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Photos and articles from the collection of

Dana Barlow

Some of his collection of newspaper articles are at the bottom of the page.

Dana was a SMRA officer, and was one of the many people who worked hard to reopen the track in1970.  He was a consistant winner in the "A" class modified mini-stocks with this Anglia.

(Photo by Ed Oberlies) Mar. 13, 1971

The Gary Smith Memorial was the biggest race of the year.

Dana is shown here after winning  the 75 lap modified feature.

Gary's parents join Dana in victory lane.

(Photo by Ed Oberlies) Oct. 16, 1971

He was a great mini-stock supporter at a time when the class was new, and helped it to spread across the state.

7-10-71

Feature action! Clark Little leads the way in his Fiat 850.

Barlow works the outside of George Sweeting.

It looks to me like Raleigh Beatty's #8, but Dana

insists that George Sweeting drove it that night.

(Photo by Don Winchester) Nov. 7, 1971

Dana is on the move as a lapped car appears. It is John Ray driving the #76 Triumph.

Oops! Dana rolls after tangling with the 76.

There is a Sunday race at Hollywood in just a few hours, so it is off to work on the 31!

After an all-nighter, Dana is on track for some road race action.

Halloween night and the winning ways continue.

10-31-70

Dana and the SMRA developed some creative differences, so he ended up forming a traveling mini-stock group, the United Mini-Stock Conference.

In the late 1980's, he helped to introduce the Pro-4 division in the state of Florida.  He is shown here after one of his many wins driving the #56 owned by long-time Harold Perry.  This was Volusia Speedway, October 1995.  The #4 was Dana's own creation that raced for many years.

Some sort of California TQ? Going over the falls in a barrel? Not exactly. These were Dana's entries in the human powered vehicles contest at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. In 1985, Too Strange was the 7'th fastest cycle in the world at 51 MPH.

Meet Dana Barlow, a second-generation racer, life-long tinkerer, designer and innovator  He started racing at Hialeah as a high school student.

Here is Dana's hand-crafted late model that he ran at Hialeah, Naples and Palm Beach.  The 1980's were an odd time for late model racing.  A great deal of money flooded into S. Florida, and many teams used it to buy the best equipment available.  Dana, on the other hand, built his own cars and engines from the ground up with cast-off parts, and things that he traded for, found and repaired.  He used innovative, and hand-built, automatic transmissions to save weight and drag.  It was an up-hill battle against the money, but Dana ran strong for several years, and also helped to keep many other cars on the track.

The wins racked up quickly when Dana raced Renault mini-stocks in the mid1970's.  At the time, minis raced locally at Hollywood, but Dana traveled to Naples, St. Petersburg and many other tracks across the state.

In the late 1980' through the early 1990's, Dana was a big winner while building and driving Toyotas in Hialeah's popular and competitive mini stock class.  Here he is in victory lane with his wife Mary Jo, and their son Lance, who went on to race for several seasons too,

1970 or so.

Carrying the flag at Hialeah.  C. 1970

Around 2005, Dana designed and built a revolutionary car to race in the Electrathon series.  These were one hour long races for electric racecars.  The driveline was simple and dependable, but Dana's chassis design was a mile ahead of the competition.  This car was very efficient when cornering.  Because it did not scrub off speed like the others, it went on to win around 2/3 of the races that it started.  The driver was his son Lance, and I did the motor and batteries.

Here is his current project!  Beware, Dana has NEVER retired from racing.

Here was the first racecar, a Hudson Hornet built with life-long racing bud Rob Bean.

Dana worked on racecars of all sorts, and always enjoyed road racing.  This was a SCCA F5000 that he put together in two weeks from several boxes of parts.  It soon went on to its first race at Sebring and finished 5'th.

9-25-71

In addition to all the auto racing, Dana has a life-long love for sailing and sailboat racing too.  This was a "E-scow", a super-modified of the sailing world.  Dana's favorite event is an annual race from Miami to Key Largo, and his team won it 24 out of 26 years.

8-14-71

7-10-71