in the car being banned. The Chaparral 2J, affectionately known as the "Sucker Car," sported a snowmobile engine attached to two fans that sucked air from the bottom of the car and pushed it out the back. This created a vacuum that held the Chaparral 2J to the track like it was on rails. Although it raced only four times, not long enough to work out some of its "bugs," the 2J gave warning to competitors that it would be unbeatable when its reliability problems were solved. Unfortunately for Jim Hall, however, the FIA, the international race sanctioning body, banned the 2J because it used "illegal moving aerodynamic devices." In 1966 and 1967, Jim Hall decided to take his successful Chaparrals to Europe to compete in the FIA World Sports Prototype Championship, going up against the world's best, including Shelby's GT-40s, Ferrari, and Porsche. The car used for the 1966 FIA season was the Chaparral 2D, a coupe version of the 2A that was very similar to Hall's original design for the Chaparral 2A. The resemblence to the Chevrolet Monza GT concept car is unmistakable. With drivers Phil Hill and Jo Bonnier, the Chaparral 2D managed a victory in the 1000 Km race at the demanding Nurburgring in Germany. The car DNF'd in three other FIA races that year. Although the 2D also competed in the first two races of the 1967 FIA season (Daytona and Sebring), the main entrant was the new Chaparral 2F, a coupe version of the high-winged 2E. Although the car was competitive, Phil Hill and Mike Spence only finished one of the eight FIA races in which it was entered. At least the last race (also the car's last race) resulted in a victory in the 500 Km. race at Brands Hatch. Jim Hall's Chaparrals didn't win any international championships, as Carroll Shelby's Cobras and GT- 40s did. But Jim Hall and his Chaparrals dominated unlimited class sports car racing in the United States during the mid-1960s. To this day, very few race cars, of any type, have included and successfully demonstrated the aerodynamic innovations that Jim Hall built into succeeding versions of his Chaparral. The "Texas Road Runners" are truly a part of American racing history! JIM HALL AND HIS FABLED CHAPARRALS by Pete Lyons Troy Rogers stands ready beside the louver-bedecked Chaparral 2, just as he used to. Jim Hall settles once more into the composite cockpit that he molded around himself back in 1963. It fits his still-lean, lanky frame perfectly—as does his old driver’s suit. The ingrained starting drill comes back as readily: First plant your left foot on the brake and shove the shifter into low, and only then fire the Chevy. The aluminum small-block lights instantly, its eight stub stacks emitting a vigorous, eager crackle. At least old race cars can hold onto their youth. This one is already straining to go, churning the oil in the torque converter, held back only by the brakes. Hall simply releases them, and this ivory apparition from a distant time is free to run again. As the historic machine accelerates onto the Road America track, scene of two of its great victories in 1965, the converter keeps the engine at a constant growl while velocity builds. It’s like the steady roar of a Reno air racer on takeoff... except that here a resonance comes back from deep in the Wisconsin woods. Is it merely sonic reflection from thousands of trees? Or is it an echo from the glory years? That exciting era when the Road Runners from Texas were not only the dominant force in American sports car racing, but an astounding, fabulous, phenomenal leap forward in the world’s very conception of a racing car. If today, looking back, the whole Chaparral story sounds like a myth... well, that’s pretty much how it seemed then, too. See if you can sell this one to the movies. There’s a little bunch of amateur sports car racers, see, who hail from the scrub-brush obscurity of West Texas. Just the place to manufacture state-of-the-art road race cars, right? Anyway, every so often these guys pop up at the continent’s top tracks, where they unload home-built specials so novel they drop jaws, and so fast they threaten to win every time out. Plastic chassis... aluminum replicas of iron production engines... “automatic” transmissions... driver-operable “flipper” wings mounted upside-down... one car that is half roadster, half coupe... another with a second engine and extractor fans to clamp the car to the road like a giant suction cup... all produced in a secret lab, complete with a private test track. Hey, let’s call it “Rattlesnake Raceway.” Our hero is a wealthy young oilman who’s tall and slim and looks good in a cowboy hat. Plus, he’s an excellent race driver—a former F1 driver, no less—as well as a brilliant, imaginative race car designer. And, and, how about we give him a clandestine engineering liaison with the world’s largest automaker. Preposterous! But true. All that happened. And here to prove it is tall Jim Hall with four of his Chaparrals. His long racing career finally, firmly behind him, Hall is living a quiet, reclusive life. He and wife Sandy have become very serious about golf. But only days shy of his 66th birthday, he has come to RA to be grand marshal at the BRIC—the Brian Redman International Challenge, a vintage event named for the driver who won three champion-ships in Hallmanaged F5000 cars, 1974-76. Grand marshal: It’s a cloak of honor that must drape awkwardly over the shoulders of a hard-core, no-nonsense racer. And as the weekend develops, this very private man must be surprised by the endless throngs of people who want to see him, speak with him, ask him to sign something. The surprise is evident in the gracious “Thank you,” he returns along with the autograph. Other things feel unfamiliar today, too. Chaparral Cars used to tow its fantastic machines on open trailers; to the team they were just disposable raceware. This time they’ve been transported in 18-wheel splendor; rumor says they’ve been specially insured for $2 million—each. Back home in Midland, plans are afoot to build a museum around them. Opening is scheduled for 2003. It won’t have to be a very big building. People who remember all those Road Runners in all those races are always amazed to learn the actual total number of Chaparral-built sports car chassis: just seven. Six still exist, now lovingly restored by Rogers, one of the craftsmen who built them originally in Texas. (A series of five front-engined predecessors named Chaparral 1s came
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70 Chaparral 2J - Motorsports Almanac

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