The Shelby American (Fall 2021)

The SHELBY AMERICAN Fall 2021 114 inside joke with SCCA racers who were of Polish extraction and even- tually became a long-running gag. Koveleski was, of course, the Presi- dent and the group was open to anyone willing to pay $3 for a life- time membership. The newsletter (“ published irregularly and with great difficulty ”) was a showcase for Koveleski’s expansive sense of humor and its decals were in- escapable. As soon as he read about Brock Yates’ cross-country “record” of 40 hours and 51 minutes in 1971, Koveleski began planning a PRDA entry. He sent off a telegram to Yates, threatening to beat him fair and square in a race to California, “ if we can find it .” Suddenly Yates had a serious race. PDRA’s drivers would be Koveleski, racer Tony Adamowicz and Brad Niemcek. They promoted a Chevy van from a New Jersey dealer and rigged it with six fifty-five-gallon drums of gasoline so they could run non-stop. They were even able to check the oil while from inside the cab while in motion (they shut the engine off on long downhills). They demanded the “Pole position” and were the first vehicle off. They failed to in- clude the van’s wretched 8.5 mpg in their calculations and ran short of entertaining speaker but his wife became ill at dinner and he was forced to leave early. It was clearly our loss. He was a walking compendium of Polish jokes and could fire them off, non-shop, for hours. Two of his favorites were about the $1 Million- Dollar Polish lottery: the winner would receive a dollar a year for a million years, and the Polish Godfa- ther who was going to make some- one an offer they couldn’t understand. Oscar Koveleski was another ir- replaceable star in a galaxy of bright lights. He was 88. fuel in Albuguerque. They finshed sec- ond, 53 minutes behind Dan Gurney and Brock Yates in their Ferrari Day- tona 365 GTB. Koveleski was a formidable racer, gravitating towards big-bore entries. In the ‘60s and early ‘70s he cam- paigned a McLaren and in 1970 he won the A/SR National Championship at Road Atlanta, beating 27-time Na- tional Champion Jerry Hansen by a mere one-tenth of a second. He also entered many Can-Am events in the ‘60s and ‘70s. His orange McLaren was numbered “54,” which referred to the television sit-com “Car 54 Where Are You” about a Polish po- lice officer in New York City. Oscar was a guest at SAAC-14 in 1989 and at SAAC-40 in 2015, both at Pocono Raceway. We were looking for- ward to some very funny comments from him after dinner. He was an