The famous caster was there after an incident at Indy 1970 when Jimmy
King did a huge wheelstand off the line and the car just kept on going
over backwards. It landed upside down and the car suffered very little
damage as a result. Somewhere along the line, one of the characters that
hung around King's shop put that caster on the cage as a goof on King,
just in case the car ever did a backflip again.
The caster did two things. First, it always caught my fire suit pants
when I got in the car. Second, it always caught the attention of
spectators in the pits, but very few would ever ask why it was there. You
could see the puzzled look on their faces, and the question almost came
out as to why. If there were several people, it was fun listening to the
explanations between themselves as to why it was there. Now, I had this
conversation with Bert Toulette about the caster, and he SWEARS that it
was on the car in 1969 at a race at Capitol in Maryland. I asked King, and
he can't remember. Soooooo, another unexplained phenomenon.
The only decent shot of the car with the caster was when we did a
promotion with Loctite where the two cars tried to pull apart steel and
aluminum bars that were bonded together with Loctite Super Bonder. This
was taken April 1971 in the infield at Seekonk Speedway Seekonk, Mass.
That's me on the left with my helmet on, and King on the right. I was in
the dragster and King was in the funny car.
Tried twice at full throttle with the slack out of the line. Didn't come
apart.
Don Roberts
