Racing Career
Muncey began his boat racing career in 1949 by sinking in front of a hometown crowd on the Detroit River. Bill’s first attempt to drive in an American Power Boat Association (APBA) Gold Cup event began by blowing up the engine. Muncey went to Gar Wood’s riverfront mansion, and asked Wood for help. Muncey got an engine from Wood, but the bottom of the boat fell out during the next race.
Muncey had his first win at the Gold Cup in 1956 in Miss Thriftway. His career took off in 1960. Muncey won fourteen races between 1960 and 1962, including six of seven in 1962. In 1976, at age 48, he won five races in his boat Atlas Van Lines to silence the critics that said that he was too old to win. He moved to a new Atlas Van Lines boat in 1977 and won twenty times in the next three seasons. He followed up with four wins in 1980. Muncey won his last race during the Thunder on the Ohio race at Evansville, IN in 1981. Muncey was leading the final heat of the World Championship race at Acapulco on October 18, 1981 when he died in a blowover crash while travelling 175 miles per hour (280 kilometers per hour). He was buried at Glen Abbey Memorial Park in Bonita, California
In more than three decades of hydroplane racing, Muncey had claimed eight Gold Cups (1956, 1957, 1961, 1962, 1972, 1977, 1978, 1979), seven U.S. National Championships (1960, 1961, 1962, 1972, 1976, 1978, 1979), and four World Championships. He was named the driver of the year seven times.
Read more about this topic: Bill Muncey
Famous quotes containing the words racing and/or career:
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)