Leonard W. Miller
Scott drove Vanguard’s Formula A, in a McLaren M10-A, powered with a 500-horsepower Chevrolet V-8 in the L & M Continental 5000 Championship and Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) events.
Vanguard’s board of directors consisted of Paul Jackson, president of Jackson & Sanders Construction Company; Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr., first head of the Peace Corps and former Ambassador to France, who would be the Democratic Party's candidate for Vice President of the United States in 1972; Washington Redskins defensive halfback Brig Owens; and Richard Deutsch, board chairman of Harbor Oil Corporation.
Today, former BARA members from Maryland, Washington, DC, and Virginia are carrying on the original objectives as the Quartermasters Drag Racing Team.
At Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, California on May 4, 1975, he was the fastest qualifier, but on the final lap of the race itself Scott was barely beaten in a photo finish by Fred Phillips in his Eldon Mk 14B.
Brown & Williamson Tobacco expedited BAR’s promotion into Formula 5000 events, with Benny Scott competing at speeds over 200 mph with racing legends such as Great Britain’s Brian Redman, South Africa’s Jody Scheckter, Mario Andretti, and Chris Amon of New Zealand.
BAR qualified for the inaugural Long Beach Grand Prix (LBGP) on September 28, 1975, an invitation-only event for the top 60 race teams in the world.
Although BAR’s LBGP performance demonstrated its ability to qualify the first African American driver for the Indianapolis 500 in the mid-1970s, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation terminated all of its motor racing sponsorships in November 1975 for business reasons.
In 1976, Leonard W. Miller and Benny Scott were inducted into the Black Athletes Hall of Fame at the New York Hilton in Manhattan for their achievements in motor racing.
African American driver Tommy Thompson approached Miller in 1977 to continue the BAR effort with personal funds in FSV (called Mini-Indy cars at that time).
They won the stock car championship at Old Dominion Speedway in Manassas, Virginia and was acknowledged as one of the top 10 teams in the middle Atlantic division.
Paul Newman called Miller's autobiography, Silent Thunder: Breaking Through Cultural, Racial, and Class Barriers in Motorsports (2004), "an extraordinary book that is refreshingly honest," and Mario Andretti praised it as "eye-opening".
