Hello,

I'm desperately looking for pictures of the Hamill SR2. If anyone can assist, it would be very much appreciated.

Many thanks!


Kind regards

Russell

Dubai, UAE

OK, then. I'll be the one that asks. What's an Hamill SR2?

David

I can only presume that it is the car built by the American Ed Hamill before the SR3 he raced extensively in the 1966 USRRC and CanAm races, but, Russell, about the SR2 I know nothing and can find nothing, as yet.

John

Correct, John. I'm looking for pictures of the Oldsmobile powered car which Ed Hamill drove in the 1966 USRRC series, referred to as the Hamill SR2. It's last race was at Pacific Raceways, Kent (USA) in July 1966.

Hamill entered the 1966 Can-Am series at Bridgehampton in September 1966 driving a SR3 with a Repco engine. By the next race (Mosport, 25th September 1966) it had a Chevrolet engine. It's this car's predecessor.

Any help would be very much appreciated!

With kind regards,

Russell

Dubai, UAE

Russell,

Sorry, I meant to check further into my files, but just a quick look turned up nothing in the photo department. Later today I will scour the files a bit more closely.

Offhand, I would not be too surprised to find very little since the coverage of the USRRC at this point was already getting spotty. However, I have a few places left to look since I got diverted from this last night to handle another project.

Here's a link to a photo (not a very good one) of Ed Hamill in a Hamill SR3 Chevrolet at Mont Tremblant in 1966.
http://www.autocourse.ca/photos/saison1966/usrrc/

Of course the obvious place to look would be Pace and Brinker's new book about vintage American sports cars! An excellent book. There is a photo of SR2 at Riverside in 1965. The authors state that this was the first car built by Hamill (I suspect that SR1 was the Cooper Monaco raced by Hamill earlier). It also states that two SR3s were built for 1966, one for Hamill and one for Roy Kumnick, although it may have been that one of them was the upgraded SR2, again my hunch.

John

Many thanks for the info, John.

I was delighted to receive an e-mail from none other than Roy Kumnick himself! Roy wrote:-

Russell,

I am not a member of Atlas F1, but I review Nostalgia Forum. I raced Corvettes in the
early '60s and raced in USRRC and Can-Am from '64 to '68. Ed Hamill built his cars
in the same building as my Corvette shop. (Tero-Corvette) The SR-1 was an Indy car
which never qualified at Indy (1964). The first sportscar was the SR-2 which I put
upside-down while testing at Meadowdale Raceway in May, 1965. Car was totaled.
Ed then built two SR-3s in late ''65. He raced one first with an Olds engine and then
switched to Chev. I raced the second SR-3 with a Chev. We both ran in USRRC and
Can-Am.

Hope this helps a little. Are you considering building a model of a Hamill?
Let me know if you receive this, or can give you any more information.

Regards,
Roy

In another message, Roy confirms that the SR-2 and SR-3s had the exact same bodies.

"The only differences were some minor chassis changes and moving the brakes from inboard to the wheels. All three bodies were fiberglass and came from same mold. My car was dark metalic purple with white scallops and Ed's was white with a blue stripe."


With kind regards,

Russell
Dubai, UAE

Martin Hill is a visitor to my website who has contributed many photos from his personal collection. He sent me a photo of a CanAm car that neither of us could identify. This thread provided the identification. Here's Martin's photo of Ed Hamill in his Hamill SR-3 at Riverside in 1966:

http://www.tamsoldracecarsite.net/MartinHillHamillSR3.html

Tam McPartland

Many thanks for that, Tam!

Now that Roy has confirmed that the body of the SR-2 and the SR-3 was the same, it makes matters a lot easier!

Here's another picture that I came across:-




Incidentally, I see that a "1965 Can-am Hamill-McKee SR-3" is available for sale ! The car is referenced as the "former Carl Haas USRRC/CanAm race car witha 366cid Chevrolet engine with Webers, a Hewland transaxle and has been winning many vintage USRRC races."

Tam, you have a fabulous website! It's a great reference source for modellers.

Thanks again!


With kind regards,

Russell
Dubai, UAE.

Roy Kumnick very kindly sent me these pictures, which I just had to share. Roy raced Corvettes in the early '60s and in the USRRC series and Can-Am from '64 to '68. Ed Hamill built his cars in the same building as Roy's Corvette shop, Tero-Corvette.




Friday May 28, 1965. The first Hamill sports car (SR2) just completed.




Saturday May 29, 1965. Roy put the car upside-down while testing at Meadowdale Raceway. The car was totalled.






SR3 at Road America USRRC, September 1966.




SR3 at Riverside Can-Am, October 1966.




SR3 at Johnson Wax HQ, Racine, WS. Johnson Wax was the principle sponsor of the Can-Am series in 1967 and 1968. Taken with the Board of Directors and an interested onlooker -- Stirling Moss, pointing at the rear spoiler.

Many thanks, Roy!


With kind regards,

Russell

Moss was of course more than an interested onlooker. His services were retained by Johnson Wax as a "front man" for the Can-Am series.

Thanks, that really helps with some of the work I am doing. Like most other series, most of the focus was on the frint-runners with relatively little attention was focused elsewhere in the field. These are the only pictures I have seen of the SR-2 prior to and then being totalled. Again, many thinks for the contemporary pictures since they really make a difference.

I was at Meadowdale when Roy crashed his car coming off the Monza wall. Saw him slide down the straight inverted, when we turned the car over we expected to see him dead but somehow he had held himself up off the track for the long slide to the Start-Finish line, I was an official at that race.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Russell_Sheldon

Hamill entered the 1966 Can-Am series at Bridgehampton in September 1966 driving a SR3 with a Repco engine. By the next race (Mosport, 25th September 1966) it had a Chevrolet engine. It's this car's predecessor.


Is there some sort of mixup here ,the pictuer below is the Australian built Matich SR3 Repco 1967 ,at Riverside .It seem strange that these two sports cars used the same index numbers ,and Repco Power plant did not come by that easily.It seem to be a strange coincidence going on here.

The Hamill SR2 was vintage racing in California as recently as Palm Springs 1996. I went Russell Racing School with the owner, whose name escapes me. You might check out some Vintage clubs...

Bud

Russell:
In conversation with Ed Hamill today and tonight, he states that SR2 was actually the first car he started to build, but, in the midst of it all, he was offered the job of building an Indy car, which was actually the first car he completed. There never was an SR1. He then finished the SR (sports racing) and, because it was the 2nd car actually completed, he designated it the SR2, which was pretty well destroyed at Meadowvale. He then built SR3, then used the usable bits of SR2 in constructing another Hamill SR3 for Roy Kumnick. This is the car now offered for sale, the body of which was supplied by Ed some 10 or 15 years ago. He still has the original SR3 he built. It will be of some interest that the SR2 body was some 3" approx. narrower than that of the SR3, and that the SR3 had clearance bumps in the tail section for the rear tires, the necessity of which, he says, he learned the hard way. There were minor differences in the tail sections of all 3 cars.
The SR2 or the SR3 was sold in model form, in clear plastic, by Lancer. I did have one copy, but gave it to a friend some 25 years ago; he is not sure if he still has it; if he does, I will get pics of everything that was in the box, and the box itself. If he did sell it, he knows who bought it, so we should be ablt to track it down.

edward_skakie@bigfoot.com

If I ever manage to get a new scanner laid in, I'll post a snap I took of the SR3 in the paddock at Mosport for the Player's 200 at Mosport. As I recall, the car was reasonably quick and well driven.

That would have been in 1966, when we worked all night at the Sawyer Farm workshop near Orono, Ontario, disassembling the front uprights to repair small cracks in the gussets, as well as doing other maintenance items. Ed drove on raceday with, I believe, one hour of sleep, breakfast, and a shower, which may be more than some racing team members had.

I'd like to mention here the enormous generosity afforded the racing fraternity by the general public, many of whom had no connection to the events, the participants, or the racing itself, but helped out only because they were asked. The Sawyer family is a case in point: when the cracks were discovered, Ed said that the ball joints would have to be pressed out of the uprights; I knew that Mike Sawyer's family had a well equipped workshop on their farm nearby; a call to Mike resulted in an instant invitation to use their facilities; during the work, we were assisted and encouraged in keeping our spirits up, at various times during the night, by Mike, his brothers, their respective spouses/girlfriends, his parents, and his grandmother, who, at 3 or 4 AM, brought out freshly made doughnuts, tea, and coffee, served on a silver platter service! In such circumstances, it is difficult to pinpoint the highlight of the whole experience, although a contender would certainly be Ed's experience, on the way to the Sawyer farm, of crossing a small bridge at speed and having his Pontiac station wagon, and the trailer with the SR3 on it, all becoming airborne.

Copies of pics will be most appreciated, as most racers did not have time, or, in a lot of cases, money, to build their own collection. One illustration is that, until I described it to him yesterday, Ed Hamill had no previous knowledge of the Johnson Wax pic posted on this site.

I've not seen it on the 'net in black & white, but the members of all these various sites should know that racers in general are very appreciative of all the postings of memories and pics, and are generally blown away by the general esteem in which their exploits are held, which is expressed indirectly by the mere fact of such postings.

edward_skakie@bigfoot.com

As promised, if a bit late. I hope that this is the correct model? Photographed by me at the Player's 200 at Mosport in 1966

This is the Hamill SR3 model that Ed drove that weekend. I've lately remembered some amusing trivia: after this race, Ed and his partner Vicky set off for their base in Chicago; he drove until she took over, and he tried to catch up on some much needed sleep. Some time later, he awoke because he "felt funny". He studied where they were and what they were doing, which was that she was doing around 85-90 MPH, on a curve, and had the Pontiac station wagon, and the trailer with the race car on it, doing one humongous all-wheel drift. He quietly said "Vicky? You can slow down a bit, Hon." He also related that, earlier that year, at Ste Jovite, wanting to see how the front suspension was acting on a particular part of the track, he took a run without the bodywork, only to find that, when cresting a rise on the back straight, the car decided it wanted to be an aircraft; he got all the wheels in the air, and found it unnerving when the car decided to come back down both crabwise and with one side lower than the other. He said, at the time, that he was very careful to make sure the first wheel to contact was pointed absolutely straight down the track. This was, IIRC, the same weekend that some very well-known drivers did the same, and I believe he said someone got to slide on the rollbar and other bits.
If anyone has any other pics of the Hamill cars, I would be interested in purchasing copies, both for myself and for Ed. I can be reached at: info@SkakiForm.com. I've also obtained an original Hamill SR? clear plastic slot-car body that I bought in 1967, and later gave to a friend, who has now given it back to me, unmolested, to forward to Ed Hamill.
Many thanks.