How a Rocket Scientist Changed NASCAR: Dr. Gas X-Pipe & The 1995 Daytona 500

But that's the one that won the '95 Daytona 500. There's a system being built. We'll get to that. >> But listen to this poor car. This >> Larry, you you hear him as he goes by? That's a different sound. >> Ain't no what it was, and we wanted to keep him in suspense. >> Gentleman from Salt Lake City, his name was Dr. Gas. >> How is it that I would get to be the one to figure that out? >> I might have some details that that nobody knows. >> So, you're like a rocket scientist. >> Well, actually I was. >> [laughter] >> You saw that picture upstairs? >> Yeah, well, we're going to ballistic missiles and stuff in the military. >> I worked for Hercules Aerospace. But this was on February the 6th of 19 1995. In December of 1994, I got a call from Larry McClure. And he says in his his Southern accent, says, "You make that I'm imitating this. Maybe I shouldn't. >> But do it. >> He says, "You make that work on a Winston Cup car?" >> [laughter] >> I says, "Of course." Two things. I was going to die trying or I was going to make it work. I made several systems for him to test, and they were around. And they dyno tested them, and they found some positive results. >> It looked different, but we didn't know what it sounded like. You couldn't tell with the dyno room. >> They never told us what they were, but I'll tell you what what we found what I saw with my own eyes. Horsepower got with the actual race car system would increase the horsepower by by 4 and 1/2 horsepower. I sent him these two test systems, and he calls back. He says, "I tried to ovalize those, and I ruined them. And he I don't know what he was doing, but run over with a truck or something like that. But anyway, they were they were they were pretty much just pancaked. >> Was this in late '94? >> This was in December of '94. January comes and goes and I get this frantic call from him. Let's see. Now, I've got The date here is February the 6th, so >> Was that from your first visit there? >> Correct. Yes. >> Wow. >> So, [clears throat] 2 days before that, he calls up and he says, "Put every piece of tubing that you can fit in your luggage and and get back here right now." That was on a Saturday. I I was a scuba diver, so I had two big scuba diving bags. My gear bags. I filled them completely full of bends, 3 and 1/2 in, because that was what the rules permitted at the time. That was your maximum size. I go out to the airport with these bags full of full of tubing and I set them down where you put your bags. Clank. The ticket agent comes over and he goes, "What's in the bags?" And I said, "Exhaust tubing." He looks looks at me like, "Why in the world would somebody be carrying around two giant bags full of tubing?" And he asked to see what was inside. And I, of course, showed them. And he shook his head and he goes, "Okay." So, he checks checks my bags. From Salt Lake to Kingsport, which is the Tri-Cities area, which is near Abingdon, Virginia, there's no direct flight, so I had to go to Atlanta and then come back to Kingsport. And sure enough, the bags arrived, thank goodness. Got a car and it was Sunday evening when I made it there, so I drove I had the address and I more or less navigated my way there. And I walked in the door. It was locked. Knocked on it knocked on the door. One of the employees that was there, one from the engine room, came and I introduced I said, "I'm Boyd Butler from Dr. Gass." And he goes, "Oh, yeah, we've been waiting for you." He says, "Come with me." They [snorts] usher me in. It's one of first time ever ever in a NASCAR shop. I've never seen anything like it. We go into the engine room and there is Larry and Run Larry McClure and Run Pitman. >> You can see where the fans for the dynos are up there. >> Run Pitman with his characteristic toothpick. You ever meet Run? >> No. >> Oh, what a shame. He has his toothpick and he has it he can take with his tongue and he can spin it around and it's the more excited he gets, the faster that toothpick spin spins around. Uh anyway, true story. Larry says, "Come with me." So, we walk to the other side of the shop. The lights are all off, pitch black. And he flips on the breakers and you hear this It's just like in a movie. You hear these breakers they go clang and all of a sudden the lights go on and I'm looking there and here's these two cars right here. And I'm looking at this and it goes like I just thought, "Wow." That's uh there's more There's more pictures here as we go. I got some of the race and things I took in the pits. We'll We'll We'll get to that. See, there's There's a system being built. We'll We'll get to that. The cars were not fully decaled. They were They were about this condition right here. There's There's our system. Now, notice that this is This is discolored right here and then this is This is not. >> So, that's the system from the car that everybody knows. >> Correct. That is the winning system on on the It's been dyno tested, but that's the one that won the '95 Daytona 500 and that's That's the backside of Mark Giles right there. Mark Giles is the person who was responsible for Dr. Gas getting into NASCAR. He saw our ad in Chevy High Performance, showed it to Larry McClure and then Larry McClure contacted us. I I watched your interview with Larry. He said they hadn't heard the the car until they got to got to the track and were surprised to hear it. Um I had noticed when we tested uh in the diner room that it sounded the way the way I wanted it to sound. They didn't they didn't say much at the time, but they were they were just mostly looking at the the readouts, you know, four and four and a half more horsepower. >> Probably too fixated on that. It could have sounded like a wooden question. >> I just said Run Run and Larry looked like they were about ready to do the tango and Run's toothpick was just just spinning around. And as we tested that, the first time um we're at 460 or so, 461-ish and it goes up to 464. >> [clears throat] >> Larry goes, "Oh gosh, we somehow lost adjustment. We're out of adjustment." So, he goes out and he measures the barometer, measures the humidity, and they calibrate the dyno. And then they said, "Okay, take that off of there and put the uh the dyno exhaust back on." Which had an H pipe in it. 460, 461, 460 and a half. You know, it's huh, wow, what nothing changed. So, put that put that Dr. Gas thing back on there. 464. They were so happy because four and a half horsepower at Daytona is 1 mile an hour. So, after 500 miles where is the rest of the field? Some distance behind you. So, Larry McClure puts his creeper there and he has it right there. Puts his creeper on the ground. He says, "Go ahead and roll your roll under there." So, our first time seeing a Winston Cup car I'm underneath it. And I'm thinking like, "Really? I am just some guy from Utah and I considered Utah to be the vacuum of motorsports." >> How did he just let you waltz in here and start taking pictures of everything? This is like the fairy 51 stuff here. >> this this is. There there's Mark right there. And here here's our system right here And he's We've just finished fabricating the boom the boom tubes, right right you see you see right there. This is the second system we made. This this system right here actually ran on the Bush Clash car. Mhm, I'm not sure how many people you know remember the Bush Clash cuz the name has changed. >> So, you had an X pipe, but you had to figure out how how to make it fit into the car with the truck arm crossmember and all that. How did How did you Did you know if you would be able to make it work when you showed up there with your duffel bags of stuff? >> Well, as I said earlier, I was either going to die trying or it was going to work. Well, fortunately, it worked. >> Was it hard? >> There was some challenges there. We back back in the in the in the area of the truck arms, we had some some near And this this system, I have an actual picture we'll look at at at the shop. It shows that we kind of wiggled a little bit of a jog to get around the truck arm brackets that were that were right in this area right here. >> Did you do all these on the first day you were there? Or how many days were you actually >> I I got there Sunday night and I worked worked Monday and Tuesday night. And on Tuesday night, the trailers they loaded they loaded both both the cars on the transporters and off they went to Daytona. >> So, you had like 3 days to figure this out. >> Two. Well, two and a half. Let's say. I got there I got there in the evening. So, I rolled under the car and I looked at the thing and then I went back and got a room at a hotel and literally did not sleep. Just laid there looked at the ceiling all night long and I thought, well, I got to do this and shape that and turn there and so, I was I thought about it all night long. Monday morning, Mark Giles, he was the young and dashing Mark Giles, good fabricator. He comes to work and Larry says, "This This guy, Mark Giles, and you are going to make this exhaust system." I said to him, or one of the guys I said, "I need a couple things. I need some big steel plates, 1/2 in thick steel plates, and I need your shop press, and I need a bag of sand." And they look at it at me like, "Are you some kind of a farm boy?" I said, "Yeah, that's This is all we got. I only got 2 days. Get Get going." And so, a little while later, here comes my bag of sand and my steel plates, and I um with Mark, we took There's There's a DoAll. No, that's not the DoAll band saw, but they have a band saw. Mark Mark helps me, and we There's Tony. There's some of the guys right there working on the boom boom tubes. Mark helps me. Oh, there There it is. There This is actually the one on the on the Busch Clash car. We We trimmed the steel plate so just the area that I wanted to trim, and I had to do I had to do do two things. I had to make a transition to go from 3 and 1/2 in round down to at the time what we were using 2 and 1/2 by 4 oval because when you took the oval down to 2 and 1/2 in vertical, 2 and 1/2 in it was just automatically out about 4 in. So, we made transitions, which you can see here. >> If it wasn't oval, would it not fit under the car? >> Correct. >> It would scrape. >> Well, the car was uh pretty low. Anyway, after we finished finished these, I I said to Tony, right there I said, "You know, Tony, um I'm concerned about the vibration right here because the the outside radius on the on the tubing is is stretched, and the inside radius is compressed, so the inside radius is is is really strong, and the outside radius of the bends is is not. And if it's going to crack in 500 mi, I don't want it to fall off the car. So, we need to build some reinforcements around that. So, we built a box. >> And this this was this was uh accidental genius. The box caused uh at at at the speedway when they're when they're down at at at in the garages at Daytona, when they lift the cars up to work on the cars, right next to us was the 16 car >> Ted Musgrave Ted Musgrave was the driver. It's a Roush car. >> And on the other side was uh I think it was Kyle Petty. It was it was a uh >> Sabco car. >> Sab Sabco car. And so, they lift [clears throat] the car up to go get under there and work on it, and immediately those other two teams, they're right under the car, and they're just over there they're just looking and looking, and all they see is they see two pipes coming in, and there's a box. And then at the [clears throat] other end of at the box, at the two corners, they come out. >> All week long, people would photograph this car and try to catch us with our pants down to to see if they could determine why this car sounded so different. >> So, the following week was Rockingham, and they were interviewing um Jack Roush. They said, "Jack, do you have any idea what's on the bottom of the of the four car?" And he says, "Well, we know it's a box. So, >> [laughter] >> so, we've been experimenting with them, and we're going to get it figured out." >> There was a lot of talk at Daytona about the sound coming from the winning car at the Daytona 500, that of Sterling Marlin. So, Glenn investigated, "What's up with that strange sound?" I've got an exhaust system uh development program that we've started uh to go back and uh see what impact a little bit of a plenum will have in the in the collectors forward to the tailpipe. Uh I think it's pretty obvious that they've added some volume to their exhaust system and whether or not they've got a benefit from it is unknown, but it sure does make it sound different. >> Well, it was an auto box. But anyway, they put them off for quite a while and then um >> Do you owe these guys all these Roush dudes just having their exhaust dumping in the box? >> how many people were building boxes. I'd heard on one of your videos where you had Larry on it and he was saying we didn't really know what it was going to sound like till we put the car out on the track and then we were shocked because it comes by >> Go listen to this poor car. Larry, you hear him as he goes by? That's a different sound >> and everybody else is going you know. And during the race with Sterling out front, it was just to my delight. It was just sit there >> dominated this race back in 1990 155 laps and finally had to settle for fifth. >> And they're all chasing chasing Sterling and and we win the race. It's like, wow, that was like right thing, right right time, right place, right everything, Cinderella story. You know, confident and I'm thinking, how on earth [clears throat] would that happen to me living 2,000 miles away and how was it that I would get to be the one to figure that out? It's like miracle. And it's just just amazing. Here's a box being starting to go together. I don't I actually have one finished, but during the week of speed weeks at at Daytona uh they do a lot of testing and they do tech inspection and things like that. And so I I went down there for that. The media went absolutely crazy about that. And you've probably seen the ESPN qualifying for the four-car. Had Bob Jenkins and Benny Parsons and um Bob Jenkins, I don't know if he's still alive, but Benny Benny's passed away. Nice guy, really liked him. There Benny is that he says, "I wish we could get a microphone down here for you folks to hear this four-car." And then here he got it comes by He says, "Hear that?" And then Bob's goes like, "It sounds much much different. Sounds like an Indy car." And then Jenkins is is going to "I think it's got a turbocharger on it." Well, anyway, later they they come and they interview Oh gosh, what was his name? The little short guy. >> Glover. >> Yeah, Tony Glover. Yes. And they said, "Tony, it sounds like you got 180° headers on your car." Well, of course, which were illegal. And he says >> Well, I don't know. Something that I've been aggravating is about a new driver. They're calling him Nigel Mansell now. It's just something that the guys in the engine room come up with a little different combination in the engine and seemed like it's working pretty well. >> It just sounds so different than anything else we've heard today. We used to hear the old 180° headers. Is it somewhat of a variation from that? >> Well, not really. It's more like 140° headers, but to be honest with you, I think it's a little slower, but Larry and Rob like the way it sounds, so I guess we're going to run it. >> He just He's just making up some BS. To to tell the press. And so at that for the 500 on '95, he started up at the front. And as that race went on, he gradually in under under green light green conditions lapped slowly lapped the entire field except for about 11 cars. There was a caution at about lap 185 out of out of 200. >> There's four cars that broke away a little bit right now. And then you got another another travel of three of them and you got everybody else still running side by side. Beautiful picture through that trial just how close they're running. >> The media was going crazy. Well, is Sterling going to pit and lose track position or or not? Well, he'd pitted maybe 10 laps previous or 15 laps and uh Sterling >> at this race? >> I I I have it recorded. I've watched it many times. >> Like were you physically there? >> I was physically there. Yeah. I'll Yeah, I'll get to that. Sterling stays out. And so everybody else does because they don't want to lose track position and they're still on the lead lap, but they're not as fast as Sterling is. Except for Dale Earnhardt. >> Earnhardt has brand new tires. Yours are worn. Can you still beat him? >> Well, I don't know, you know, that was We were in a no-win situation. I feel like if we if we had a pitted, he wouldn't have pitted and we would have been in the rear in his position. So, you know, we got 10 laps to go. We've had a heck of a week down here already and you know, whatever happens will just happen and uh take a chance on >> You've been talking with Ray Evernham. Are you and Gordon going to hook up together in a draft? >> Well, our two cars worked awfully well today together and you know, hopefully that could be a lot of benefit to us. >> Okay, we'll see which strategy works. >> In a move of desperation Dale Earnhardt comes in and they tape the nose of the car and put on new tires. So, you know, he's got fresh rubber and they've they've taped the nose of the car and they don't care if that motor goes to lap 201 and then blows out, no big deal. But they they literally taped the whole nose. So, there's you know, it's so it's they've aerodynamically improved the nose of the car as much as possible. So, the race goes green and Dale Earnhardt's in the back and he passes one or two cars every lap. >> Jeff Gordon just radioed his crew and said Earnhardt has this in the bag. I'm not so sure. >> And with three laps to go, he finally catches up with Sterling. And the the media, the announcers are saying, well, oh, Sterling's in a bad place because Earnhardt is just going to get a run on him, do it do it down down the back straight on the last lap, and he's going to get him. Well, amazingly, they every time they get to the back straight, Sterling pulls away. And Dale Earnhardt, with fresh tires in the corners, catches back up. >> The only place that really Earnhardt ever runs anybody is like up off of the number two corner up at the back straight. And of course, that's where you need to run fast cuz you get a good draft going in, make that last deal. >> Yep. >> Martin third must be able to really catch Earnhardt and really get that momentum up off of there. >> Yep. >> And then it clears you all the way down the back straight. >> So, as the race went last lap, Sterling does the same thing, pulls away. And Earnhardt starts catching up after turns three and four, but Sterling wins wins the race. So, now you ask about me. I'm there. I'm standing there and I'm going like I'm literally shaking. I mean, I could barely stand up. It was like realizing I think my life just changed. It did. >> I don't think they would have known what what they could have done. They weren't going to weren't going to catch that car cuz I know when I I don't know if I'll leave this in there or not, but when I went to go do that video with Larry, before that, I was talking to one of the crew guys and he's like he's like, look, man, I want to tell you like when you go in there, Larry's going to say…