Frank's Candle
First lit on 1/23/99

In memory of Frank Crane Sr.

1/23/20-6/8/95

1960, 1961, 1966 SF Region Class E Champion

 
From our scrapbook- Vintage racing news from the 60's.......

SUNDAY is for SPEED
By Budd Austin
 Motor Sports Correspondent

RACING IS IN FRANK CRANE'S BLOOD. THE EX-MOTORCYCLIST WILL BE ON THE AUTO RACING CIRCUIT AS LONG AS HIS HANDS CAN GRIP THE WHEEL.

The hot Sunday morning sun and buffeting wind belted bare-chested Frank Crane as he carefully checked the tire pressure on his sleek red 12-cylinder Ferrari racing roadster and scrutinized every square inch of the car through unblinking ice-blue eyes.

He lit a cigarette and stepped back to contemplate the machine like a field marshall trying to decide precisely how many troops and tanks it would take to stage a successful campaign. His strategy apparently well set in his mind, Crane strolled off and climbed into the mechanic's truck. He promptly fell asleep.

An hour later he awoke and commenced slipping into a set of clean, blue racing togs. Expressionless, he hoisted his five-foot, six-inch, 155-pound frame into the Ferrari's cockpit and fired up the power plant.

It whined and screamed, as Ferrari's do, like a woman in anguish. Crane cocked an ear and listened critically. Satisfied, he rolled to the starting line at Vaca Vallet raceway near Sacramento to wait the start of the big modified sports car event of the 1964 Grand Prix.

Minutes later he was gunning the Ferrari through tight turns and down the straightaway at speeds up to 150 miles an hour (7800 revolutions per minute by the tachometer). The heat in the cockpit was enough to roast potatoes. But Crane appeared unperturbed as he ground the Ferrari around the rugged course.

crane, who makes his home in Redwood City, drove hard and consistently, but most important, logically that Sunday. While Porsches and Lotus Fords conked out of the race due to mechanical troubles, the Ferrari hung in until the end and a pleased, exhausted and par-boiled Frank Crane emerged as second place winner.

"Part of the ordeal of racing is waiting", grinned Crane the other evening as he nursed a cool drink at his Redwood City apartment. "You get up at 7 o'clock, go to the track and wait. And wait some more. By the time you've finished the race you've had a pretty hard day of it. I usually try to sleep before a race. It's a throwback to my motorcycle days. It seems motorcycle racers always get sick before going out and I was no exception. But I found that if I went to sleep I didn't have the opportunity to do much thinking and subsequentially get sick. it works."

Crane, in his mid-40's, has been racing in one form or another for the best part of 25 years. Twenty-two of them were spent racing motorcycles. But for the past few years he's confined himself to sports cars. First it was a TR-3 (Triunph), then a Morgan and an A. C. Bristol. Last year he drove a Ferrari coupe for Bev Spencer Buick in San Francisco. And now he is responsible for winning races in Spencer's new Ferrari roadster.

The curious thing about Frank Crane is that he's never been in a wreck on a race track with the exception of the time years ago, as he grins, "when I fell off a motorcycle and broke my collarbone".

"I always figured you can't win a race if you spin out and wreck the car", Crane explains in his typically quiet, crisp way. "The guys who grab the lead right away rarely finish there anyway. So I figure the best strategy is merely to get as fast a start as possible and try to get with the lead cars quickly. After that you just settle down to a steady pace and hang in there. I drive consistently and operate on the theory that if you pace your car right you can wear 'em down. I just keep plugging and make everybody race hard. Bev Spencer had a driver a couple of years ago that was hot for taking an early lead. So he took off like a bat one day, missed the corner, and dumped the car upside down. That was that!"

According to Crane, driving a Ferrari on short curvy sports car tracks is no easy job.

"The Ferrari was never built," he says, "to drive on short, twisting courses. It weighs about 500 pounds more than the average car and needs a lot of room to work up it's horsepower. You have got five gears in a Ferrari and you have to use all of them consantly. Smaller cars use only three gears. At the Vaca Valley race I blistered my hand on the gear shift knob. That's how hot it was. And you're constantly shifting up and down. I actually worked myself out of my pants during the race and didn't realize it until I brought the car back to the pits."

In all his years of racing, Crane has yet to meet up with more than a couple drivers whose lack of ability or good sense threatened his life or the lives of others during a race.

"You seldom run into that type," he says. "I had an argument with such a driver down in Southern California one time, though. As I recall it was a case of him trying to run me off the track. It shakes you up when that happens. Makes you good and sore. But the best policy when you spot a guy like that is to just give him plenty of room. Stay away from him. You'll only get hurt doing otherwise and you sure can't win the race."

Crane finished a respectable 10th overall in the recent Laguna Seca competition, and if everything goes right he'll enter the professional Riverside Grand Prix. His ultimate goal, of course, is to drive a big Indianapolis type car, but he admits that his chances of ever doing it are slim.

"It's hard," he says, "to find a man with the money to invest in a car capable of runninf the Indy. That's a $50,000 or $60,000 deal, you know. But if the opportunity ever presents itself you can bet I'll be there--with bells on."

Obviously, Frank Crane doesn't take unnecessary chances when he's behind the wheel of a powerfull race car. And he doesn't look with favor on drivers who are "chance takers".

"I push hard all the time," he explained, "but I don't do darn fool things on the track. There are drivers who did and they're no longer with us. Ricardo Rodriguez, the Mexican ace who was killed not long ago, was a daredevil. I watched him and his brother, Pedro, at the Riverside Grand Prix a couple of years and just knew Ricardo wouldn't finish if he didn't take it easy. He was going into the turns all out of shape. Take Sterling Moss. He was one of the greatest drivers of all time. One of his main problems was finding a car strong enough to hold up under him. With Moss either he'd win or wind up in the pits with a blown rear end or engine."

But with all his experience he admits that the first race of the season still gives him butterflies.

"Sure, you're a little apprehensive for the first event of the season," he grinned. "Particularly if you're driving a new car. But after a couple racesyou settle down and get straightened out. It's like anything else. With a new car you have no idea how fast you can go, how it'll handle on turns and in tight situations. It's no different really, than the average driver who may switch from a Ford or a Buick. You've got to make an adjustment. For the first week or so you're learning all about the car. Once you've got it down you can drive it safely."

"At Vaca Valley," he recalled, "we found out during practice runs that the track was tearing up the Dunlop tires we were using. In fact, it just rolled the rubber off the front tires in chunks. So we had to send to San Francisco for a new set of Goodyears with wide tread--more rubber. They worked fine. But it set us back about $400. Racing as you can see is an expensive proposition. We're also having steering problems with the Ferrari. But we figure if we shorten the sway bar on the front end we'll have that licked, too. Generally, however, the Ferrari is an exceptional car. Last year we didn't put a drop of oil or water in it all season. Just changed spark plugs once. And that's pretty amazing."

After a quarter of a century in racing you would think Crane might begin to contemplate retiring.

"Take me away from racing." he says, "and I don't know what I'd do. Really. It's so much a part of meit's like eating and drinking. I couldn't live without it."

He got up and stretched. "When I get to be 50 years old," he laughed, "I'll probably start racing speedboats. That's an old man's job. But I'm not quite there yet."

 Time, Records and "Fatha" Crane
By Gordon Martin
 Motor Sports Correspondent

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