Ernie Derr
The Keokuk, Iowa, veteran, who has won seven IMCA national late model stock car championships, bolted his 1967 Dodge Charger to victory in the Keystone 100 feature race at the Great Allentown Fair.
Derr started on the pole and led for 66 of the 100 laps, finishing the event in just eight-tenths of a second over 50 minutes and lapping the entire field along the way.
While the 18-year stock car veteran breezed at the end, he had it anything but easy at the start. Ramo Stott, who like Derr is a factory driver – Stott is a member of the Plymouth team – took the lead on lap 18 and held it through the 46th circuit.
Stott pulled up at the start of lap 47, and it appeared that he was making his mandatory pit stop. It was the end of the day for him, however, as his car developed transmission problems and he was forced to retire.
That bit of racing luck gave Derr, who was two seconds behind at the time, the lead again, and the only time he lost it was between the 58th and 63rd laps, after making his own pit stop. He took the lead position for good when Lewis Taylor pulled in to make his pit stop.
Derr was running behind second place Ole Brua for eight laps, and it appeared he was content. On lap 71, however, he shot by Brua, completing his sweep of the field, and he went on to win it hands down.
Derr said afterwards that the car was running perfectly. “This is a good track,” he said. “The only thing is that it’s hard on the brakes, because the turns are more square than many tracks we run.”
Brua held on for second place while Taylor was third. Taylor is a perfect example of how hard the track is on the brakes – he ran the last 34 laps without brakes on his 1965 Plymouth, and several times it appeared that he had trouble in the turns. He came out well, however, completing 99 of the 100 laps.
Derr came from his seventh starting position to win the 10-lap STP trophy dash. In another qualification heat, Paul Long, a Pennsylvania driver in a 1960 Ford, led wire to wire to easily win.
Derr, who started racing in IMCA in 1950 and won his first national championship three years later, said afterward he has no desire to join any other late model stock car association – like NASCAR or USAC. “If I was going to do that, I’d have done it in 1954 or ’55, when they were growing. I’m not set up to travel that far now. They’ve got a couple of good ones you have to beat, but if you have the good car, the only guy you have to beat is one right behind you.”
Derr didn’t have good car on Sunday – he had the best one.
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